Srikanth Bogadapati

Visual Studio -Orcas Jan CTP - New APIs for Remote tool writers

Hi

My recent purchase of a new passion red colour semi sports model car has been keeping me busy for a while, But I still love my black SUV which has been with me all these days.

On Orcas,

While we have completed impementing most of the planned features , I have taken a resolution to do regular contribution to my blogs,

In this blog, I would like to introduce Managed  Connectivity APIs is Orcas Jan CTP (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=69055927-458B-4129-9047-FCC4FACAE96C&displaylang=en)

These APIs will help device programers write Remote tools with ease. I have also created a Hands-On-Lab session and a starter kit for the device programers. I hope developers would get to see the hands on lab in the forth coming MEDC session. The starter kit will most probably make it into product. A new college graduate was excited to work with me on these APIs especially on the starter kit. So in the coming  days I shall present more details about the starter kit. However if you guys have any suggestions on the starter kit and how would like this to be, please do let me know, I would also be looking out for feedback on these APIs

If there are good suggestions worth implementing in Orcas schedule, then we shall definetely give it a try.

To illustarate how easy it is to use these APIs i am pasting a small code snippet here to select a device and connect(I have typed in this code here)

DatastoreManager dsmgrObj = DatastoreManager.GetInstance(1033);     // Get a Handle to Datastore Manager Class passing the locale ID, Please note that in next CTP, this API might  change.(i.e  singleton pattern may be scrapped. I would love to see people guess the reason behind such a decision.) 
IEnumerable<Platform> platformcollection = dsmgrObj.GetPlatforms();  

foreach (Platform objplatform in platformcollection)
{
    IEnumerable<Device> pdeviceCollection = objplatform.GetDevices();
    foreach (Device objdevice in pdeviceCollection)
    {
        if(objdevice.Name.Contains("Windows Mobile 5.0 PocketPc emulator"))
        {
            objdevice.Connect();
        }
    }//foreach (Device objdevice in devices_list)
}//foreach (Platform objplatform in platform_Array)

Happy programing !!!

Thanks

Srikanth Bogadapati

Align menubar and toolbar on a Smartdevice

This blog is about various code snippet trials to align MenuBar and toolbar  either one above the other or MenuBar and tool bar SXS or vice versa.  on a Windows CE/smartdevice

Check out http://srikanthb.spaces.live.com/  , refer to Smart device programing-MenubarToolbar  gallery for 4 coding options to align Menu Bar and tool bar in different positions

 Thanks

Srikanth Bogadapati

VS2005 SP1 beta is out,

VS2005 SP1 is now available to our customers through connect website

https://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio. (You need to signup, fill a small survey to get the download URL in an E-mail)

You can also read our Vice president Soma's blog on this for more details at

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar 

Well, coming to the device world, we have made major bets in SP1.

For the past few months my entire team has spent a  lot of time triaging and fixing bugs, dogfooding,  stabilizing the release and so on. SP1 for devices though is a bit smaller but has a striking similarity or comparison with a full blown release like VS2005(I was coordinating the release for SP1 for devices). To align with SP1 release goals we went through some firefighting to enable new device developer scenarios.  

SP1 is purely customer oriented release. All important bugs reported by customers have been fixed in SP1. Apart from that we took a step forward and made bold bets to enable following

1. We delivered application development experience targeting WinCE6.0
2. Added a whole lot of functionality to native MFC libraries.(I will talk about it in more detail below)  
3. Validated NETCF V2 SP1 release with  VS2005 SP1.
4. Improved and updated Native device development documentation (in sync with SP1
5. Improved eVC –VS2005 native migration experience (from eVC to VS2005)
6. Refreshed compilers and remote tools.

There are other new device development experiences enabled with SP1-beta which I wish to cover in my future blogs

Since my key areas of responsibility include device Native runtime ,native libraries, Managed and native device debuggers , Core connectivity framework for devices, I would like to discuss a bit more on these.

Improved device MFC libraries

A number of classes have been cut down in  VS2005 RTM when compared to eVC.

Main reason for this cut down was lack of time to meet the VS2005 RTM schedule.

However we have come across many customers who gave us a feedback to add those classes back to the MFC library. So we decided to do it by SP1.

Based on the customers feedback, we have added following classes back to device MFC library

1.      CHttpFile

2.      CInternetSession

3.      CHttpConnection

4.      CInternetFile

5.      CInternetConnection

6.      CInternetexception

7.      CDialogBar

8.      CBitmapButton

9.      CEditView

10.  CReBar

11.  CReBarCtrl

12.  CSplitterWnd

13.  CRecentFileList

14.  CFindReplaceDialog

15.  COleSafeArray   

I am sure a lot of customers would be super excited about getting these classes back in device MFC library.

Please let us know your feedback on device MFC library update in SP1 to me at

Srikant_b_@_microso_ft.com (remove underscores) or put up a comment on this blog.

We have also improved eVC –VS2005 migration experience.

There are quite a few other things which I wish to talk about in SP1. Probably I will continue in my next Blog.

Srikanth Bogadapati

Program Manager

VSD