Alex Yakhnin

My new blog

2007-06-17T17:42:47.0176250-05:00

I've got a new blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/priozersk/ , so you can update your links if you want to continue to read the stuff I'll be posting.

Taking the red pill...

2007-06-01T09:38:50.2832500-05:00

I am moving to the "other" side. I am joining the Mobility group at the Microsoft Consulting Services next Monday. I will not be reallocating to Redmond though. Will need to travel to the clients or work from the NY office. Of course I am not saying goodbuy to the readers of my blog. I will try to continue posting tips, tricks or code snippets on the Mobile development.

Meanwhile... need to pack for the week in Redmond - new employee orientation, meeting with the team etc...

The oFhone from Microsoft...

2007-05-09T15:59:54.3757500-05:00

Check out this hilarious prank on IPhone that Microsoft put together...

I was laughing so loud that people from the other offices came to see at what I was laughing at.

Compelling UI's in NetCF anybody?

2007-04-27T08:54:37.3593750-05:00

No, this is not what you think this is. This is a proof of a concept .Net CF v2 program that I've put together during my 2 train rides home and to work. And yes, the button does slide. The code is pretty simple. It just draws the images in the right places with transparency. The transparency is achieved by using AlphaBlend API function that's become available in Windows CE 5.0. I think this proves that the UI's that we can create in CF are not limited to the usage of a standard controls. With enough creativity we can spice up our applications with this kind of eye candy.

You can download the project from here:

AlphaDrawingPOC.zip (696.29 KB)

Implementing Gestures recognition in .NET Compact Framework.

2007-03-23T08:33:50.2900000-05:00

The ‘Gestures’ paradigm was introduced a few years ago for internet browsers and became quite popular. Tablet PC platform also recently added ‘gestures’ recognition to its arsenal. But I always thought that this functionality could be really valuable for the Pocket PC platform as well: it has a touch screen, limited screen space and is a perfect candidate for improving user interoperability of our applications. So, how can we implement the ‘gestures’ in NET CF? vbAccellerator has had this whitepaper explaining how it could be done for .NET. He implements the IMessageFilter to hook up into application’s message loop and catch all mouse messages. When the ‘MouseDown’ message is received he starts collecting the mouse coordinates and on ‘MouseUp’ would stop collecting and interpret the collected data. I’ve ported this code to NET CF utilizing the Application2 functionality from the SDF v2. Here is the screen shot of the sample application:

This code implements recognition of a very simple gestures like moving up or down, left or right, left and then up etc… If you want to implement recognition of more complex gestures, you would need to resort to more sophisticated methods like neural networks. Codeproject.com has a few interesting articles on this subject. Many of these could be easily ported to CF.

But even having been able to recognize the gestures provided by this implementation can add a lot more usability to your Pocket PC applications. Move your stylus to the right and you can switch to the next screen. ‘Down’ – and you can scroll the form or the ListBox or Grid etc…

GesturesCF.zip (14.21 KB)

Extract Icon from exe file

2007-03-07T08:07:09.7180000-06:00

One of the recent question that came up on the forums on how to extract icon from an exe file in CF. The ExtractIconEx is available on Windows CE platform as well as desktop, so I went to http://www.pinvoke.net/, copied the code from here, removed unneeded 'unsafe' statements and modified the PInvoke declarations to use coredll.dll:

public static Icon ExtractIconFromExe(string file, bool large)

{

int readIconCount = 0;

IntPtr[] hDummy = new IntPtr[1] { IntPtr.Zero };

IntPtr[] hIconEx = new IntPtr[1] { IntPtr.Zero };

try

{

if (large)

readIconCount = ExtractIconEx(file, 0, hIconEx, hDummy, 1);

else

readIconCount = ExtractIconEx(file, 0, hDummy, hIconEx, 1);

if (readIconCount > 0 && hIconEx[0] != IntPtr.Zero)

{

// GET FIRST EXTRACTED ICON

Icon extractedIcon = (Icon)Icon.FromHandle(hIconEx[0]).Clone();

return extractedIcon;

}

else // NO ICONS READ

return null;

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

/* EXTRACT ICON ERROR */

// BUBBLE UP

throw new ApplicationException("Could not extract icon", ex);

}

finally

{

// RELEASE RESOURCES

foreach (IntPtr ptr in hIconEx)

if (ptr != IntPtr.Zero)

DestroyIcon(ptr);

foreach (IntPtr ptr in hDummy)

if (ptr != IntPtr.Zero)

DestroyIcon(ptr);

}

[DllImport("coredll.dll")]

static extern int ExtractIconEx(string szFileName, int nIconIndex,

IntPtr[] phiconLarge, IntPtr[] phiconSmall, uint nIcons);

[DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "DestroyIcon", SetLastError = true)]

private static extern int DestroyIcon(IntPtr hIcon);

The followup question was how to display the Icon in the PictureBox, so here it the quick solution for it too:

public Bitmap GetBitmap(Icon icon)

{

Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(icon.Width, icon.Height);

//Create temporary graphics

Graphics gxMem = Graphics.FromImage(bmp);

//Draw the icon

gxMem.DrawIcon(icon, 0, 0);

//Clean up

gxMem.Dispose();

return bmp;

}

I am back on the surface.

2007-03-07T07:53:07.2030000-06:00

Yeah.... it's been a while I posted on this blog. I've been submerged into a very time demanding, but incredibly interesting project which involved quite a wide range of technologies, like Outlook 2007, Exchange 2007, Sharepoint 2007 and of course a Windows Mobile piece. You can see a glimpse of the project in the video that was created for Microsoft Launch events in January:

http://www.infusiondev.com/news/CaseStudies.htm

It's the first case study on the page.

Windows Mobile Network Analyzer is available.

2006-11-05T10:51:50.3860000-06:00

Microsoft recently have made the Windows Mobile Network Analyzer available for download. It's a Power Toy that runs on a device and can be used for troubleshooting network connectivity issues. It includes utilities such as ping and ipconfig as well as captures network traffic to a .cap file which you can later view with Network Monitor tool or the Ethereal tool.

WCF in the new version of the .NET CF

2006-10-30T17:42:54.5818810-05:00

Ah.. yes, the WCF (Indigo) will be available in the new version of the .NET Compact Framework! Read this blog by Roman to get the latest scoop. And yes, they do listen ;)

PopupMenu Component has been released.

2006-10-12T11:45:17.7890018-05:00

We have released the PopupMenu Component that I'd described before. See this page on where and how you can get it.