Got feedback for .NET Compact Framework?

[Michael Lipp [MSFT]]

I'm looking for feedback from developers using the .NET Compact Framework
for consideration in future releases. We've got lots of ideas and are
looking to focus on what's important to our customers.

To submit your feedback, email it to: (e-mail address removed).

Please note, the newsgroup is still the place to post problems and
questions. If you have feature requests and/or feedback, I'd love to hear
it and feed it back to the product team for future consideration.

A few examples of feedback I'm particularly interested in:

a.. specific feature requests for classes and api's
a.. include a typical usage scenario, why it's important to you
b.. show us what you've built with .NETCF!
a.. send a link to your application's web page
c.. what sort of general sample code would be useful?
a.. I would love to see more examples showing ...
b.. I'd like to see a white paper describing how ... works
We value all your submissions, but unfortunately won't be able to respond
outside the newsgroup.

thanks!
..NETCF Product Team

 

[Guest]

I sent it to the email, but I'll post it here as well because it's so key
for a whole host of things I want to do and simply can't because there's
absolutely no provision for it. WE NEED CLR HOSTING!

<ctacke/>

 

[Michael Lipp [MSFT]]

Thanks for the feedback Chris, we received your sdwish. I'll make sure your
request gets to the right people.

mike

 

[Michael Lipp [MSFT]]

thanks to everyone who has responded, we've received some great feedback.
I'm re-posting the original request here (and some other newsgroups) in case
you missed it over the holiday break.

mike

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The .NET Compact Framework team is looking for feedback from developers
for consideration in future releases. We've got lots of ideas and are
looking to focus on what's important to our customers.

To submit your feedback, email it to: (e-mail address removed).

Please note, the newsgroup is still the place to post problems and
questions. If you have feature requests and/or feedback, I'd love to hear
it and feed it back to the product team for future consideration.

A few examples of feedback I'm particularly interested in:

* specific feature requests for classes and api's
- include a typical usage scenario, why it's important to you
* show us what you've built with .NETCF!
- send a link to your application's web page
* what sort of general sample code would be useful?
- I would love to see more examples showing ...
- I'd like to see a white paper describing how ... works

We value all your submissions, but unfortunately won't be able to respond
outside the newsgroup.

thanks!
..NETCF Product Team

 

[Steve Maillet \(eMVP\)]

I'll chime in at this point as I don't get into this group as much as I
should/want.

1) support for headless builds
2) ASP.NET.
2) Compact Avalon

There are lot's of industrial control applications that would benefit from
both of those. It's getting harder to sell Windows CE as an embedded OS
because of it's similarity to the desktop when the desktop has moved so much
focus and emphasis to .NET for everything and with Avalon - the entire UI
model goes in a completely different direction leaving any similarities
purely coincidental.

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

1) support for headless builds

I'll definitely second this one! The rest I've mailed in.

-Chris

 

[Daniel Moth]

We are getting that as part of CF 2.0 anyway aren't we?!

Cheers
Daniel

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

I'd not heard that we were. The key is the ability to suppress *all* UI -
so unhandled exceptions should spit out debug, not throw up a dialog that
the system can never react to.

 

[Daniel Moth]

Naturally, I agree with the spec for what "headless" means... our platform
has a headless variant that I am looking forward to targeting... As an aside
you can catch all exceptions and never see a dialog with CF 2.0:
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2004/12/appdomainunhandledexception-part-1.html

We know that chat statements are not guaranteed but (search for "headless"
on the page):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/transcripts/mobileembedded/embedded_070804.aspx

Cheers
Daniel

 

[Steve Maillet \(eMVP\)]

What they say they plan on giving us is not always what we get or want. I
need a version that runs on a device without GWES! e.g. the actual binary
doesn't have any import dependencies on all the OS GUI APIs. (I'd like a
version of ATL that did that too but that's another story...)

 

[Yechezkal Gutfreund]

It's not only that it should work without a GUI, but also that we have the
process control functions (kill, start, stop, signal, get process handle by
id, etc). to be able to monitor and control GUI-less processes.

Right now, I often have programs that fail for some reason and then become
sleepers (you can't see them in the control panel for in memory programs).
But they are still there and still holding on to their ports. I have to soft
reset.

 

[Guest]

The SDF contains pretty much all of those, so at least there's a workaround
for that. The GWES dependency can't be worked around.

-Chris

 

[Daniel Moth]

Headless support is close to being dropped from CF 2.0. If you want it, I
suggest feeding it back:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mikezintel/archive/2005/02/07/368829.aspx

Cheers
Daniel

 

[Steve Maillet \(eMVP\)]

Thanks for the heads up. It would be disastrous for CF to not support that.
I've got a bunch of projects where that was a major part of the plan.