Revu des MSDN Webcast sur Windows Mobile pour l’année 2008

image L’année 2008 a été fructueuse pour la technologie mobile.  Le nombre d’article et de vidéo disponible sur internet ont grandement augmenté.  Entre autres, Constanze Roman (Windows Mobile Community PM), Maarten Struys (MVP) et Jim Wilson ont fait de très belles et instructives vidéos qui sont toujours disponibles sur demande. 

Voici donc la liste (en espérant que je n’en oublie pas):

Windows Mobile Webcast Series – Getting Ready for Tech Ed

24 Hours of Windows Mobile Application Development

À ne pas manquer en janvier 2009

Bon visionnement et à l’année prochaine!

~ Franky

Références:

A New Start / Un nouveau départ

I start this blog to keep notes of some works or to have a better understanding of some technologies.  You "probably" notice my English is not perfect, and this is because it's not my primary language.  I was doing this blog in English to improve my skill, but now with my new job, the new schedule and everything, I found that it's to much.  I will continue to do my blog but in french.

image

J'ai commencé ce bog pour garder des notes des petits projets que j'ai fais, sans prétention.  J'avais décidé d'écrire en Anglais pour me pratiquer.  Après avoir essayer quelques temps je trouve difficile de bien expliquer en Anglais.  De plus je trouves qu'il manque de ressource francophone sur le net, donc je continuerai mon blog mais en français.

~ Franky

No more "Post-in" on you're screen

As long as I remember I always want to keep information close to my workspace.  I try the little bloc-note, but I was unable to keep one note on top...  So I switch to post-it, you can easily imagine what my screen look like.   But recently I found "the thing".  I will not anymore stick post-it on my screen but in my screen.

Stickies is a little application done by Zhorn Software. This nice application is a virtual post-it manager.  A simple double click on the little post-it icon place in you're tray and a new post-it appear on you're screen.  The post-it is fully cutomizable.  You can create different style that regroup paper color, font, etc.

 

image

 

You can attach a alarm to the note and put it to sleep.  So if you want to call you're Mom for her birtday you just need to create a new note and specify the date...  Then the note will popup shaking and buzzing just n time.   

Another nice feature is the network share.  You cant create as it's call some friends.  Those friends can have e-mail address and ip or network name.  Then by right-clicking you can share one or all note to one specific person or to all you're friends.  You can event configure it to sync with you're mobile device!

That it.  Let go and try it you will see it could be a great tools.

~ Franky

Jing, un outil différent


Un ami m'a récament parlé de Jing. Il a dit que c'était un bon outil de capture d'écran ou écran vidéo rapide. "Quoi de neuf", ai-je dis. "Essaie le" m'a t-il répondu, tu verras bien. Et je vis me plus!

Jing ressemble à un soleil accroché sur le côté de votre écran. Vous pouvez facilement y avoir accès seulement en bougeant la souris au-dessus.

Pour faire une capture, rien de plus simple. Vous sélectionner quel partie de votre écran vous voul seulement Vous pouvez faire de la capture d'écran et ajouter du texte ou des flèches sur elle.

Une fois que vous êtes la capture est fini, vous pouvez l'enregistrer sur un lecteur local ou en ligne! Vous pouvez créer un compte gratuit pour tous afin screencast.com vous êtes capture sera disponible pour tous les peuples.

So like me if you want to try it, it a free software and it’s well done. Alors si comme moi vous voulez essayer, c'est un logiciel libre et c'est bien fait.


www.jingproject.com/

Video tour: ici


Jing the Wonderful

  image

A friend recently talk me about Jing.  He said that it was a good tool to take screen shot or do quick screen video.  "And what's new?" I said.  "Try it", he reply, "you will see".   

And I saw.

Jing look like a docked sun on the side of you're screen.  You can easily access to it by moving you're mouse over it.  You can  do some screen capture just by one click.  

Before saving it give you the opportunity to add coloured arrow, text and to high-lite some zone of you're capture.

Once you're capture is finish you can save it on a local drive or online!  You can create a free account to screencast.com so all you're capture will be available for all the people.

So like me if you want to try it, it a free software and it's well done.

www.jingproject.com/

Video Tour: Here

DiagramLib

Description

DiagramLib is a library that give the opportunity to draw some schema like Visio.  I did this librairy doing a addon to Microsoft Visual Studio.  The goal was simple use the drag&drop to quickly build a schema.

 

Features

  • You can draw many different shapes like: oval, rectangle, rounded rectangle, diamond and the special class shape.
  • Each shape is completely manageable by the UI.  You just need to right-click on a shape to get the Property windows, exactly like Microsoft Visual Studio.
  • You can draw connection between shapes.  Those connections will automatically be re-draw to optimize the path as you moving a shape.  Also the connections have the same customization feature as all shape.
  • The board will automatically expend if needed.
  • You can save and load the schema.

Code

To be able to use the library you just need to add a reference to it. 

   1: private GraphControl oBoard;


   2:  


   3: this.oBoard = new Compuware.DiagramLib.GraphControl();


   4:  


   5: this.oBoard.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill;


   6: this.oBoard.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(0, 0);


   7: this.oBoard.Name = "oBoard";


   8: this.oBoard.ShowLoadSaveOption = true;


   9: this.oBoard.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(605, 372);


  10: this.oBoard.Tracking = false;




Download



I did a quick test application to play with the class that you can download here: http://boucheros.no-ip.org/TestDiagramLib/



If you prefer doing a Test application by you're self here is the DLL: Boucheros.DiagramLib.rar



 



ScreenShot



image



For any Question or comment feel free to live a comment.

What you must have to enjoy IE7

Recently I got some trouble with the so lovely Firefox, so I got no choice to suffer and use IE. But then I take the time to search how I can improve the application. Here is my top 4 of some add-ons that are really nice....

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides a set of tools for quickly creating and debugging web pages. Tools include such areas as exploring the DOM of a page, locating specific elements on a page, and outlining code blocks. It's really look like FireBug, a MSUT to any developer. Download from here.

image

Inline Search

Inline Search is a quick way to search for content on a web page without pulling up the Find Dialog as well as providing the ability to find as you type and highlighted search terms.

http://www.ieforge.com/InlineSearch/HomePage

image

Extended Copy Menu

Again for all developer... Adds a “Copy As Html” and “Copy As Plain Text” to the context (right-click) menu.

http://ryanscook.com/adminsBlog/2007/02/firefox-ie-copy-context-menus.html

image004

IE7Pro

IE7Pro is an add-on for Internet Explorer which adds a lot of features and extras which make your Browsing faster,More Responsive and Sleek. It add also:

  • New Module: FasterIE,It will increase your IE surfing speed.
  • Add Session Manager function, it include save, load, copy, send by mail
  • IE context menu add save selected source code to file and clipboard as html, text, links
  • Online bookmark support IE8 webslice now
  • New ActiveXObject interface.
  • View page info SaveAs dialog support multi-select now
  • Add serverinfo plugin again

http://www.ie7pro.com/index.php?language=en

Voila! I hope you will enjoy those.

François

Change Font Color in Gnome Panels

 

I don't know if you are like me, but I prefer darker themes.

image

But with Ubuntu no UI interffface is present be default to change the color of the font in Gnome panels. Here the simple way I found.

  1. Open a terminal and type:

    Haskell-Code:

    sudo gedit .gtkrc-2.0



  2. Then a empty file will open so copy-paste this code:

    Haskell-Code:



    include "/home/autocrosser/.gnome2/panel-fontrc"style "desktop-icon"
    {
    NautilusIconContainer::frame_text = 1
    text[NORMAL] = "#000000"
    NautilusIconContainer::normal_alpha = 70
    }
    class "GtkWidget" style "desktop-icon"
    #NautilusIconContainer::dark_info_color="#888888"
    #NautilusIconContainer::light_info_color="#bbbbbb"
    #NautilusIconContainer::highlight_alpha=20
    style "panel"
    {
    fg[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
    # fg[PRELIGHT] = "#000000″

    # fg[ACTIVE] = "#000000"
    # fg[SELECTED] = "#000000″

    # fg[INSENSITIVE] = "#8A857C"
    # bg[NORMAL] = "#000000″

    # bg[PRELIGHT] = "#dfdfdf"
    # bg[ACTIVE] = "#D0D0D0″

    # bg[SELECTED] = "#D8BB75″

    # bg[INSENSITIVE] = "#EFEFEF"
    # base[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
    # base[PRELIGHT] = "#EFEFEF"
    # base[ACTIVE] = "#D0D0D0″

    # base[SELECTED] = "#DAB566″

    # base[INSENSITIVE] = "#E8E8E8″

    # text[NORMAL] = "#161616″

    # text[PRELIGHT] = "#000000″

    # text[ACTIVE] = "#000000″

    # text[SELECTED] = "#ffffff"
    # text[INSENSITIVE] = "#8A857C"
    }
    widget "*PanelWidget*" style "panel"
    widget "*PanelApplet*" style "panel"
    class "*Panel*" style "panel"
    widget_class "*Mail*" style "panel"
    class "*notif*" style "panel"
    class "*Notif*" style "panel"
    class "*Tray*" style "panel"
    class "*tray*" style "panel"


    That time I change the color code of: fg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF". You can change this fffor any color by using the #RRGGBB equivalent code.




  3. Save. Close the editor. Re-log and Enjoy!



  If you dont know the code for the color you want you can go here, Or you can use gcolor2.   To install it type in a terminal



Haskell-Code:



sudo apt-get install gcolor2


And when you are done, type: gcolor2 and voila!



I hope this little trick will make it eiser for you!



Franky 

Line of Business Accelerator 2008 – Part 1

 

Manage store procedure with SQL Compact 3.5

This article is the first of a series were I will explain in small chunk the best practices use in Microsoft Line of Business Accelerator 2008.

Prerequisites

To be able to do it you will need:

  • Visual studio 2008 – with SQL compact 3.5

  • Line of Business Accelerator 2008

  • SDK Mobile 6.0 Standard (smartphone, no touch screen)

  • Microsoft Active Sync 4.5

Create the Project

Open Visual studio and create a new Mobile 6 project. You can pick any platform for this demo but a select the framework 3.5 standard.

  1. On the main Form Add a DataGrid and name it grdProduct.

  2. In the Main Menu:  

    • Add a Menu Item Close (mnuClose). Double-click and add the following code to close the application.
         1: private void mnuClose_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)


         2: {


         3:     this.close();


         4: }





    • Add a menuItem Fill mnuFill and double click on it to add the handler.





Now you should have something like this.





Add the Database


Now we need a database. I use the Northwind database. You will found it in the SDK folder (\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SmartDevices\SDK\SQL Server\Mobile - Northwind.sdf). Right-click on the project and add existing item.



When the dataset dialogue will prompt select the in the Product table the column: [Product ID], [Product Name] and [Unit Price].





Fill the datagrid with the “normal” method


Before we add the code in the mnuTest click Handler we need to know the connectionstrng of our database. In NetCF this is the full path and name of the database. The relative path seem not be supported. So in our case we put the database in the same folder that the application, so we could hard coded or use something more generic (and reusable like:





   1: "margin-bottom: 0cm">


   2:  


   3: string runAppFolder = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase);


   4:  


   5: "margin-bottom: 0cm">




 



So now we can use it in the click function. Everything else now is like any “regular” .Net application. But instead of using SQL object were using SqlCe.



1: [code:c#;ln=on]



2: private void mnuTest1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)



3: {



4: try



5:     {



6:         SqlCeDataAdapter oAdap = new SqlCeDataAdapter();



7:         SqlCeConnection oConn = new SqlCeConnection(@"Data Source = " + runAppFolder + @"\Northwind.sdf");



8:         SqlCeCommand GetProduct = new SqlCeCommand(“SELECT [Product ID], [ProductName], [Unit Price] FROM Products”);



9:



10:         oAdap.SelectCommand= GetProduct;



11:         oAdap.Fill(tblProduct);



12:         grdProduct.DataSource= tblProduct;



13:      }



14: catch(Exception ex)



15:     {



16:         MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);



17:     }



18: }



19: [/code]



Now everything is in place the application should works. So Select youre emulator and run it.



Use the manage store procedure


Now it's time to use the “new” that the NetCF Team call:Manage Store Procedure. In fact this is not realty a new, because it was available in VS2005.



Add a Resource call StoreProc to the project.



Add a file to the project ProductGet.sql.



From the resource add an existing text file... select the ProductGet.sql. You should have something like this:





Double-click on the ProductGet icon, the file will open with the SQL syntax hi-lighter. So now we will move the SQL query there in the file you should have:



To use this we will get back in the code where we were building the sqlcqcommand and replace the string by the ProguctGet. So the new code will be



1: [code:c#;ln=on]



2:



3:



4: ...



5:



6:



7: SqlCeCommand GetProduct = new



8: SqlCeCommand(StoreProc.ProductGet,oConn);



9:



10:



11: oAdap.SelectCommand =



12: GetProduct;



13:



14:



15: oAdap.Fill(tblProduct);



16:



17:



"margin-bottom: 0cm">



18: ...



19:



20:



"margin-bottom: 0cm">



21: [/code]



Conclusion


Now you can test again the application. It's works like before but this time you can edit the sql code without re-compiling.





To add some parameter just add some ? in you re query and add the parameter(s) to the SqlCeCommand, like usual.



I hope this simple tutorial help you, feel free to ask any question or let me know you're comment.



Thanks



Franky