Calvin Hsia's WebLog : SmartPhone

Resize your pictures for your phone or pocket pc

Calvin_Hsia — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:55:00 GMT

I have many digital pictures, and I'd like to put some of my favorites on my SmartPhone. However the files are much higher resolution than the device's display. This means the files take a lot more memory on the phone, and they take longer to process. I wrote some code to resize the images automatically. The code below shows a form with a resized picture on it, and you can vary the Quality of the JPG saved image by moving a TrackBar control. The form's caption shows the Quality selected, and the resulting file size. It's amazing how small you can make the file without losing too much quality.

Start Visual Studio (2005 or 2008), choose File->New->Project->Windows->Windows Forms Application. Choose View->Code and paste in the VB code below. Run it and give it a digital picture to play with.

The code creates oBitmap as an Image object, representing the original image. oBmpOut is an Image object, with the desired target size. A Graphics object is created from oBmpOut and oBitmap is drawn onto that Graphics object. Then the JPG Image encoder is found, and the JPG is saved with the specified Quality.

Below is sample code in both VB.Net and Fox that shows a particular JPG resampled to 320 x 240 resolution, with a TrackBar that allows you to change the JPG quality.

Create your own web browser on your SmartPhone

Calvin_Hsia — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:41:00 GMT

Windows Mobile 5.0 comes with a Web Browser (v6 is due out any day now). It runs on Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. That browser only allows one web page to show at a time: to show another page, you have to navigate away from the current page. I created a web browser for my first SmartPhone over a year ago that allows you to open multiple web pages.

If you have Visual Studio 2008 (or 2005), you can do it too, with the few hundred lines of code below.

This sample WebBrowser features:

Go Forward/Back
adding and editing of favorites
full screen view
multiple web pages open
address bar editing.

Start VS 2008 (or 2005). Choose File->New->Project->Visual Basic->Smart Device Project->Ok.

(You can also run this same sample as a standard VB Windows Form application to see it running on your PC. File->New->Project->Visual Basic->Windows->Windows Forms Application. You can actually have 2 projects in one solution: one for the SmartPhone, one for your PC, both sharing the same code: PhoneBrowser.vb. Then you can right click on the desired project and Set As Startup Project. Be careful of having 2 copies of the code: One copy actually references the Compact .Net Framework, and is in a different project type).

In the wizard that shows, choose Target Platform: Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone SDK, and Templates: Device Application

In Solution Explorer, Delete Form1, then add a new Class called "PhoneBrowser.vb"

Paste the code below.

In Project Properties, choose Application->Startup Object: PhoneBrowser

Hit F5 to build and run the program. A dialog comes up: choose either smart phone emulator. The first time, it takes a few seconds to deploy the .Net Framework 3.5.

Notes: use Tools->Device Emulation Manager to hook up the emulator to your network, so it can browse web sites. Right click on the emulator you chose and choose "Cradle" to attach the emulator electronically to your PC (like putting the phone into a cradle that's attached via cable). Otherwise you'll get "Your Internet connection is not configured properly. Please verify your settings in Data Connections"

Install Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5, run it, and choose File->Connection Settings->Connect to sync the emulator to the PC. This is not required, but will allow you to have your emulator connect to the web while it's cradled.

You can change the Output File folder where the application is stored: Project->Properties->Devices->Output File Folder. It defaults to %CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILES%\SmartDeviceProject1

The sample doesn't show History: if you figure that out, let me know. Otherwise, I may just create a SQL Server CE database and store the links in there….

If you're using VS 2005, you'll get several VB compile errors that you can fix due to new features in VB.Net 2008

Change due to Type Inference:

Old: Dim NewWindow = New PhoneBrowser
New: Dim NewWindow As New PhoneBrowser

Change For loops to declare vars

Old: For i = 1 To oBrowserForms.Count
New: For i As Integer = 1 To oBrowserForms.Count

Relaxed Delegates in 2008 means the method signature doesn't have to exactly match. To fix this, change the event handler method parameters to match.

Old: ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs
New: ByVal o As MyMenuItem, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs

Now that the method signatures match, you'll have to cast some of the Objects to things like "MyMenuItem" or "MyListViewItem" :

Old: Select Case o.Text
New: Select Case CType(o, MyMenuItem).Text

The sample uses Linq in a few places: just replace with the commented code below if Linq is not available (as in VS 2005)

The F1,F2 buttons on your keyboard map to the left and right soft keys of the phone.

To deploy on a real SmartPhone, connect via ActiveSync and choose Project->Properties->Devices->Target Device: Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Device, then hit F5. You'll get some confirmation dialogs on your phone.

You can use Linq on your SmartPhone in VS 2008: if you get an error creating a simple query, Project->Properties: add a reference to c:\Program Files\Microsoft.Net\SDK\CompactFramework\V3.5\WindowsCE\System.Core.dll, and import System.Core and System.Xml

You may have to unlock your phone: http://blogs.conchango.com/stuartpreston/archive/2005/11/10/2376.aspx

Customize your Windows Mobile SmartPhone home screen and Start Menu

Calvin_Hsia — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 02:00:00 GMT

My Smartphone (Cingular 2125) died the other day: actually the phone was fine: the SIM card needed replacing. In the old days, if your phone died you could get help 24 hours a day. Nowadays you have to wait til their service center is open. On the trusty landline phone, they told me to swap SIM cards with my wife's phone to help diagnose the problem, and then told me to go visit the local cell phone store to get a new SIM card.

At the store, I was told I could upgrade my phone quite inexpensively and get a much faster data connection rate for $3/month more. So I got a $50 Samsung Blackjack phone (Microsoft discount), and indeed the data rates seemed quite a bit faster.

The home screen on your SmartPhone (or Pocket PC) can be customized. I didn't like the content or the order that items were displayed. There are items for the Wireless Provider and Date/Time, email, appointments, call in progress, etc.

Because of the limited number of horizontal lines available, each time I wanted to check for email, I'd have to turn on the phone, then scroll down to the email item. There was an ad for email that always showed up, but I didn't want it taking up valuable home screen real estate.

I wanted to put the email and appointments at the top, and remove the ad for the provider's mail service. I also wanted to change the font of the provider and the date/time, so that I could see more on the screen.

From Start->Settings->Display->Home Screen, you can choose from amongst some pre-provided home screen layouts. These are actually just files in a folder on your phone.

Connect your SmartPhone via ActiveSync, then from ActiveSync, choose Tools->Explore->Smartphone to open an Explorer window showing the contents of your SmartPhone. You can navigate the content of your phone's folders, copy files, etc.

Go to \Application Data\Home (You might have to go into "My Windows Mobile-Based Device") to see the XML files that you can customize. I copied them all into a new folder on my PC.

Now, in the PC folder, just make a copy of the scheme you'd like to modify. I called mine "Calvin's Phone.xml". Edit that XML file using any text editor. Visual Studio's editor is nice, due to intellisense and syntax coloring.

Look at the XML of the various schemes to get ideas of what can be customized.

After editing, copy the modified one back to the phone (drag & drop from Explorer on the PC to Explorer on the Phone)

On the phone, you might have to switch color scheme too to get the home display to change immediately, but I didn't have to reset the phone to see the changes.

You can also create shortcuts that will show up on your phone's Start Menu. Navigate to the desired target, click Copy, then paste into \Windows\Start Menu folder. You can rename it as you like. You might have to soft reset the phone to see the change.

Don't forget you can set Speed Dial to access any application quickly with a single button push.

You can change the order of the items in your Start Menu, as well as change the way it's viewed.

Start Menu->Visual Studio 2008->Remote Tools\Remote Registry Editor (also note Remote Process Viewer, Remote File Viewer (also in VS 2005))

Start Remote Registry Editor and go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Shell\StartMenu and change the Order value.

The items listed in this value will appear in the order you specify and before all other items.

If you get a storage card (highly recommended) you might put you’re "My Documents" there, so you don't use up your device's precious memory.

You can change the location of "My Documents" to the storage card using 2 methods:

HKLM\System\StorageManager\Profiles\SDMemory and change the value of "Folder" to "My Documents" Then soft reset.
HKLM\System\Explorer\Shell Folders\My Documents and change the value of "My Documents" from "\My Documents" to "\Storage Card\My Documents"

The first method calls the entire storage card "My Documents", so you can't put a "Program Files" on the card that's outside of "My Documents"

The second is supposed to map just "My Documents" to \Storage Card\My Documents", so you can still have other folders "like Program Files" on the Storage Card that are not in "My Documents".

Beware: Some applications use the hard coded "\My Documents" rather than ask Window for the location of the current user's Documents folder.