The Windows CE Technology Tutorial: Windows Powered Solutions for the Developer - Softcover

Muench, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201616424 ISBN 13: 9780201616422

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000

Synopsis

"If you want the straight shot on writing code for the hottest information appliances powered by Windows CE, this book is your guiding light. A must for any serious developer of Windows CE-based applications!" --Scott Henson, Group Manager, Windows CE Developer Evangelism, Microsoft Corporation

This practical guide is designed to get programmers up and running with Windows CE, Microsoft's emerging operating system for handheld PCs and other alternative computing devices. This book helps you learn Windows CE programming by building on your experience with Windows 98 and NT. Although other resources may take a more theoretical approach to Windows CE, The Windows CE Technology Tutorial focuses on the essential topics and practical programming techniques you will need to create real-world Windows CE applications.

By using a sample application that is explored throughout the book, Muench walks you step-by-step through all of Windows CE's major technologies, functions, and capabilities--from the most basic skills through advanced techniques. Making extensive use of COM technology, he shows you how to create an application framework and prototype, work with the file system and registry, program for graphics and sound, design the user interface, and enable printing and connectivity. By book's end, this sample application is ready for deployment, complete with a redistributable setup. Smaller code snippets are also used to illustrate important techniques and concepts.

You will find coverage of such specific topics as: Choosing the proper device and installing Windows CE Available Windows CE development tools Windows CE application development with Visual C++ and Visual Basic Creating a COM server and ActiveX control Distributed COM and DeviceCOM The Windows CE registry ADOCE for database access Windows CE Internet integration Adding support for such remote technologies as RAPI, WinSocks, infrared communication, and an ActiveSync provider

In addition, The Windows CE Technology Tutorial offers an overview of Windows CE technology and COM fundamentals. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all the source code used in the book, as well as a variety of convenient tools.

About this title

About the Author

Chris Muench is Siemens's technology ambassador to Microsoft. There, he works closely with the Windows CE development team, bringing Windows CE technology to Siemens as well as providing feedback from his own company to Microsoft. In this position, he has access to the latest Windows CE versions, devices, software development kits, and compilers.

0201616424AB04062001

From the Back Cover

"If you want the straight shot on writing code for the hottest information appliances powered by Windows CE, this book is your guiding light. A must for any serious developer of Windows CE-based applications!"
--Scott Henson, Group Manager, Windows CE Developer Evangelism, Microsoft Corporation

This practical guide is designed to get programmers up and running with Windows CE, Microsoft's emerging operating system for handheld PCs and other alternative computing devices. This book helps you learn Windows CE programming by building on your experience with Windows 98 and NT. Although other resources may take a more theoretical approach to Windows CE, The Windows CE Technology Tutorial focuses on the essential topics and practical programming techniques you will need to create real-world Windows CE applications.

By using a sample application that is explored throughout the book, Muench walks you step-by-step through all of Windows CE's major technologies, functions, and capabilities--from the most basic skills through advanced techniques. Making extensive use of COM technology, he shows you how to create an application framework and prototype, work with the file system and registry, program for graphics and sound, design the user interface, and enable printing and connectivity. By book's end, this sample application is ready for deployment, complete with a redistributable setup. Smaller code snippets are also used to illustrate important techniques and concepts.

You will find coverage of such specific topics as:

• Choosing the proper device and installing Windows CE
• Available Windows CE development tools
• Windows CE application development with Visual C++ and Visual Basic
• Creating a COM server and ActiveX control
• Distributed COM and DeviceCOM
• The Windows CE registry
• ADOCE for database access
• Windows CE Internet integration
• Adding support for such remote technologies as RAPI, WinSocks, infrared communication, and an ActiveSync provider

In addition, The Windows CE Technology Tutorial offers an overview of Windows CE technology and COM fundamentals.

0201616424B04062001

From the Inside Flap

Welcome to the World of Windows CE

Windows CE is probably the most underestimated technology Microsoft has ever produced. At present, Windows CE is most commonly used in palm-size and handheld PCs, but in fact it is capable of much more. The embedded environment Windows CE is targeting holds a nearly unlimited reservoir of opportunities for software developers and original equipment manufacturers.

Windows CE was written from scratch but is modeled after its bigger brother Windows. This book will help you to understand the differences between these two brothers and will guide you step by step through all the major technologies of Windows CE.

Back in 1996, when Windows CE was still in diapers, I was already working on several hardware and software products using this program as the base technology. At that time I was working as a technology ambassador for Siemens at Microsoft, which entailed dual responsibilities: to evangelize Windows CE at Siemens and to deliver feedback from Siemens to Microsoft. During my time at Microsoft I made friends in all departments of the Windows CE team. The Microsoft DRG (Developer Relations Group) made sure that I always had the latest Windows CE devices running the newest beta build of their next generation software. The Windows CE Marketing and the Tools Team provided me with the latest versions of SDKs (Software Development Kits) and compilers. Many of those technologies were still in beta when I wrote this book. By the end of 1998 I had collected so much information and knowledge about Windows CE that I thought it would make a useful book for others. How Is this Book Different from Others?

The title tells you that this book is a technology tutorial. But what is a technology tutorial? A tutorial explains something by walking the reader step by step through an example. This book is a technology tutorial because it uses the tutorial method to walk you through all the essential technologies of Windows CE. Traditional technology books generally discuss a technology in a more theoretical way, for example, by explaining the Application Programmable Interface (API) calls and their parameters. However, during my years of experience as a developer, I found that even the worst example is better than the best theoretical explanation.

During the course of this book you will find innumerable tiny examples and step-by-step explanations showing you how to recreate each example from scratch. At first the explanations will be very detailed, but as you proceed through the book, you'll find that they come to focus more on the essentials.

In addition, this book emphasizes the importance of Windows 2000. This new operating system will quickly become essential for developers, industrial users, and end-customers in the business sector.

The book also stresses the importance of the Common Object Model (COM) approach for Windows CE. COM is the best way of preparing any application for the digital and "distributed-technology" age we will face in the near future--and which I will discuss more fully in Chapter 12. The "Thread Example": A Real-Life Application

Another big feature of this book is the "thread example." The thread example is a Pocket-CD-Manager (PCDM) application. It allows you to synchronize a database of your CDs with the "Microsoft Deluxe CD Player" on your desktop and manage it with your Windows CE device. The PCDM will, with very few exceptions, explore all the technologies of Windows CE. This example, which gets its name because it weaves through the book like a red thread, is a real-life application that you will create from scratch. At the end of the book the application will be ready for deployment, including a redistributable setup. How to Read this Book

This book is meant for developers who want to bring their desktop programming experience to Windows CE but have not yet worked on Windows CE. In other words, it is aimed at Win32 professionals who are Windows CE beginners.

To guide you through the technologies of Windows CE, the book contains 12 chapters, each focusing on one area of Windows CE. The order of the chapters is determined by the real-life thread example. As in any tutorial, you will create this real-life example from start to finish. The sample application is a Pocket-CD-Manager that will synchronize a CD library database on your Windows CE device with the library of the Deluxe CD Player on your Windows 2000 desktop. To be more specific, you will learn how to

Set up your development machine (Chapters 1-3) Create the first steps of the application by choosing the framework, creating the application base structures, and designing a prototype in eMbedded Visual Basic (Chapters 4-5) Create the framework for two components used in the sample application introducing COM on Windows CE (Chapter 6) Include the UI elements like CommandBar, CommandBand, and ListView, among others (Chapter 7) Add storage capacity to the application using Registry, ObjectStore, and Active Data Objects (ADO) (Chapter 8) Add support for remote technologies like Remote Application Programmable Interface (RAPI), infrared communication, and ActiveSync (Chapter 9) Create a fancy About Box using graphic APIs on Windows CE (Chapter 10) Wrap up the application by adding advanced feature support for palm-size PCs, creating a setup to install the application on Windows CE and to distribute it using the Windows Installer Technology (MSI) (Chapter 11)

If you follow all the steps, you will end up with a fully functional Pocket-CD-Manager application.

One goal of this book is to keep the sample code as simple as possible. Therefore you will not check each and every error condition, and some code will look a bit "crude." For example, instead of using dynamically allocated and growing lists, the book will rely upon fixed-dimension arrays.

Besides the thread example, each chapter will also contain a tiny code snippet that shows the technology at work. This will allow you to jump to any chapter if you are just interested in a specific technology.

To summarize, the technology section of each chapter will have several sub-sections including all or parts of the following:

An introduction to the technology A small code snippet giving you a quick glance at the technology A sub-section wrapping the technology into a COM component A small Visual Basic code snippet using the COM component of the previous sub-section A sub-section adding the COM component to the main PCDM application A summary highlighting the main caveats, gotchas, and remarkable facts of the technology

The book contains countless examples and sample code. To save space, I provide only the technology-specific code and not all the plumbing code that the eMbedded Visual C++ (eVC) wizards create. If you have to change any code, the new code will be printed in boldface. Most of the code is embedded in step-by-step procedures that explain exactly what you have to do to add the code to the example. Since many of those procedures will have repeated content (for example, adding a method to a COM component), they will become progressively simpler and less detailed as the book progresses. // Code lines themselves are printed in fixed letter spaces. The Companion CD

All source code printed in the book can also be found on the companion CD in the directory Sources. Chapter and section numbers structure this directory. An extra sub-directory contains the sources of the thread example. Inside this directory you will find sub-directories named PCDMUI, for the user interface component; PCDMDLL, containing the core technology component; and PCDM CE, the main thread-example application.

Other directories include tools, helpers, and some redistributables you can use to evaluate certain third-party technologies like DeviceCOM, InstallShield for CE, the Microsoft Installer SDK, and the latest ActiveSync. The source code on the CD was created using the latest Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools. I removed all temporary eVC files but kept the executables and DLLs so that you can run the application without having to recompile them. If you open the source-code, you will find the book-specific code between two remark lines: // **************************************

// *************************************

The thread-example code adds the step number after the chapter number to the remark tag. If you are familiar with Extended Markup Language (XML), you will recognize that we are using XML syntax to mark the code of the book. Using a Visual Basic macro, you could highlight the areas where the book has added code. The Beginning at the End

The final chapter will give you some general ideas about where to go from here and what the digital future may bring. In case you do not know what to do with Windows CE, just read it, and you should come away with at least one idea that leads to a great digital-age product.

Now, without further ado, let's get started.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201616424
• ISBN 13: 9780201616422
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624