Upgrading from .NetCF 1 to 2 - designer

[Nathan]

Finding the upgrade menu item was easy, but since then, it hasn't been all
that smooth.

I'm most clueless about the designer. The third party controls that should
render in the designer don't; I'm checking with the vendor, but it could be
something on my end.

I don't know how to use all the anchor, autoscale, and dock stuff
effectively.

And I didn't expect that changing the form factor, then changing it back,
woudl screw everything up. I can change from Pocket PC 2003 to Pocket PC
2003 VGA and back to find the controls missing or squished. Silly me for
thinking the switch was a nondestructive operation.

There is probably a migration guide I am missing that goes into a little
more detail on the designer stuff, with a few tips.

I did find a guide that said dock and anchor should be familiar if I've done
screens on the full framework, but I haven't. A tutorial with pictures would
help. Maybe it's in some sample code somewhere.

Anybody know some good articles with pictures?

Nathan

 

[Nathan]

I found out a pattern.

I found that many simple forms would do the "right thing" for VGA if I
simply change the AutoScaleMode to dpi. The child controls seem to have
anchor top, left by default.

However, if the form contains a Panel or a TabPageControl, the inner
controls do not respond appropriately. I have forms with Tab Pages and
Panels. These controls haven't been deprecated to my knowledge. I see no way
to set AutoScaleMode on these like you do on a form.

Please don't tell me that Microsoft never tested the designer with TabPages
or Panels.

Nathan

 

[Alberto Silva]

Hi,
When migrating an application from VS2003 to VS2005, I must say than 99%*
of the invested time was related to the UI, specialy when running the application
on VGA devices. I had to ask for 3rd party controls compatible with .NET
CF 2.0 and for VGA aware versions, and had to add VGA support to my controls.

About the panels question, AFAIK the panel inherits the settings form the
parent, since in my application, controls inside panels are properly sized
on run-time.


*Most part of that time was spent adding design time support to our custom
controls.

Alberto Silva
MS Mobile Devices MVP
http://msmvps.com/AlbertoSilva

 

[Nathan]

About the panels question, AFAIK the panel inherits the settings form the
parent, since in my application, controls inside panels are properly sized
on run-time.

Not the case for me. Is something wrong with my installation?

I can set AutoScaleMode=DPI in the form, and the Panels or Tabpages on the
form does not AutoScale with the rest of the form.

I could make panel work by editing the code to change it to UserControl,
which did inherit the AutoScaleMode. It was a more

It is good to know that I am not the only one spending some good quality
time on the UI.

Nathan

 

[Alberto Silva]

The only situation where I find that controls are not resized automatically
is when I add them at run-time...

BTW, I had several custom controls that inherited from 'Panel' and changed
them all to inherit from the UserControl.

Alberto Silva
MS Mobile Devices MVP
http://msmvps.com/AlbertoSilva

 

[Nathan]

The only situation where I find that controls are not resized
automatically is when I add them at run-time...
BTW, I had several custom controls that inherited from 'Panel' and changed
them all to inherit from the UserControl.

If the panels worked *after* you changed them to use UserControl, then your
experience isn't different from mine. I would not have guessed that
UserControl was a replacement for Panel, but it works.

Tabpages also inherit from panel, and fixing them is a bit more complicated.
I posted my complete steps in a subsequent thread: "TabPage, Panel, and
AutoScaleMode"

Nathan