Widget development in Windows Mobile 6.5

paulfo — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:34:14 GMT

I had two sessions to present at Over The Air 09 . The first was all about the new Widget runtime included in Windows Mobile 6.5 . The runtime brings a Microsoft implementation of W3C Widget support to Windows Mobile for the first time. Our implementation...(read more)

OTA09: Widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5

paulfo — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:30:40 GMT

Just finished my first session at OTA09 on the new Widget framework built into Windows Mobile 6.5. Thank you to everyone who attended the session I really enjoyed our discussions – its always great fun to be able interact at these sort of things.

As promised I have packaged my slides as a PDF file which can be downloaded here.

Now onto building my next session - Building an augmented reality game. Tonight I have to pull this all together and have a game for tomorrow!!! If anyone would like to contribute ping me (Twitter @paulfo).

Here’s to a great party tonight (and some serious coding)

Widgets!

paulfo — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:28:56 GMT

I’ve been lucky enough to obtain my very own HTC Touch Pro2 running Windows Mobile 6.5 :-)

Its been awhile since new gadgets landed on my desk – so to say I am keen to play with it, would be an understatement. It is also exciting to be back in the world of mobile development. I did a fair amount in the late 90’s and early 00’s but have been away doing other stuff for most of the last five years.

Windows Mobile 6.5 has many interesting features – including new UI stuff – but it also has a built in Widgets platform. Widgets are very much in on the mobile device these days. Everyone is doing them! And so are we now.

What are Widgets. They are best described as local HTML/AJAX and JavaScript pages. They install using a compressed file – not a .CAB, but a .Widget. The zip file contains localisation directories,together with image, CSS style sheets and script resources and of course the HTML page that pulls everything together. They run in the mobile IE (mIE) sandbox but have some special Widget JS objects which let you get to some of the device detail – including some events and soft key definitions. This enables the Widgets to look very much like native applications – but they aren’t. They are local web pages which can consume web services asynchronously using the XmlHttpRequest object; they even have a limited amount of local storage (each field limited to 4000 characters).

As web pages, they are easy to script and play nicely to the broad web developer skill set that exists. But because they ‘run’ locally, they can operate with more apparent integration to the device than starting a web browser and selecting a favourites link.

There are also some disappointments. Running in the mIE sandbox prevents Widgets from getting to any of the cool new device functionality – like the GPS or G-Sensors. You do get device rotation events which enables you to restructure your display for portrait or landscape viewing – this can be done very simply by switching between alternative CSS style sheets.

In theory, IDispatchEX COM components and ActiveX controls can also be hosted in a Widget, but I haven’t seen any examples as yet. I wonder if the Widget installer can register COM objects? Looking at an architecture diagram for the Widget platform there is a Security Broker between the ScriptEngine and plugins such as the Flash player, Windows Media, MSXML etc. I need to do some more research here to see how to create such plugins as I would really like to use the GPS from my Widgets!

Widgets will come into their own with the opening of the Windows ® Marketplace for Mobile. This is a gallery of applications directly accessible to Windows Mobile 6.5 devices via what appears to be a widget which is part of the Windows Mobile 6.5 implementation. Developers of Widgets can publish their creations directly onto the Marketplace to sell them. So along with XNA Community Games for Xbox Live, we now have a (or at least very shortly will) mobile applications marketplace where developers can sell goods for real money!

I think this is all very positive stuff. There a couple of rough edges: your device can’t install Widgets via any other means than the Marketplace application unless you enable the WMWidgetInstaller application via registry settings. Easy for us developers to do, but not so for the great unwashed. The Marketplace will go live when the Windows Mobile 6.5 devices are released to the shops – 6th Oct.

Also the OMTP’s BONDI project which provides Widget infrastructure for Windows Mobile 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6.1 is rather cut off and left drifting. Although, looking through the list of planned developments for BONDI, not many seem to have progressed beyond the drawing board.

Codeplex already has some nice utilities to help you build your Widgets. Some templates for VS projects as well as Expression Web. A packager application that creates your config.xml file which describes your Widget for you. Unfortunately, the current version requires some tweaking as it fails to include the config.xml or the icon files you need within the ZIpped package file – which is also called .wgt rather than the required .Widget. But these are easily solved and importantly there are a number of Widget examples provided in the Codeplex download – good for getting started with.

With so many service APIs now available (Bing has a whole stack of stuff to play with) building Widgets is productive, useful and fun!

I will be presenting a short session on Windows Mobile 6.5 Widget development at the Over The Air event this Friday/Saturday.

wotudo : Widgets

Widget development in Windows Mobile 6.5

OTA09: Widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5

Widgets!