MobilePostIt 1.1 beta screenshot

Here is a screen capture of my MobilePostIt version 1.1 on a real WM5 device. I just loaded it onto my PPC6700 and will be doing some self testing.

Collection editor and string array

Getting edit control buttons to work on MobilePostIt is not hard, but I wanted to implement some “fancy” designer support such that once the button control is implemented, I can just drag-drop the button in place and configure them via the properties pane.

OpenCloseTagButton design time support

The next little feature I want to add to MobilePostIt is editing shortcuts, similar to the ones in WordPress. I classify these buttons into two categories, one that pops up a dialog box, e.g. “img” and “link”, and the other that surrounds selected text with open and close tags. I started working on the second type first.

I am calling my button type the “OpenCloseTagButton”. I thought about creating an user control but chose to derive it from System.Windows.Forms.Button instead.

Since I am working on MobilePostIt for the sake of fun, I decided to add a little Visual Studio 2005 design time support so I can use the designer to configure the controls. For this aspect I found three nice tutorials:

• Creating Custom Controls for Microsoft .NET Compact Framework in Visual Studio 2005
• Custom Design-time Control Features in Visual Studio .NET
• Compact Framework Custom Control Design Support in Visual Studio 2005

At first I made a mistake of not exposing getters on the class properties, so for a while properties just wouldn’t show up in the designer. I finally fixed that by trial and error. I guess that’s enough progress for tonight.

Version control at home

More than a year ago I asked myself which version control software I should use at home. I then more or less decided to go with Subversion. Unfortunately all was moot as I never put it into action.

That is until today. I just installed Subversion and TortoiseSVN (minus the Apache part) on my over burdened laptop. I wouldn’t have done it if not for two reasons:

1. I found an excellent 2-part guide to Subversion installation: part 1 and part 2.
2. I started tinkering with my MobilePostIt project again.

MobilePostIt v1 released

It’s been 6 months since I last worked on my little pet project MobilePostIt. After my comments on Pocket PC Thoughts, I am now putting it up as a >>free download<<.

Chinese MobilePostIt

This is just a Chinese test post using my MobilePostIt program:

大家好吗?
我现正坐在新加坡世界贸易中心的麦当劳里用它提供的免费无线网络上网.

中文输入是通过 CE-Star 2.8.

.NET setting management

One of the things I had wanted to do for my MobilePostIt project was to use .NET 2.0′s setting management to store blog settings. Right now I use file IOs to access a binary file. Using .NET’s setting management is not that useful of an enhancement, but it would result in less code in the application and more API experience for myself. Unfortunately I never got to it as I couldn’t find any quick examples and also other bigger bugs got in the way.

Then last Friday a colleague (thank you, if you are reading) gave me the Feb. 14, 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine. While flipping through it during lunch today, I found an article about Visual Studio 2005 enhancements and a section on Improved Settings Management. My curiousity about setting managment is fulfilled.

To access an user-scoped setting, in C#:

string myUserSetting = Properties.Settings.Default.MyUserSetting;
Properties.Settings.Default.MyUserSetting = "myNewUserSettingValue";

To save the settings, again in C#:

Properties.Settings.Default.Save ();

Simple enough. These APIs are almost the same as those for resource management, which I had jammed into v1 beta.

[update @ 2006-02-11 00:00] Well, looks like this setting management doesn’t apply to the .NET 2.0 compact framework afterall.

WordPress 2.0.1 fixes XML-RPC bugs

I just noticed that WordPress 2.0.1 has been released and that it fixed some of the XML-RPC bugs I have mentioned, bugs such as stripping of CSS in <div> and stripping of <!–– more ––>.

WP 2.0.1 bug fix list is here.
The 3 XML-RPC fixes are mentioned here.

MobilePostIt v1 beta

I did say that I wouldn’t work on MobilePostIt project for a while, but then I thought I should just finish what I started. It took me another two nights and one day, but v1 is feature complete and ready for blitz testing.

New in this (self) release:

• Retrieve and edit recent posts
• Publish or save as draft
• Appropriate menus for each tab
• Warning for when current post is about to be lost
• < and > encoding, for HTML tags e.g. a link
• Data-binding usage (just for correctness)
• SIP and screen-orientation fix
• Some backend restructuring and cleanup

– Anything above this line was posted using MobilePostIt. –

MobilePostIt pre-alpha

I have released (to myself) a pre-alpha version of MobilePostIt, a .NET 2.0 Windows Mobile 5 application that allows one (ok, just me) to publish blogs straight from his/her (or just my) PDA.

MobilePostIt uses XML-RPC to communicate with blog systems. Currently it supports metaWeblog XML-RPC used by WordPress. Posting with categories is supported, so are cut/copy/paste/undo operations.

The application is written in C#. Last time I checked the .exe size is 23.5KB. Unfortunately the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 takes about 2MB, and its startup time is not too impressive either. I guess one should stay away from .NET if speed and size is important.

I did not use Cook Computing’s XML-RPC.Net library. I wrote my own limited XML-RPC APIs because I wanted to.

Screen shots below:

I started working on this pet project last Friday night (Jan. 20, 2006), that included installation of Visual Studio 2005 and the Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC SDK. My next goals include retrieving/editing existing blog entries and reorganizing the menus, but for now I am putting this project aside for other personal tasks.

…

And you know what, someone has already taken the www.mobilepostit.com domain! Interesting…