----------------------------------------------------------- New Message on BDOTNET
----------------------------------------------------------- From: Srinivas Message 2 in Discussion Hi Ravi, When I wrote this article the ASP.NET mobile controls were in Beta1 stage. Now there are lot more advancement in the ASP.NET mobile controls. This article can give you an introduction to mobile web application development. But there are plenty more to learn. Regd, S. Srinivasa Sivakumar ______________________________________ S. Srinivasa Sivakumar Technical Lead, Author, and Reviewer Thomson Financials http://www3.brinkster.com/webguru/ ----- Original Message ----- From: ravi varma To: BDOTNET Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 9:34 AM Subject: Building Mobile Web Applications with .NET Mobile Web SDK & ASP.NET New Message on BDOTNET Building Mobile Web Applications with .NET Mobile Web SDK & ASP.NET Reply Reply to Sender Recommend Message 1 in Discussion From: ravi varma Mobile Applications Design Concepts The NET Mobile Web SDK supplies three container objects: MobilePage, Form and Panel. The MobilePage control is the primary container for the mobile application. A single MobilePage can have one or more Form controls. A Form control can have zero are more Panel controls. Panels are used to group mobile controls. Mobile Controls Shipped With NET Mobile Web SDK Mobile controls can be grouped into three main groups. They are User Interface (UI) controls, Validation Controls and Utility controls. The UI controls are things such as Label controls that allow us to manipulate the UI. The validation controls allow us to validate the user input such as RequiredFieldValidator control. These controls validate the data entered by the user before the data gets submitted to the server. The utility controls are items such as the Calendar control, which supports the viewing a calendar with out writing any code. The following tables show the controls shipped in the above categories. UI Controls Control Name Description Command A Command control performs actions such as submitting information. Form Form control is a container for one or more mobile controls. Image Displays an image on the mobile device. Label Displays output text on the mobile device. Link Creates a hyperlink in the mobile form. List Displays a list of items on the mobile device. MobilePage Container control for all mobile controls. TextBox Displays single line text box. Textview Displays multilane text box. Validation Controls Control Name Description CompareValidator Compares two mobile controls. CustomValidator Custom validator provides us to call our own validation procedure from the control. RangeValidator Range validator validates the data within a range. RegularExpressionValidator Validates the data against the expression specified in the control. RequiredFieldValidator Verifies that the user enter some data in these fields. ValidationSummary Displays a summary of all the validation that occurred. Utility Controls Control Name Description Call Supports calling a Telephone number. Calendar Displays a calendar for date picking functionality. AdRotator Displays random advertisement. Automatic pagination is one of the main advantages of the .NET Mobile Web SDK. The .NET runtime will take care of the paging for the targeted device. The pagination is handled differently for each different Mobile control. For example, for the List control, the pagination is handled by the PageSize property of the control. This property is set automatically based on the target device. When the paging takes place at runtime the controls included in the panel control will stay together. A Simple Example Let�s write a simple application that displays a text box to accept your name and displays the entered name in the next form. <XMP><%@ Page Inherits="System.Mobile.UI.MobilePage" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="mobile" Namespace="System.Mobile.UI" %> language="VB" runat="server"> Sub Btn_OnClick(Src As Object, E As EventArgs) �Move to the next mobile form ActiveForm = frm2 �redisplay the name. EnteredName.Text = "Your name is: " & YourName.Text End Sub </Script> <mobile:Form id="frm1" runat=server> <mobile:Label runat=server>Your Name:</mobile:Label> <mobile:TextBox runat="server" id="YourName" /> <mobile:Command runat="server" id="btn" OnClick="Btn_OnClick">Ok</mobile:Command> </mobile:Form> <mobile:Form id="frm2" runat=server> <mobile:Label runat="server" id="EnteredName" /> </mobile:Form> </XMP> In the above code, we built two mobile forms. The first form has the id of frm1 and the next form has the id as frm2. By the way, the Mobile Form control doesn�t support the name attribute. Instead, it supports the id attribute. That�s how the ASP.NET runtime identifies the forms. In the first form, we�ve added a label control, text box control and a command button control. When the command button is clicked, the server-side VB sub routine (Btn_OnClick) will be called. Those who are familiar with VB will feel right at home now. In the event handling VB sub routine, we�re moving to the next form by setting the ActiveForm method to frm2. Then we�re accessing the label control defined in the frm2 and setting the value submitted by the user. Here is the screen shot of the above code in action simulated in the Phone.com and Pocket IE simulators. Here is the view of the code generated for the Phone.com simulator by ASP.NET. As you can see, ASP.NET generated the WML code necessary to handle the text input from the user and post it to the server. It also generated the WML output to display the user-entered name in the next WML card Pros and Cons Of The .NET Mobile Web SDK There are a few pros and cons of using the Mobile Web SDK. Pros No need to do browser checks and deliver WML or HTML content based on the target device. Only thing to learn is ASP.NET and .NET Mobile Controls. No need to learn WML. Easy to use programming model and drag and drop application development with Visual Studio.NET Server-Side event handling support. Automatic paging support. Cons You are limited to Microsoft products and operating systems. When a new version of WML or HTML is released, you�ll wait until Microsoft announces support for the new version with its Mobile Web Controls. Supported Devices The .NET framework is still in development (Beta 1). Currently .NET Mobile Web SDK has been fully tested on following devices: Pocket PC with Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer version 4.5 Mitsubishi T250 phone Nokia 7110 phone Nokia WAP Toolkit 2.0 Beta simulator for the Nokia 7110 The .NET Mobile Web SDK has undergone limited testing on the following devices: Samsung Touchpoint phone Sony CMD-z5 phone Microsoft Mobile Explorer� v 2.01 simulator Phone.com UP.SDK 4.0 simulator with the generic skin Phone.com UP.SDK 3.2 for WML simulator with Mitsubishi T250 skin Many other devices are supported but have not yet been tested with the .NET Mobile Web SDK. You will notice that I've used an untested skin with the Phone.com WAP simulator in this article. View other groups in this category. ----------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this e-mail, or change how often it arrives, go to your E-mail Settings. http://groups.msn.com/BDotNet/_emailsettings.msnw Need help? If you've forgotten your password, please go to Passport Member Services. http://groups.msn.com/_passportredir.msnw?ppmprop=help For other questions or feedback, go to our Contact Us page. http://groups.msn.com/contact If you do not want to receive future e-mail from this MSN group, or if you received this message by mistake, please click the "Remove" link below. On the pre-addressed e-mail message that opens, simply click "Send". Your e-mail address will be deleted from this group's mailing list. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
