December 2007 - Posts

• Microsoft Mobile Office 6.1 Released - Now Supports Office 2007 Files!

  At long last you can now get Office 2007 support for earlier Windows Mobile 6  and some Windows Mobile 5 devices! So you can now view Office 2007 documents on your handheld. It was released by Microsoft last week (28 November) without much fanfare. I first became aware of it from   a post from Jason Langridge's on his MSDN blog Some of the very recent Windows Mobile 6 devices already appear to have it. For example my HTC TynTyn II (which is a great device, by the way)  already appears to have office 6.1, so doesn’t need it. Device Version Support This is how the device support breaks down: 1) Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC or Windows Mobile 6 devices - as long as it came with Office Mobile you can use the FREE upgrade to install Office 6.1 and get support for Office 2007 documents . 2) Windows Mobile 6 Standard device (i.e. Smartphone) which didn’t come with Office Mobile (e.g. The HTC S620) - for the first time I am aware of you can buy Office Mobile 6.1 from the Handango Retail store and install that assuming your device has free space. 3) Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone (e.g the ubiquitous SPV C500 etc ) - you are out of luck however! Sadly there is no upgrade path or way of getting Office Mobile 6.1  If Office 2007 support is that important to you, you are looking at a device or Windows Mobile OS upgrade if one  is available. In addition to Office 2007 support there are some other new features around charting in Excel and support for Zip folders.  You can get full details here as well- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4b106c1f-51e2-42f0-ba32-69bb7e9a3814&DisplayLang=en Installation Tips I selected the Worldwide English US (default)  download for my installations.  On my SPV E650 I found that the installation complained about my device having a different language installed compared to the update. I therefore I set the language (not the locale) on the device (Start / Settings / Regional Settings) to be US English rather than UK English. This requires the phone to be powered off and on again. The update then installed fine and I set it back to English afterwards (with another power on/off)! I couldn't see a specific UK English install amongst all the other downloads so this may be the way forward. Availability on Windows Update I don’t know whether this is going out on Windows Update for Mobile 6 devices or not. It is a 12.6 Mb update and I'm not sure if it is considered a core OS update. SmartPhone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) Issues & Workarounds I have just installed it on my SPV E650 and it seems fine in Word and supports .docx files. I haven’t put any large documents through it however.  I did notice that the Smartphone version (sorry Windows Mobile 6 Standard) still doesn't let you create documents natively on the device however. Not sure why this is given some of the devices such as the e650 now have fullish keyboard support. The workaround to this frustration is fairly well known. You simply copy a blank document or template document to your device using Active Sync or Windows Mobile Device Center. Then open the blank document each time and use the Save As menu option to save it to the filename of your choice... Easy. Why there is a Save AS but not New, I'm not sure. Future Tasks I am going to try this Office 6.1  update on a Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC device (Orange M5000) shortly so I'll update this post when I know what happens there... Posted Dec 06 2007, 11:11 AM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: Windows Mobile Compatibility, Microsoft Office 2007, Windows Mobile 6.0, Microsoft Mobile Office 6.1

• ASP.Net MVC (Model View Controller) - More Information

  Scott Guthrie has made Part 2 of his blog on this important addition to ASP.Net available on his blog. This carries on from his initial look at teh ASP.net MVC (Model View Controller) in part 1 and explores deeper into the internals of the routing architecture. So I don't repeat any of it, you can find out all about it at: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/03/asp-net-mvc-framework-part-2-url-routing.aspx Posted Dec 05 2007, 01:01 PM by rogerw with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Programming, ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC (Model View Controller)

• Windows Mobile Emulator - It's The Little Things That Make All The Difference

  Whilst working on my current piece of Windows Mobile application development I discovered a little tweak in the Windows Mobile emulator that significant helped my development time. Making Mobile Applications Orientation Aware Like all good mobile developers, I am trying to make my mobile application "orientation aware". This means that the application will work on the maximum number of devices in landscape and portrait orientations at a variety of resolutions. If you want to find out more about this check out some of the links below.In particular take a look at the Orientation Aware control that ships with the Microsoft Windows Mobile Client Software Factory which provides this functionality out of the box. You can subclass it to your specific requirements. Developing Orientation and dpi Aware Applications for the .NET Compact Framework  - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838174.aspx  MSDN Webcast: patterns & practices for Mobile Client: Designing Zero-Code Adaptive UIs Using the Orientation Aware Control (Level 200) - http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032310458&CountryCode=US  Mobile Client Software Factory – July 2006 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480471.aspx Emulators Can Help Microsoft supplies a number of great mobile emulators that each try to best represent the characteristics of all of these devices, languages and orientations for development purposes without having to physically deploy to each device. However starting and stopping the relevant emulator each time just to switch orientation was getting a bit time consuming particularly when switching from portrait to landscape. A Nifty Time Saver... I recently discovered that if you click the calendar "hardware" button on the "chrome" surround of an emulator image, it toggles the emulator from portrait to landscape or vice versa. Simple but effective and a great time saver. It seems to work with both Windows Mobile 6 Classic and Professional Emulators but I haven't tried it with a Windows Mobile 6 Standard emulator. As I said it's the little things that matter. Posted Dec 05 2007, 12:43 PM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: Mobile Devices, Windows Mobile Client Software Factory, Orientation Aware Applications, Mobile Emulator, Windows Mobile 6.0