www.amazon.2db.com.pl - .NET Compact Framework

The latest technology preview was released on January 17, and it plugs into the new final release of Visual Studio .NET and this allows you to compile your existing applications successfully for the mobile platform, while just altering your user interface for the smaller screen. This book explains everything you need to know for converting your existing applications to the .NET Compact Framework, and although the code in book is almost exclusively C#, it will teach C# and VB.NET developers to create new applications.

What does this book cover?

* The features, libraries, tools, and add-ins for use with the .NET Compact Framework
* How to create a mobile application that communicates with XML Web Services
* How to use data from an external data source, or from SQL Server CE
* How to port existing .NET code over to the Compact Framework
* How to best deploy your code to a mobile device

It's a small book of 167 A5 pages written by 4 people. There are 6 chapters starting with an introductory overview of the .NETcf and ending with advice on porting code from existing CE code or the desktop. The second chapter is about the SDE and VS.NET. This leaves chapters 3-5 which go through building a 3-tier application (GUI - middle tier - data tier).

Unfortunately, I found it to be full of syntax/grammar errors and the overall style indicates a piece of work that has gone through little review prior to going public. Irrelevant info is included (how to build Window & Web Service projects on the desktop and MMIT) and some of the relevant info is just wrong (features in Beta 1 added/dropped since PDC release). It will become even more outdated with the next release of the .NETcf in August (the final expected in November).

IMHO, there is much more info and benefit to be gained by visiting the relevant pages of gotdotnet.com and the compactframework newsgroup.