Pocket PC Controls.com web log

FREE 'HANDY AS HELL' TOOLS...

This is not so much technical... more helpful.

I just wanted to share a couple of tools that I find very handy for day to day use:

1: Sync Toy - Microsoft have a free tool for, well I use it for backing up in Echo mode to an external drive. I am not too fussed with the backup system for Vista... I keep all my gear in one directory and this is all I want backed up. As you are not able to backup one directory, Sync Toy is the answer for me, you can find it here:   http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0FC1154-C975-4814-9649-CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en

2: Microsoft GIF Creator - For ages, I was looking for FREE animated GIF creator and couldn't find one that I liked, the other week, I came across the Microsoft contribution and although it has been around for ages.. it is really good! If you need to create animated GIF's, you can find it here: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/13212.. just MAGIC!!!

Well, I have tried to find an ILMerge GUI out there that will run on my machine and have had no luck, so I finally took it upon my self to create my own (although basic) GUI for the ILMerge utility for combining IL libraries.

Download Links:
ILMerge GUI Executable
ILMerge GUI Source Code (VS 2005)

You will need the ILMerge application also, you can download it here
There is also the version history of the software here

I use this for wrapping up the different controls into one demo executable file which saves me having to collect source code from different places and compile manually.



As I add to the app, I will update the site.
If you would like to add to the app, add comment with your changes and I will update the source & app.

I was just asked a question by a recent ColorButton Source code customer about how the design time .dll (ColorButton.PocketPC.asmmeta.dll) is created for the ColorButton Control and seeing how it is not obvious in code (there is not a seperate project), I thought I had better explain what is going on.

Within the ColorButton source, there is a file called 'DTAColorButton.xmta'. The DTA part is an abbreviation for Design Time Attributes, by no means a naming convention standard, but something that I have become comfortable with.

The .xmta file simply contains an .xml format definition of the public properties within the ColorButton class. The compiler (magic really) recognises the existance of the .xmta file and creates the ColorButton.PocketPC.asmmeta.dll file, or one appropriate for the project target.

Further, the ColorButton solution shares the one set of source code across all projects in the solution:
ColorButton.Desktop
ColorButton.PocketPC
ColorButton.Smartphone
ColorButton.WindowsCE

Apart from the Desktop compile which has alot of #'s in the code which takes care of the desktop design time attributes:

#if Desktop
  [Description("Gets or sets the position information for button content"), Category("Appearance")]
#endif

The rest of the projects compile an asmmeta.dll to suit the device:
ColorButton.PocketPC.asmmeta.dll
ColorButton.WindowsCE.asmmeta.dll
ColorButton.Smartphone.asmmeta.dll

I hope this explains a bit about the source provided by Pocket PC Controls.com and may even give you some insight into creating your own controls.

If you need more info, feel free to add comment.

This is the second release of the Color Tab control this month.. the earlier v1.5 realease saw additional properties added like:

ShowBorderNonSelected - border non-selected tabs
TabStripBackColor - set color behind tabs
TabStripShowGradient - Show gradient behind tabs
Spacing - Set the spacing between tabs
Align - align tab content: left;center;right
BackgroundImage - tab page background image
TabImage - tab background image
TabImageSelected - selected tab background image

The latest release of the ColorTab control (v1.6) includes much improved keyboard navigation and a new property 'HotTrack'.
Navigational functionality has been emulated from the standard Tab Control so that you are now able to tab onto the Color Tab control using the keyboard, then using the arrow keys navigate your way through the available tabs. With the HotTrack property set to true the border on the focused tab is highlighted for easy reference to which tab is focused.

Pressing the tab key, then takes you inside the tab area where you can navigate your way through controls as you would on the standard Tab Control.

I must say, after having a bit of a look around the net, there doesn't seem to be another feature rich Tab Control available quite like this one with support for PocketPC, Smartphone, Desktop, WindowsCE & Tablet.

Please see the help file for a complete list of features: http://www.pocketpccontrols.com/controls/help/

In the Pocket PC Controls.com Color Picker control their is an embedded bitmap called 'palette.bmp' used for the drop down color selector. Due to the source code being available to clients, it was not acceptable to hard wire the name of the resource which would include the namespace as the source code may be inserted into projects with namespaces other than PPCC.

palette.bmp

The palette.bmp was added to the project inside a project folder called 'resources' and the build action for that file set as 'Embedded Resource'. When compiled, this resource is embedded into the assembly saving the need for adiditional external files.

Rather than using the fully qualified name for the image ie: 'PPCC.resources.palette.bmp', I have simply searched through all available resources to find the 'palette' bitmap.

---

System.Reflection.Assembly asm = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
string[] s = asm.GetManifestResourceNames(); // extract names of all embedded resources

for (int i = 0; i <= s.GetUpperBound(0); i++) // wind through all available resources
  if (s[i].IndexOf("palette") > 0) // if we find the one we want
    _ColorBitmap = new Bitmap(asm.GetManifestResourceStream(s[i])); // assign that resource for use into a local variable

---

If you are happy to hard wire the resource name, you could always use ILDASM.exe after compilation to find the fully qualified name of the embedded resource, simply double click on the MANIFEST entry. ILDASM.exe is installed with Visual Studio (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin) and is an excellent tool to have a look at what is going on inside your compiled IL assemblies, it has been a great tool for me over the years.

It was brought to my attention that the ColorButton control had no way of determining that it had focus!!!
We stuck with the standard button behavior of thickening the border of the button when focused.
The DrawColorButton method looks like this now:

private void DrawColorButton()
{    
  CollectColors();

  // draw the button to the screen
  switch (_ButtonShape)
  {        
    case ButtonShape.Ellipse :

      if (_ShowGradient)
        Draw.Gradient(_Graphics, this.Bounds, _BackDownColor, BackColor, (int)_GradientDirection, (int)_ButtonShape);
      else
        _Graphics.FillEllipse(_Brush, 0, 0, Width-1, Height-1);
    
      _Graphics.DrawEllipse(_Pen, 0, 0, Width-1, Height-1);

      if (base.Focused)
        _Graphics.DrawEllipse(_Pen, 1, 1, Width - 3, Height - 3);

      break;

    case ButtonShape.Rectangle :               

      if (_ShowGradient)
        Draw.Gradient(_Graphics, this.Bounds, _BackDownColor, BackColor, (int)_GradientDirection, (int)_ButtonShape);
      else
        _Graphics.FillRectangle(_Brush, 0, 0, Width, Height);
                    
      _Graphics.DrawRectangle(_Pen, 0, 0, Width-1, Height-1);

      if(base.Focused)
        _Graphics.DrawRectangle(_Pen, 1, 1, Width - 3, Height - 3);

      break;
    }

    DrawStringToButton();
    DrawIconToButton();

}

Those of you who purchased the control in the last 6 months would like the update please send me an email.
There is still no way of determining if the ColorButton has focus when using images and we will add this functionality in the near future. If there are any of you who would like to see a new image property added to cater for the focused state, please let me know and we can push that along.

You can see here that colorButton2 has focus: