Multi-form PocketPC App loses focus.

[Guest]

Hi all,

I'm developing an app for PocketPC 2003 Second Edition using vb.net, compact
framework 1 SP 3 which integrates with TomTom Navigator.

(*apoologies if this is the wrong place to post.. couldn't find a section
for CF*)

To allow the end-user to switch between the apps, I've configured the PDA's
physical buttons - one to start my application, the other to start TomTom.

With both apps running, the buttons then serve as a means of switching
between them.

However: I have a problem handling multiple forms in my app... when a user
closes a form in my application application focus jumps back to TomTom!

It seems as though PPC just goes back to displaying the previous form -
irrespective of whether it was from the same application. For example, the
following behaviour occurs: -

1) User runs my application by pressing Hardware Button 1 on PDA.
2) Users presses hardware button 2 to look at TomTom.
3) User presses hardware button 1 to return to my application.
4) User presses an on-screen software button which loads another form to
display some data.
5) User closes this new form.
6) Instead of reverting to the previous form in my application it suddenly
jumps to TomTom.

Any ideas/suggestions about handling multi-form pocketpc application where
the user can switch between apps would be greatly appreciated.

My only current idea is to do everything on one form and show/hide different
elements to emulate multi-form behaviour! (Not something I like the sound of)

Thanks in advance,

Wheeldo.

 

[Tim Wilson]

The dedicated CF newsgroup can be found at
microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.compactframework

With PPC, windows are simply stacked on top of each other. If you create an
application with two forms and then open both forms and then look at the
running tasks list you will see both forms listed instead of one as you
would typically expect. This is due to each window being treated as a top
level window. So it sounds like what you're seeing is related to this
behavior. With the CF 2.0 there is now an Owner property on each form that
could probably be used in this situation, although I haven't tested that. I
believe that this issue was discussed a while back in the newsgroup. Off the
top of my head I can't remember what the recommendation was for CF 1.0. You
may want to go over to the google archive and see what you can turn up.
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.compactframework

My only current idea is to do everything on one form and
show/hide different elements to emulate multi-form behaviour!
(Not something I like the sound of)

This is something that was typically done back in the days of eVB. I agree.
This is not something that you'd want to do in a normal situation.