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.