Support for Windows Mobile Devices Without a Touchscreen

 

Visual CE

Visual CE^® has support for Windows Mobile devices without a touch screen (such as a Smartphone). The exact same Visual CE development environment is used to develop forms for these devices.

Since there is no touch screen, there are some differences in the use of the Visual CE forms:

• The up/down rocker to moves focus from one control to the next (as opposed to moving from one record to the next).
• The right/left rocker is used to change the selected option in a set of radio buttons.
• The action button is used to open a dropdown list. The right/left rocker is used to change the selected option in the dropdown list.
• The date/time picker is not used. Users enter this information directly into the control.
• The on screen numeric keypad is not used. Users enter this information directly into the control. The * can can be used to enter the minus sign, the # can be used to enter the decimal point.
• The sort order cannot be changed by clicking on a column name in list mode. To change the sort order, the form designer has to provide buttons on the form or menu commands.
• At the time of this writing, "User can add" dropdowns do not work particularly well due to limitations in the operating system.
• At the time of this writing, adding new entries to the word list associated with an edit or note control does not work particularly well due to limitations in the operating system.

Windows Mobile devices that do not have a touch screen tend to have smaller screens. Consequently, there are some additonal differences in the use of the Visual CE forms:

• List mode only displays one column. If a sort order is active, the value of the sort column is displayed. Otherwise, it first control in the control order is displayed.
• OPTION | FILTER | CUSTOM is not supported.
• When using the "ask user" synchronization operator, the user is only asked once for all the records in the table (as opposed to being asked for each record in the table).

Forms cannot be designed on Windows Mobile devices that do not have touch screens. On the desktop, form designers may want to make the dotted line that represents the physical sceen on the device smaller. It is suggested that you follow the instructions in the help topic "Changing the Device Screen Size" and set the width to 178 and the height to 205.

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mEnable

mEnable is supported on Windows Mobile devices that do not have a touch screen.

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Report CE

Report CE is supported on Windows Mobile devices that do not have a touch screen. However, printer drivers are not available for Smartphones, so Report CE can only display the report on the screen and generate emails (but not print).

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sqlceEnable

sqlceEnable is supported on Windows Mobile devices that do not have a touch screen.

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Serial Link

SerialLink is currently not supported on Windows Mobile devices that do not have a touch screen If you have an interest in this, please let us know.