The event db (it is my naming) holds all events and actions that can be invoked to launch an app or fire some events.

NotificationList

The tool shows all known notifications on a WM device. You can browse the event db and examine the defined events. Additionally the tool shows power change notifications.

In the mid window above you can see there is a timed event that will occur at 0:00 and start \windows\calupd.exe. This will wake your device all night and update the calendar entries for re-occurring schedules etc.

The right window shows the power notifications on a suspend/resume cycle.

Using the options menu you can save a list of the defined notification events.

Continue reading ‘Mobile Development: manage the event db, what wakes up your device’ »

Screen layout changes from Windows Mobile 6.1 to Windows Mobile Embedded Handheld 6.5

The Windows Mobile screen geometry changed from Windows Mobile 6.1 and before to the actual Windows Mobile 6.5 (also called Windows Embedded Handheld). Not only the geometry changed, the layout also changed. The Start icon is now moved to the bottom whereas before WM65 the start icon was on the left in the taskbar.

The taskbar and the menubar was about 26 pixels in height. With WM65 the taskbar is about 18 pixels in height and the menu bar occupies 34 pixels in height.

You can see that assuming a fixed client size will give problems with the layout of the application, especially if menubar and taskbar height are assumed as being 26 pixels all the time.

Applications that only use the client size with the taskbar and menubar visible, will show normally, as the resulting client size does not differ between WM61 and WM65.

Continue reading ‘Windows Mobile 6.5: Changed Screen Geometry’ »

ShowWin

Sometimes you may need to display a small window to inform the user about what is going on. Although the scripting tools MortScript and nScript provide functions to show dialogs they can not show simple information windows.

ShowWin default colors

ShowWin with a progress bar

ShowWin is nothing special but a nearly full configurable window to be used from cmd line tools. It just uses Win32 API calls, constants and structures as FindWindow, PostMessage, SendMessage, WM_COPYDATA, COPYDATASTRUCT, GetSystemMetrics, GetDesktopWindow, GetWindowRect, CreateWindowEx, ShowWindow, UpdateWindow, INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX, GetDeviceCaps, CreateFontIndirect, GetWindowDC, ReleaseDC, PROGRESS_CLASS, InvalidateRect, BeginPaint, CreatePen, SelectObject, Rectangle, SetBkMode, DrawText, EndPaint, SetTextColor, DeleteObject, GetKeyState and PostQuitMessage.

Basic WIN32 programming

Possibly you never wrote a native C windows application. Come on and dive into the basics. It is always good to know the basics even if one writes DotNet or JAVA code.

Supported arguments

 showWin -t "Text zum Anzeigen" -r 90 -g 80 -b 70 -s 8 -w 200 -h 50 -x 0 -y 0 -rt 200 -gt 20 -bt 20 -ti 10 -progr 30 -align left

 ARGS: 
 option/parameter:                meaning:                default:            limitations:
 -t "Text zum Anzeigen"           text to show            "Installing"        255 chars, no " inside, no line breaks, no tabs
 -r 90                            background color RED    255                    0-255
 -g 80                            background color GREEN    207                    0-255
 -b 70                            background color BLUE    0                    0-255
 -s 8                             font size in points        10                    7-24 points
 -w 200                           window width pixels        460                    100-screenwidth
 -h 50                            window height pixels    40                    menu bar height (ie 26pixels)
 -x 60                            window pos X            12                    0 + system window bordersize
 -y 60                            window pos Y            48                    0 + system taskbar bar height. Using 0;0 does not work nice on WM, win may be below taskbar
 -rt 200                          text color RED            0                    0-255
 -gt 20                           text color GREEN        0                    0-255
 -bt 20                           text color BLUE            0                    0-255

 -align center                    text alignment            left                center|left|right

 -ti 10                           timeout to autoclose    0                    no autoclose, min: 1 (second), max: 3600 = one hour

 -progr 10                        show with progress val    0                    no progressbar, max: 100
                                  the progressbar is appended at bottom of textwindow
 -prval                           update progress bar value                    no default, min=1, max=100

 -kill                            kill existing window, exit app

 -m "new message text"            replace text in window                        see -t

Continue reading ‘Mobile development: show a small information window using WIN32 API’ »

Some times ago I posted my remote cpu usage monitor. Now here is a similar tool but for logging the memory. You can now watch the memory usage of processes remotely for example when you test an application.

There are two tools: vmUsage and vmUsageRecvr. You may use the mobile vmUsage alone and just use its logging. The other tool receives the memory status information on a PC and enables long time logging and export to a csv text.

Continue reading ‘Windows Mobile: watch the memory footstep of running processes’ »