March 24, 2004

Microsoft focuses on mobile development, Visual Studio

Concurrent developer shows being held

Microsoft, in conjunction with several developer shows taking place this week, announced Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition along with a Visual Studio 2005 technology preview and a series of programs to boost Visual Studio 2005.

Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, unveiled at the Mobile Developer Conference, is focused on enabling hardware innovation and application development. The product adds support for dynamic screen-switching between landscape and portrait modes and square screen resolution support, which enables smaller devices with keyboards. Other features include VGA and QVGA that support high-resolution displays for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

Hardware diversity in the product boosts creation of form factors by device makers, while platform consistency enables developers to reach a large addressable market with a single code base, Microsoft representatives said.

Additionally, the Windows Mobile Developer Resource Kit has been updated to create new applications and services based on the new software. Included in the kit are eight white papers focused on Windows Mobile development and new and updated code samples, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition emulators, embedded Visual C++ 4.0 SP3, and Windows Mobile 2003 SDKs.

The Community Technical Preview version of Visual Studio 2005 includes Microsoft .Net Compact Framework 2.0, which enables smart device development, the company said. Microsoft plans a series of pre-beta releases of Visual Studio 2005 to be distributed to target segments of the developer community.

Visual Studio 2005, which has been known as “Whidbey,” is due in 2005. The VSLive show pertaining to Visual Studio also is being held this week.

Programs announced to promote Visual Studio 2005 include: the Community Technology Preview initiative for Visual Studio 2005; VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partners) SDK 2003 Extras, which enables partners to customize and integrate with Visual Studio using managed code; and two ASP.Net resources for Web developers to increase productivity: the Issue Tracker Starter Kit and DotNetNuke Portal 2.0.

The DotNetNuke community consists of 30 people from a variety of technical backgrounds who contribute in key project areas. The community portal is designed for Web hosts and developers and contains features required to operate a Web site, including user membership, role management, and content authoring.

Microsoft also announced it has signed an agreement with Business Objects Software to ship that company’s Crystal Reports reporting package with Visual Studio 2005. The move continues a previous distribution agreement between the two companies.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld.
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