Visual Studio 2005 and the SmartPhone

Introduction

The SpinControl

I decided to write for the first time, a program for the SmartPhone and found that there are many differences that need to be overcome compared to the Pocket PC. However there is not a lot of help so I decided to share a few of the tricks I found with you. Hopefully it will make SmartPhone development a little easier. Because of the time I have available, I will share one tip at a time.

Background

This article deals mainly with MFC and dialog based applications. There is not a lot of help when coding using the MFC classes and dialog based applications for the SmartPhone. I also found that in VS 2005 help files, they removed a lot of the sample code.

The Combobox

The SmartPhone does not have a touch screen and therefore it does not natively support the Combobox. The help files tell you to use a Spin-Box. You will not find this control in the tools drop down. It has to be created using a Spin Control and a Listbox.

A Spin control must be attached to the Listbox in the code.

Here is how it is done...

First you add a listbox to your dialog. Use the following attributes:

• Border=TRUE
• No Integral Height=TRUE
• Notify=TRUE
• Vertical Scrollbar=TRUE
• Selection=Single

and give it an ID - we will use IDC_CONTROL1

Then you add a Spin Control. The control attributes are:

• Alignment=Right
• Arrow Keys=True
• Orientation=Horizontal
• Wrap=True
• Set Buddy Integer=TRUE

Then you need to add control variables to the listbox and spin controls, we will add m_ctrlControl1 for the listbox and m_ctrlSpin1 for the Spin Control.

Next you need to add a string variable for the listbox, for this demo we will assign a CString called m_strControl1.

// In your header, you will have the following
protected:
CString m_strControl1;
CListBox m_ctrlControl1;
CSpinButtonCtrl m_ctrlSpin1;        

Next, you will need to tie the Spin control to the list box. In the InitDialog of your application, add the following code:

BOOL CSampleDlg::OnInitDialog()
{
CDialog::OnInitDialog();

//..... startup code such as menus and defaults from the registry

m_ctrlSpin1.SetBuddy(&m_ctrlControl1);

Now we are ready to populate the control:

m_ctrlControl1.AddString(_T("Item1"));
m_ctrlControl1.AddString(_T("Item2"));
m_ctrlControl1.AddString(_T("Item3"));

Now you can set the text to default to the first entry like this:

m_ctrlControl1.GetText(0,m_strControl1);
UpdateData(FALSE);

There you have it... A SpinBox control for the SmartPhone.

In my next article, we will discuss how to set the back arrow key on a Smartphone to act as a Backspace key while in a textbox.