Beginning Mobile.NET

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Beginning Mobile.NET

• Umer Faruq (3D Business Solutions)
• Mohammad Faridi (faridianslip)

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Agenda

• Introduction to Mobile
• Design/Performance Considerations of a Mobile
  Application
• Mobile Internet Toolkit (MIT)
• Mobile Controls
• MobileCapabilities
• ltDeviceSpecific /gt

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Introduction to Mobile
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Introduction to Mobile

• Evolution of Mobile Technology
• Current Mobile Development is geared towards
• PIMs (Personal Information Manager)
• PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant)
• Cell Phones (Mobile Web Browsing)
• 2G technology
• Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
• Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
• Running at 9.6kbps
• Global System for Mobile (GSM)

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Introduction to Mobile

• Evolution of Wireless Technology
• Next Generation Mobile Development will be geared
  towards
• Enterprise Applications
• Rich Feature Sets
• 2.5G technology
• General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)
• Up to 100 kbps
• Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)
• Up to 384 kbps

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Introduction to Mobile

• Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
• Wireless specifications were needed because
  TCP/IP was not sufficient for phones
• WAP Forum was formed in 1997 by Ericsson, Nokia,
  Motorola and Phone.com
• WAP Forum has contributed to WSP and WML as de
  facto standards
• WAP protocol includes
• WSP (Wireless Session Protocol) - mimics what
  HTTP does for the web
• WML (Wireless Markup Language) mimics what HTML
  does for the web

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Introduction to Mobile

• Wireless Markup Language (WML)
• WML is based on XML which means it is case
  sensitive and all tags must be closed
• The following standards have to be met for a
  qualified WML file
• WML files must start with the following document
  type declaration
• lt!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML
  1.1//EN http//www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml"gt

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Design/Performance Considerations
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Design Considerations

• Limitations that affect the design
• Limited CPU Cycles
• Half/Full Duplex (One/Two Way Communication)
• Latency caused by SAR (Specific Absorption Rate)
• Network Connectivity (Full/One Way Coverage)

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Design Considerations

• Things to remember during development
• Real estate (display size)
• Display Quality
• Available Bandwidth
• Supported Protocols (WML, HTML)

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Design Considerations

• Two approaches to Mobile Development
• Client Side
• applications are device specific
• have the richest UI
• harder to deploy
• Server Side
• applications run in browsers
• require internet service
• easy to deploy and have less UI choices

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Design Considerations

• How to Layout a Wireless application
• Use the Deck of Cards concept
• Transfer multiple screens at one time
• User Input should be based on a Step-by-Step
  approach

Card
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Design Considerations

• Best Practices
• Implement Error Recovery Mechanisms
• Benchmark Time-To-Live variable
• Use SSL encryption
• Optimize your application for individual devices
• Minimize round-trips/communication
• Cookieless State Management
• Disable ViewState

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Performance Considerations

• Factors that affect the application
• Requests per second
• Time To First Byte (TTFB) and Time To Last Byte
  (TTLB)
• Processor Use
• Scalability in terms of number of clients and
  processors
• Size response bytes

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Mobile Internet Toolkit and Mobile Controls
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Mobile Internet Toolkit

• MIT
• writes out Standard Code (WML, HTML, cHTML)
• includes Visual Development Tools
• includes Debugger
• provides Drag and Drop development

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Mobile Internet Toolkit

• MIT
• utilizes ASP.NET Pages that render on Cell
  Phones, Pocket PCs and Palm Browser
• provides Server Side Mobile Controls
• provides rich device identification mechanisms
• write-once/view anywhere
• Mobile pages can be consumed by web browsers as
  well

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Mobile Internet Toolkit

• Is different than regular web.config
• ltdeviceFiltersgt
• Markup Languages
• Device Browsers
• Specific Devices
• Device Capabilities

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Mobile Controls Text View

• Three ways to display text
• Display text Directly within a form
• Use a label control
• Pro Programmatic access to the text
• Con Cannot contain HTML tags
• Use a TextView Control
• Pro Programmatic access to the text
• Pro Can contain HTML tags
• Cons NONE ??

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Mobile Controls List

• A Mobile List Control acts like a regular
  Listbox.
• HTML device renders HTML Table
• WML device renders List Item with a ltbrgt tag in
  b/w them
• List control supports a property called
  Decoration
• None
• Bulleted
• Numbered

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Mobile Controls List

• Allows binding to a DataSource such as DataSet,
  ArrayList, etc
• Pagination is enabled by setting the Pagination
  property of the form
• Creates next and previous links automatically
• Change the ItemsAsLinks property to display each
  list choice as a link

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Mobile Controls PagerStyle Class

• PagerStyle Class
• Controls the way the form is displayed on the
  browser
• StyleReference property changes the presentation
  of the text Values include Error, SubCommand,
  Title
• NextPageText and PreviousPageText Properties
  allow changing the next and previous label text

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Mobile Controls Textbox

• Very similar to the ASP.NET textbox
• Does not support multi-line
• Properties
• Numeric (unique to WML devices)
• allows user to input numeric values directly from
  the keypad
• Password
• hides critical data by showing asterisks

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Mobile Controls Validation

• Validation is supported by Mobile Controls
• Compare
• compares two values or does a data type check
• Custom
• permits user to write a custom validation
  function
• Range
• checks if the value entered falls within a
  specified range
• Regular Expression
• matches a value against a regular expression
• Required Field
• verifies if a value has been entered or not

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Mobile Controls Validation

• Differences between Mobile and Standard
  Validation Controls
• Mobile Validation Summary
• is placed in a separate form
• has a property, formToValidate, which is set to
  the form that needs to be validated
• No JavaScript Support
• None of the controls use JavaScript to display
  error messages

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Mobile Controls Images

• Complicated Proposition
• Several different incompatible formats
• Mobile devices only support bmp or wbmp
• For compatibility, need to support gif and jpg
• Image Control
• Can detect different devices
• Automatically displays the proper image file
  format
• If image format is not supported, it displays the
  value assigned to AlternateText property

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Mobile Control Adrotator

• Works like the ASP.NET Adrotator
• Shows alternate text on WML Devices
• Shows images on HTML Devices
• To define the ad, use an External XML file
• ImageURL
• NavigateURL
• AlternateText
• Keyword
• Impressions

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Mobile Control PhoneCall

• Places phone calls on phone devices
• If the device does not support calling, a label
  or phone number is shown
• You can tie the call control to a specified phone
  number by setting the PhoneNumber property

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Mobile Controls Calendar

• In a WML device, Calendar control renders
• a series of selections to choose a date
• user can enter the date themselves
• In a HTML device, Calendar control renders a
  regular calendar

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Mobile Capabilities
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Mobile Capabilities

• When MIT is installed, machine.config file is
  changed
• Browser cap section is expanded
• MobileControls section is added
• These changes in machine.config allows you to
  reference System.Web.Mobile.MobileCapabilities
  class which gives you access to a multitude of
  information specific to the device

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Mobile Capabilities

• What does MobileCapabilities class buy you
• Browser returns the type of browser used by the
  device (IE, Phone.com)
• Type returns the general type of the device
  (IE5, PocketIE)
• PreferredRenderingType returns the MIME type of
  the rendering language of the device (HTML3.2 or
  WML 1.1)
• ScreenCharactersWidth Height returns the
  number of characters the screen can show

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Mobile Capabilities

• What does MobileCapabilities class buy you
• CanInitiateVoiceCall
• IsColor
• ActiveX
• AOL
• CanSendMail

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Mobile Capabilities

• What does MobileCapabilities class buy you
• Cookies
• Frames
• IsMobileDevice
• JavaScript
• JavaApplets

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Device Specific
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Device Specific

• DeviceSpecific tag allows you to control how
  things are rendered on different devices
• DeviceSpecific tag can be applied at
• individual page(s)
• individual form(s)
• individual Control(s)
• DeviceSpecific is a thought out process

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Questions?