Professional Windows® Embedded CE 6.0

Chapter 11. Visual C# 2005 Applications

Writing C# code for CE devices is quite similar to writing it for XP, Vista, and other versions of Windows. The Visual Studio 2005 IDE provides an efficient and effective environment to develop C# applications for CE devices. Developers with experience writing C# code for the desktop Windows environment can easily adapt their skills to this new task.

When writing code for embedded devices, you need to be conscious of some drawbacks. An embedded device typically has a slower processor with much less system memory and storage compared to the desktop computer. In addition, the embedded device display screen is typically smaller than the desktop computer's and may not have a keyboard or mouse to capture user input. Some embedded devices use the touch screen to capture user input, but some don't have any user interface at all.

In this chapter, you'll go through the steps to develop a C# application for the CE device, using the VS2005 IDE.

Developing C# Applications for CE

To develop a C# application for CE, we need to work with a target device with a CE runtime image, built to support managed-code application development, already launched on the device.

To support the C# application development in this chapter, we will work through the following steps to configure and use the emulator as the target device:

1. Configuring and building a CE OS design for the emulator

2. Adding the necessary component to support C# applications

3. Building and deploying the CE runtime ...