Mobile2Market help...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brian H
  • Start date Start date
B

Brian H

Hi all,

I've been encouraged by a few users of a freeware app I've written to submit
it to this Mobile2Market competition. I'm going over the requirements for
logo certification a bit, and would like a few clarifications. First the
easy one:

1. Since my app is mainly in the CF, the exemptions section seems to
inficate that:
- tooltips on the command bar are not needed.
- it is ok for CF apps to have a different help mechanism and display a way
for the user to invoke this help.

Regarding the help, I simply CreateProcess an iexplore instance to disaply a
help.html file. Would this be allowable?

2. Fonts. I allow the user to configure the fonts the application uses when
drawing info to the screen. The docs state that when displayed, these
options must appear in this order, left to right: style, font, font size,
bold, italic, underline.

In my case, I have several comboboxes on the left side of my form. One
combobox for the font, and under it, one for font size. On the other right
side of my form, I have the checkboxes for Bold, Italic, Underline, from top
to bottom. It follows the "flavor" of the requirement but is not left to
right. Is this ok? There's no logical way to make these options go left to
right.

3. Clarification: when I show a dialog box for settings, I must keep the
application name as the form's text property? (IE, myform.text = <app
name>). It seems fairly strict against truncating the text, so I suppost
"<app name>: Fonts" would likely be out.

4. Finally, is there a way to execute code should the app be uninstalled?
I have an option that allows the app to run for certain events
(CeRunAppAtEvent) and, should the user elect this option, but then uninstall
the app, I'm uncertain how this should get cleaned up. Right now I simply
state, in the help, to make sure these options are disabled before
uninstalling, but I'm not sure if this would pass logo certification.

Thanks for reading, I'd appreciate some qualified input!

Regards,
Brian
 
Answers inline:-

Brian H said:
Hi all,

I've been encouraged by a few users of a freeware app I've written to
submit
it to this Mobile2Market competition. I'm going over the requirements for
logo certification a bit, and would like a few clarifications. First the
easy one:

1. Since my app is mainly in the CF, the exemptions section seems to
inficate that:
- tooltips on the command bar are not needed.
- it is ok for CF apps to have a different help mechanism and display a
way
for the user to invoke this help.

Regarding the help, I simply CreateProcess an iexplore instance to disaply
a
help.html file. Would this be allowable?
Click to expand...

The CF exemptions would indicate yes. However you could still use the
Windows CE peghelp format for your help, but just supply your own way of
invoking it with CreateProcess and the peghelp.exe viewer. You can then add
your help into the master contents list too. See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnppc2k2/html/WinCEHelp.asp
For more details
2. Fonts. I allow the user to configure the fonts the application uses
when
drawing info to the screen. The docs state that when displayed, these
options must appear in this order, left to right: style, font, font size,
bold, italic, underline.

In my case, I have several comboboxes on the left side of my form. One
combobox for the font, and under it, one for font size. On the other
right
side of my form, I have the checkboxes for Bold, Italic, Underline, from
top
to bottom. It follows the "flavor" of the requirement but is not left to
right. Is this ok? There's no logical way to make these options go left
to
right.
Click to expand...

Looking at the Font dialog in Pocket Word, the options are arranged Font,
Size and the style flags are arranged vertically below. Perhaps you could
follow the format used there...
3. Clarification: when I show a dialog box for settings, I must keep the
application name as the form's text property? (IE, myform.text = <app
name>). It seems fairly strict against truncating the text, so I suppost
"<app name>: Fonts" would likely be out.
Click to expand...

If you want to provide a sub-heading, you should draw it on the form itself
and underline it with a single pixel line across the entire screen width
(see other settings dialogs for an example). The SDK contains the exact
specs for font, color and pixel dimensions required.
4. Finally, is there a way to execute code should the app be uninstalled?
I have an option that allows the app to run for certain events
(CeRunAppAtEvent) and, should the user elect this option, but then
uninstall
the app, I'm uncertain how this should get cleaned up. Right now I simply
state, in the help, to make sure these options are disabled before
uninstalling, but I'm not sure if this would pass logo certification.
Click to expand...

The way to do this would be to write a custom setup dll to be placed in your
cab files. See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...v_evtuv/html/etgrfsetupdllfilesfordevices.asp

You can place code in the Uninstall_Init and Uninstall_Exit to perform
cleanup operations when your ap is uninstalled. This setup.dll must be
written in native code as it must expose specific functions. ce_setup.h
defines the function prototypes required.

Peter
 
Peter, can you provide an example of this that I can look at?

"If you want to provide a sub-heading, you should draw it on the form itself
and underline it with a single pixel line across the entire screen width
(see other settings dialogs for an example). The SDK contains the exact
specs for font, color and pixel dimensions required."
 
Thanks Peter,

Great info. Regarding the clean-up of user settings, I'm going to start
work on that because, frankly, it's cleanest way to do things. However, do
you know if it's required for certification? If it requires native code in
this fashion, I'd guess not, but I'm not entirely sure. I'd prefer to add
this functionality later.

Thanks again,
Brian
 
With pixels at a premium, is there a reason this method is preferred over
frmMain.text?
 
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