Category: NETCF

A question arose recently on the newsgroup of how to automatically capitalise the first letter of a word in a text box, e.g. by activating the shift key on the soft keyboard. Since there is no API for the SIP to do this the workaround is to simulate a mouse click over the position of the Shift key in the soft keyboard.

An alternative method is to handle the TextChanged event on the TextBox and add some logic to capitalise words as the text is entered. The advantage here is that it is not dependent on a specific SIP being in use:-

private void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

  //start with true as the first character should always be upper case

  bool makeUpper = true;

  //get the current text as a char array

  char[] oldText = textBox1.Text.ToCharArray();

  //create a new char array the same size for the new text

  char[] newText = new char[oldText.Length];

  //for each char

  for(int iChar = 0; iChar < oldText.Length; iChar++)

    if(makeUpper)

      //make the character upper-case and reset the flag

      makeUpper = false;

    else

      //copy the character as-is

    //if it’s a space the next character should be upper-case

    if(oldText[iChar] == ‘ ‘)

      makeUpper = true;

  //assign the new value

  textBox1.Text = new String(newText);

  //position the cursor at the end of the text

Windows Media Player for Pocket PC (and Smartphone) doesn’t have a true object model like it’s desktop cousin, so the ability to use it from your own code is limited. However there is an undocumented method of sending commands to Windows Media Player via a specific series of Windows Messages. These are actually hidden away in the Registry under the curiously named section “Pendant Bus”.

Therefore I put together a simple dll which creates an instance of Media Player if one is not already running, and sends messages to it, to allow you to play, pause, move back and forward through the playlist or adjust the volume. The code requires the Smart Device Framework which is used to P/Invoke a couple of Windows methods e.g. SendMessage. A typical method looks like:-

/// <summary>

/// Skips to the next track in the playlist.

/// </summary>

public void NextTrack()

{

    Win32Window.SendMessage(hwnd, 32972, IntPtr.Zero, 0);


}

There are some limitations in the code I’ve posted here – it doesn’t start the player with a specific file queued up (this would require a very simple overload to the constructor).

There are currently no events and it is not possible to get information back from the player such as track name, elapsed time etc. I’m still investigating whether such information is output in any way which can be captured. This code should work with all Windows Mobile 2003 devices (inc Smartphone) and possibly earlier Pocket PCs but these have not been tested yet.

Download the full code project with Pocket PC sample application here.

I thought it would be a good idea to compile a set of release notes for v1.1! You can view the resulting document here:-

http://www.opennetcf.org/PermaLink.aspx?guid=a8b2c046-b9fd-4b0b-bd21-f0d03f6bec55

The document lists the new items in this release. I haven’t compiled the more subtle changes to existing classes (new methods, bug fixes etc). These are available by looking through the ChangeLogs for the individual assemblies via the installed Source Code shipped with the package or via the online SourceBrowse interface.

Importantly also I’ve documented a number of known issues with this release. For many there is a workaround which is described, for other issues you can be assured they have been logged and will receive attention for the next release. If you encounter an issue which is not listed here please submit it either to the Forums or via our Submissions email address.