The chatter

I’m excited about this one. The first two screencasts were meant to introduce device development to n0obs. Now that we’re past that, I wanted to start introducing, you know, like, actual concepts and stuff.

In addition to the content improvements, I’ve also switched to a different video format. The result is a small, but extremely high quality screencast. The downside to this is that I’ve had to package a player, a codec, and the video using some special Camtasia voodoo. However, I think it’ll be worth it. The new files are .exe’s, and they’ll start playing automatically after you run them.

The other downside is that the audio kind of sucks. I'm going to work on getting that fixed, but for this episode, it's just going to be a little stinky.

What you can expect to learn from this episode

• How to connect the emulator to a network (so that you can write networked apps with it (duh))
• How to use some cool controls (WebBrowser, TabControl)
• How to handle the inevitable arrival of a System.NotImplemented exception (even though v2.0 of the .NET CF is snazzier than ever, we still have to work around some shortcomings)
• How to use generics to save your butt
• How to programatically access web resources without the WebBrowser control (when you need to)

Episode links

• The screencast – 36MB .exe (just run it to watch)
• The source code

What’s next

I’m going to be building on this example in future screencasts to illustrate difficulties with UI design on devices, as well as furthering the networked goodness. My assumption is that we’re all net nerds, and we want our devices to hook up to the intarwebs and do neat-o things. We’ll get there :)

When you’re done listening

Head over to the forum to post any questions or comments.

You can post ‘em here, too, of course.

Have fun, people.