i m developing a little tool on my Pocket PC using WM6 SDK but i would like to implement a finger friendly user interface (iphone-like). So i m looking for a free .NET framework that offers the possibility to easily integrate a finger friendly interface for Windows Mobile 6 Pro .
Any ideas ?
EDIT : Finger friendly means big icons, big buttons , scrollable screens with a simple touch of the thumb... Because the Winforms in Compact framework are made for the stylus, not fingers !!
You should really check out Resco's MobileForms Toolkit 2009.
I bet their controls are exactly what you are looking for. Plus they have a whitepaper and videos to show off the controls.
I am not sure it is what you are looking for (I didn't have time to examine it yet myself, but I definately intend to); this UI Framework looks interesting: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/uiframework
Check out the Fluid windows mobile controls available at http://fluid.codeplex.com/ This might be what you are looking for, and its open source.
Any current readers on this thread should check out SlideUI (http://www.devslide.com/products/slideui). It's a current (and supported) product which offers touch friendly (iphone-like) scrolling and controls.
I know exactly what you are talking about. All the .NET Controls are designed for the stylus. When you make them bigger for the finger, there is no guarantee they will respond well. Add to that every hardware devices sensitivity is different and its even harder.
I recently built an application attempting to incorporate some touch like functionality. it was a pain having hand code all this stuff.
The problem with a 3rd party library, as opposed as coming in Windows MObile is then everyone is designing their own library and navigation techiques. Hopefully MS will wise up on this front.
If you are developing finger friendly apps, your target device needs a process to handle finger input as opposed to the stylus. HTC devices (Such as the Kaiser, Mogul, Touch Pro, etc.) use TouchFlo for this purpose. There are a few different versions of TouchFlo and I'm not sure if there is an SDK, but you need to incorporate it into whatever you program. xda-developers.com will have lots of info about it.
It IS amazing that with WM6.1 Pro, .NET CF 3.5 and VS2008 that all we have available are the basic stylus-sized controls that are are spartan in the extreme. i.e., coyote-ugly. I'm about ready to chew my hand off rather than use them in an app.
So where is the third-party collection of controls that all WM developers are flocking to, to provide touch-friendly apps?
Ugly is truly the correct word for most (mine included) mobile win apps. I am developing for an older piece of hardware with a mono screen which makes it even worse.
Take a look here: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS9328208835.html
and here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd630622.aspx
This is not free, but it is affordable - some of the screen shots are pretty nice looking: http://www.basic4ppc.com/?gclid=CIiO1di1nJoCFRAhDQodYX8-9A
Anyway...sorry if this was just googledragging - maybe it had something you had missed.
--Joe
Finger Freindlyness is a result of the touch screen technology (capacitive screens are less accurate, but require zero pressure; resistive screens require physical pressure and are harder to swipe, flick, etc.)
With Windows Mobile 6.5, they have introduced a system gestures library (and if you'd rather not have to P/Invoke it, there is a sample wrapper on MSDN Code Gallery). Theoretically, it would be possible to write to this new library, and maybe emulate the gestures on pre-WM6.5 devices, if required.
