Friday, April 21, 2023

Beginning Mobile.NET

Umer Faruq (3D

Business Solutions) Mohammad Faridi (faridianslip)

Agenda

Introduction to Mobile Design/Performance Considerations of a Mobile

Application Mobile Internet Toolkit (MIT) Mobile Controls MobileCapabilities <DeviceSpecific />

Friday, April 21, 2023

Introduction to Mobile

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)

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

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

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:

• <!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">

Friday, April 21, 2023

Design/Performance Considerations

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)

Design Considerations

Things to remember during development:

Real estate (display size)

Display Quality

Available Bandwidth

Supported Protocols (WML, HTML)

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

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

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

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

Friday, April 21, 2023

Mobile Internet Toolkit and Mobile Controls

Mobile Internet Toolkit

MIT:

writes out Standard Code (WML, HTML, cHTML)

includes Visual Development Tools

includes Debugger

provides Drag and Drop development

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

Mobile Internet Toolkit

Is different than regular web.config

<deviceFilters>– Markup Languages – Device Browsers– Specific Devices– Device Capabilities

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 ??

Mobile Controls: List

A Mobile List Control acts like a regular Listbox.

HTML device renders HTML Table WML device renders List Item with a <br> tag in b/w

them

List control supports a property called Decoration:

None Bulleted Numbered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, April 21, 2023

Mobile Capabilities

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

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

Mobile Capabilities

What does MobileCapabilities class buy you:

CanInitiateVoiceCall

IsColor

ActiveX

AOL

CanSendMail

Mobile Capabilities

What does MobileCapabilities class buy you:

Cookies

Frames

IsMobileDevice

JavaScript

JavaApplets

Friday, April 21, 2023

Device Specific

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

Friday, April 21, 2023

Questions?