All .NET Forms showing in Running Programs List

[Bill Mitchell]

I am sure this has been asked before but I could not find in previous
threads.

My vb.net PPC application is showing every form in the control stack in the
Pocket PC's "Running Programs" list.

My Dell Axim has a custom utility called Switcher Bar which also shows
running apps and allows a user to close a selected app or all running apps
in addition to simply switching between running apps.

The problem I foresee is that my users can effectively get around certain
restrictions I have tried to put in my application such as not allowing a
form to be closed when in an "edit" mode. The program itself behaves
correctly in this event but the user can use this Switcher Bar to select the
form that was displayed before the "edit form".

I did find one post that talked about this problem and using custom controls
(reclassifying a form after it has been visually designed) but this post
looked old as it mentioned the version 1 beta of CF and it also appears to
be quite a bit of extra work to fix this apparent bug (according to the
post).

Does anyone know of an effective workaround or if I am simply not doing
something that I should be?

Thanks in advance,
Bill

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

You're correct that this has been asked before. Instead of answering here,
I've added it to the FAQ:

http://wiki.opennetcf.org/ow.asp?RunningPrograms

The FAQ is here:
http://wiki.opennetcf.org/ow.asp?CompactFrameworkFAQ

 

[Bill Mitchell]

Thanks Chris! I am headed to the FAQ now to check out the info.

Bill

 

[Bill Mitchell]

I tried the suggestion on the FAQ you added. It does work to prevent
multiple forms from showing in the Running Programs list. However, I
noticed that if I use the Start button at the top-right of the screen to
access another program such as Tasks, the current .NET form title that was
displayed disappears. In other words, the task switcher (or Running
Programs) does not indicate that the .NET program is still running in
memory. As soon as other application are closed so that the .NET
application receives focus, the program shows back up in both the Task
Switcher and the Running Programs list. Any ideas as to how to keep the
last form displayed showing up even if the user switches to another app?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[Peter Foot [MVP]]

How are you hiding the form text at runtime? you should only set the text to
"" for forms that your own application hides itself. The last open form
should retain it's text property so when another app takes focus the title
of your form will remain in the running programs applet.

Peter

 

[Bill Mitchell]

Peter,

Thanks.

I had the Me.Text = "" in the LostFocus event thus even another app was
setting the form caption to blank. The fix should be to put the Me.Text =
"" in each control that calls a child form thus it only gets set to empty by
the application itself.

Bill