.Net Compact Framework… Fun and Games

This post is from a week back… and was originally in WORD format…

netCF. Missing things such as VisualBasic.FileOpen. Do you realize how hard it is to actually find information on the web or in generic VB.Net books about how to actually open a file. The Microsoft CF FAQ essential.

OK… I have found the FileStream object. But do you think I can find a .writeline function. Ha. This is Microsoft.

It is now a week later. Experts will tell me that of course I am doing something stupid. Why would I be stupid enough to use the FileStream object to read a file. I must use the StreamReader object. Then the READLINE function works. Of course. Why didn’t I know that… What is the difference between the two anyway? Programming is supposed to be fun, but things like that make me want to take up subsistance farming big time.

One thing that is really missing from .NET is a decent grid and list control. I got a custom control written on my favourite Rescue Me WEB Site for the PocketPC… So that I can do things like .item (3,4).text = “JUNK”. Why a function like this is not in CF I will not know… But I also wanted a more advanced list control.

Resco have an advanced list control that is not badly priced for the NETcf framework. I could not get it to run, but there is a FAQ. Unfortunately for them, after spening $25 to get a C# code fragment translated on Rent-A-Coder, I could that the OpenNetCF people have a more advanced list control. It has two shortcomings as I see it. Firstly it does not have an ITEMDATA property for each item. The other issue is that any graphics attached to an entry is only ever one line, even if the text is forced to two lines.

OH… I have signed up as a Microsoft ISV. More information is available on Micosoft’s Partner WWW site. It allows you to get MSDN Universal for A$825 containing a lot of cool software to assist in development. If you are doing any microsoft development, this is a MUST.