Ui programming for Windows Mobile Devices

There are a number of things that you need to keep in mind when developing UI for mobile devices because of their small formfactor and limited input mechanic.

1. Keeping the bare minimum of text boxes and buttons is helpful so as not to clutter the UI.

2. As far as possible cascading of menu items shocould be avoided.

3. the mechanism for input entry in majority of the pocketpcs is a stylus driven software Input Panel (SIP) which will occupy some screen space. this can be shown or hidden by the user dynamically and your code needs to take care of these conditions.

4. windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Software introduces new display capabilities to the Windows Mobile platform. the OS now supports different DPI resolutions. it also supports different orientations like portrait, landscape and square screen. if you 've made assumptions about screen resolution and orientation, you may be need to take action to ensure your applications work every SS all Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition-based devices.

5. Unlike the desktop, it is not recommended that an application on the PPC has more than one toolbar.

6. Generally all top level windows provide a close/X button at the top rig.

There are a few things to keep in mind when developing UI for smartphone as compared to pocketpc.

Unlike ppcs, smartphones of today don't have a stylus. So you need to make sure that all the elements are accessible using the keypad.

Screen resolutions of sfons (the low DPI ones) are lesser than those available on PPC.

Smartphones provide for special keys like home key and back key, so good apps developed for sfons need to take care of handling these keys.

Sfons allow users to set font size to medium or large. So please avoid hardcoding the font size.

A typical rule for control placement on a smartphone form is to have one control in one row.

From: http://www.microsoft.com/india/msdn/chat/transcripts/166.aspx