The Moth

Still ROTFL with ".NET Love" part 1 and part 2. :-D

Over the last two posts I enumerated additions to the .NET Compact Framework 3.5, and there will be more posts as more Orcas CTPs come out. In particular, the two headline items of NETCF 3.5 are not listed at all in my previous two blog entries and they are: Compact WCF and Compact LINQ.

1. I have mentioned before Compact WCF. It is not in the January CTP, but when it does appear I’ll let you know.

2. LINQ is a topic that I’ll be talking a lot more about with regards to the full framework 2.5. Once I've written a few posts on that, I will come back to indicate what is missing from Compact LINQ [1].

The best people to describe the headline features and focus areas of the NETCF 3.5 are the Compact Framework team of course and they have done so here.

Cheers
Daniel

[1] If you are familiar with LINQ already, note that in the Jan “Orcas” CTP the NETCF LINQ bits use the old namespaces (e.g. System.Query ) in line with the May 2006 LINQ CTP rather than move on to the new System.Linq namespace. They are obviously aligned in future versions. Namespaces aside, the Compact LINQ implementation largely lives in System.Core assembly like its big brother.

All the API additions I listed in my previous .NET Compact Framework 3.5 post, are namespaces/types/members that were already present in the full dotnet Framework v2.0 and are now also part of the NETCF 3.5

Here I will list a couple of additions that are brand new:

* When querying the Platform property of the static OSVersion property of the System.Environment class, we get back the PlatformID enumeration. NETCF 2.0 had a smaller list than the full framework and now with 3.5 not only it catches up by adding the Unix value but it even goes further by adding a brand new value: Xbox (not a surprise if you read this).
If you ask me, the full framework team should also add this enumeration value for code compatibility.

The other addition is entirely specific to device development and hence lives under the Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms assembly. The SystemSettings class gets a new property (to make a grand total of 2!) named WinCEPlatform that returns the homonymous enumeration which has 3 values: WinCEGeneric, PocketPC and Smartphone
(I guess we’ll have to learn to map those last two to WM6 professional and standard :-p)

Next I'll list the real headlines of NETCF v3.5

Hot from the factory, get it here.


Just like the WM6 SDK, works fine on Vista on top of VS2005 SP1 as the screenshots show.

The next version number of the .NET Compact Framework is 3.5, compared to version number 2.0 that ships today. This is so the version numbers can align with v3.5 of the full framework (NetFx3.5). You can play with NETCF 3.5 in the Orcas Jan CTP.

Below is some new NETCF stuff that I found (v3.5.6282.0):

* Remember the EventWaitHandle class that I wrote 2 years ago? It is now part of the compact framework (System.Threading). As part of the addition, the inheritance hierarchies have changed so AutoResetEvent and ManualResetEvent now inherit from EventWaitHandle and not WaitHandle (making this blog entry half-obsolete :)).

* Remember the Stopwatch class that I wrote? It is now in the CF (System.Diagnostics).

* The Array class get the Resize method and some new Sort overloads.

* The CompilerGeneratedAttribute class from the System.Runtime.CompilerServices namespace is now added.

* The SerializationException class from the System.Runtime.Serialization namespace is added.

* System.Text.StringBuilder gets a new overload for the AppendFormat method and also both overloads of the AppendLine method.

* The System.Threading.Thread class gets the static MemoryBarrier method.

* The String class now contains the Contains method.

* A whole bunch of classes get a public Dispose method including GraphicsStream, FileStream, MemoryStream, StreamReader, StreamWriter, StringReader, StringWriter, TextReader, TextWriter and others.

* To support the next addition, the InvalidDataException class is added to the System.IO namespace in System.dll

* We get the entire System.IO.Compression namespace (i.e. GZipStream, DeflateStream, CompressionMode) from the System.dll

* Relevant to the previous addition, there is a new enum System.Net.DecompressionMethods that is the type of the new property AutomaticDecompression on the HttpWebRequest class.

* We get the entire System.Media namespace (SoundPlayer, SystemSound, SystemSounds) from the System.dll

* Mainly to support the previous addition, we get two classes in the System.ComponentModel namespace: AsyncCompletedEventArgs and AsyncCompletedEventHandler.

* The Trace class from the System.Diagnostics namespace only had 3 overloads of the Assert method. Now it becomes much more useful with 4 overloads for each of the methods Write, WriteIf, WriteLine and WriteLineIf. It also gets the Fail, Flush and Close methods. Add to that the new TextWriterTraceListener and tracing looks much better overall in NETCF v3.5

Stay tuned for more coming this week...

Remember, you heard/saw it here first!

It looks like the Windows Mobile 6 SDKs are out. Gone are the “for Pocket PC” and “for Smartphone” monikers. Instead, there is Professional and Standard... another mark of the convergence of the two form factors no doubt :-)


As you can see from the images in this post, the install works great on VS2005 SP1 on Vista!

UPDATE: When they are back online I’ll let you know. Please take your complaints here.
UPDATE 2: They are back online and I've updated the link above. Additional information here.

I *think* engadget are the first to break the news that what was codename "Crossbow" is now officially Windows Mobile 6

Mel has the screenshots and links to reviews, Loke lists the developer features, Scott talks about the security improvements, John asks us to stay tuned for more and the Outlook Mobile team lists their favourite features .

Like Peter says, it will be hard to get devices in the early stages (typically takes 4-6 months), so the vast improvements in the emulator are most welcome.

System.Threading is yet another namespace in System.Core.dll. There is only one main class in there: ReaderWriterLockSlim (don’t worry, System.Threading.ReaderWriterLock is still there in the mscorlib dll). The other types in the namespace are there just in a support role, including the LockRecursionPolicy enumeration and the LockRecursionException class. Joe has the details on ReaderWriteLockSlim here.

With a whole bunch of types, one of the biggest new namespaces in System.Core.dll is System.IO.Pipes (and support for it is required by types in other new namespaces in System.Core). Collectively the classes in there wrap their native counterparts to offer inter-process communication. You could achieve some IPC over named pipes in .NET remoting as I mentioned ages ago here. This new namespace in Orcas takes it to the next level and beyond and Justin has the full story here.

Another namespace in System.Core.dll is System. It contains two exception classes (InvalidTimeZoneException and TimeZoneNotFoundException) and the TimeZone2 class (that further contains two types: AdjustmentRule and TransitionTime). Kathy has the details on TimeZone2 here.