CabWizSP is an app that's specifically for building CAB files for the SmartPhone. When creating an install, that's what I use to create all my cab files. CabWiz (without the SP) is for the PocketPC, HPC, and other Windows CE devices.

CabWizSP comes as part of the SmartPhone SDK (which can be downloaded from the link someone provided above). That SDK generally requires eMbedded Visual Tools 3.0/4.0 to be installed, depending on what version of the SmartPhone SDK you've downloaded

I'm still working on more.. Have been busy (was training to hike the Appalachian Trail, but not gonna do it this year)...

The site should be back up tonight.

Maybe try re-downloading the install (or just the Cab file) from my site:

http://motbe.coolcomputing.net/ce/beta.php

eVC++ 4 is only for 2003 and other CE.Net platforms. It can't be used for 2002 development (since it's not CE.Net based, but based on the older CE code base). If you're wanting to do development for 2002, or any other CE device prior to Windows Mobile, you'll definitely need to download eVC++ 3. Of course, I haven't tried compiling an arm executable from version 4 and running it on a pre-CE.Net device. that might work, but your best best is to just use version 3. I've not really seen any advantage to using 4 versus 3, they didn't necessarily improve the IDE, they just modified it to build for CE.Net.

Version 4 installs to C:Program FilesWindows CE Tools, versus the old version installing to C:Windows CE Tools

I have both running side by side, since I do development for both.

It's actually based more on VB Script than on VB6. Alot of conventions in VB6 aren't included in this release. VB.Net in the Compact Framework is a much more fully functional version of VB. VB in the eMbedded Visual Tools can still be used to produce some good applications, but just not quite as easily as in its desktop counterpart.

I'm working on that.. Of course I've been busy lately, so haven't gotten it completed yet, but backlight code is definitely in the works.



SCR files are really just EXE's renamed to have an SCR extension. You can get a bit more special than that, like, all of the ones I've for the SmartPhone/PocketPC have a /c option that allows you to open up a configuration dialog for the screensaver (the ability to open that dialog on the SmartPhone is coming soon too!). Microsoft defined a few other options too, like a /p preview mode, and others. Generally, I tried to implement the Windows based version on the PocketPC, and that's where PocketCandy came from.

Most screensavers are just eyecandy, and use a single full screen window to draw on. Croccy's work (and some of my newer stuff, including the Winter Snow one) uses GapiDraw to create alot more eyecatching stuff than straight GDI calls (and does it with incredible speed, especially for transparent blits, rotation, alpha blending, and much more). Most of the earlier PocketCandy screensavers use simple GDI to do their work.

Also, there's a library I created that simplifies screensaver development. Or at least makes it so it matches how you might do it on the PC, using the ScrnSave.lib file. Documentation's on Microsoft's site for that. Mine matches it. I've been wanting to revamp it so it'd be easier to use along with GapiDraw, but haven't gotten that far yet..

I was writing a big reply to your with my own quotes.. But.. I don't quite have the time..

You did come across as a zealot for OSS. And some of your comments in my reply seemed that way too.. I'm no zealot for linux or microsoft. and As you said, computers are tools..

My one comment is tthat remember that Open Standards != open source. The internet runs on Open Standards so we can all communicate together. Otherwise, quite a bit of the software that facilitates those standards is closed.

The OSS community will still be around for years to come.. It's been around for a long time.. And as well, closed source will be around for a long time too. That's a fact. There are plusses and minusses to both..

Oh, and yes, if any of the apps I ported was closed source, I'd still write them from scratch.. Alot of software again is over priced, and so I'd rather spend a couple hours coding then spend $100 on something that's not worth it.. I can usually get something that's more customized to my needs, and better suits me...

To say that Open Source is the future of software is really relying on something that you don't truly know. The internet was never built on open source software. The internet's been around for many years (some people only thing it existed when the web became the big thing. Most of the systems running on the net used proprietary closed source systems. Only in the past ten years or so has linux really become a big thing. Linux is the only well known OS that's open source used on the net. I know of others out there, but of the big Operating Systems, none are open but linux.

Yes, some countries are mandating that they will start using open source, but I don't think this is necessarily a global trend.

The hard thing with open source is that people do like to get paid for their time. Giving away my software with the source included isn't exactly paying me anything. And, allowing people to make donations doesn't pay any bills either. I've only made $50 or so from donations over a three year period. That won't buy much.

Open source software CAN be great. The issue is that time spent programming is MY time. Most open source development is going on by Joe Schmo programmer, and he's usually got a day job, and spends his spare moments hacking away at something. Granted, the project he's working on is cool, but it's not paying his bills.

Red hat did pursue making money from Open Source Software. their distro is free, but service is not. Now, that's a smart way to make money via open source. But, from what I've read, they've never even pulled a profit until recently. And except for the enterprise market, they're backing out. That doesn't say much for making money to pay the bills with open source.

Now, I'm definitely not pro-microsoft. I love linux, and I'd prefer to use it. But, don't go spouting off the benefits of Open Source without considering the full picture. The economy doesn't necessarily grow by giving away things. Time = money in alot of things. And 0 money doesn't equal 8, 12, 16, etc hours in anyone's book.

I've been happy to use a few spare moments here and there to write my own free software (which many said they would gladly buy). I even have released the source to things that were GPL'd which I ported. But I'm not going all out and giving away my source. Not when there are company's selling the samples from GapiDraw as their own screensavers, and others that are simply charging sky high rates for work that took them 2 hours to do. My code would get picked up, modded a bit, and then resold. (even if it's GPL'd). The GPL might hold up in certain countries, but I know that it wouldn't hold water in other less copyright-protective countries.

So, I'd just say, consider the whole picture with open source. there are plusses and minuses. Don't just see it, say "hey, it's great, and the world's a better place for it", think about it, and how it relates to your life, the economy, and etc.

Nope.. no smartphone for me yet.. I'm tempted to buy the new motorola that just came out in the US.. But, GSM service is still spotty in my area.. So... Once they offer better coverage here, I'll pick one up!

I actually couldn't tell you exactly how it works.. When I ported the code from Unix, I didn't really get into the "how it works", I just ported the code.. It looked cool! And thus was one of the reasons I ported it!

Thanks Morflez!

I do have another version coming.. With config options to use your desktop image (current screen image) as the background, to set how much snow you see, how fast the wind blows, and to allow the snow to collect at the bottom of the screen.. It wasn't easy to make snow that seems to fall almost like in real life...

Extract both files from the zip file, and copy them to your Phone's PocketCandy Screensavers directory. To run this as a screensaver, you have to have PocketCandy installed. See the PocketCandy thread in this forum for where you can download it from.

I was in the mood to write something seasonal, and since Winter's coming here in the US (and already here in some places up north), I whipped up a quick Winter Snow screensaver.. This is the initial version. . There will be some config options coming.. (and as I've mentioned, a new version of PocketCandy is coming, I've just been busy in life)...

Sorry.. No screenshot right now.. I'll try and get one up later...

Copy both files in the ZIP to your PocketCandy screensavers dir, and then select "Winter Snow" in your list of screensavers.

Has anyone had any issues with installing cabs via a desktop installer? (i.e. using ActiveSync to do the install to your SP) I'm having some issues where a cab will install fine on an SP, but when using the ActiveSync manager, it copies the cab file to the device, but then doesn't execute the cab on the SP (or either the cab gets executed, but nothing gets installed)...

To answer some of the many questions on here, XMLTV (which is what the developer was planning on using to download the listings) can download listings for a bunch of different countries: Denmark, Germany, Austria, Spain, Finland, Hungary, Italy, US, Canada, Holland, Sweden, Norway, and the UK. So, most people on this board should be covered by that.. And if not, XMLTV's an open source project, so as long as there's an online provider for TV Listings for your country, you can write your own importer for that provider. Check out the project at:

http://xmltv.sourceforge.net/

Depending on how xmltv gets configured (by the app itself or by hand) afaik it will only spend time downloading the channels you want.. I could be incorrect on that, but I'm fairly sure of that by watching it download its data... Really though, if it only downloads a day's worth of data, it only would download the XML, and not any images from the web pasge (which would really be what would take up your bandwidth)

Being someone who uses a PocketPC all the time, I've used some of the PocketPC based TV Listing apps.. And lately most of them have broken, since the tvguide.com provider changed their listings to make them incompatible.. so, I used XMLTV to whip up a quick Listings Download app that syncs the listings with my PocketPC.. Then I wrote a quick .Net CF app to read those listings on my PocketPC.. Granted that the PocketPC has more screenspace than the SP, but it should still be feasible to write something decent like that for the SP.. I could see the channel, time, and description listed and viewable, and you could then select the listing for more details...

So anyways, Nigma can definitely whip up something good for this..

I'm working on a different copy of that screensaver, run by GAPI (so it'll run smoother). Potentially that'll solve the problem. We'll see.

I have other things on my plate right now though.. Since I'm working to get the "Screensaver Run Time Limit" and the Backlight options included in PocketCandy (thanks for MoRFLeZ help with it!)

Thanks for the nudging... Gotta keep on me about that.. I think I've got about 5 or 6 ideas I'm juggling.. From Flash based screensavers for the PocketPC, this slideshow app, newer versions of some of the CPU hungry pocketcandy screensavers, a halfway written rewrite of TimePiece (with the followup port to the SP), and the rewrite of PocketCandy... I think I get more ideas than I do get time to finish the old ones!

But, yes, I do have a newer version of PC about halfway done. And I think I've sorted out how to made the backlight stuff happen. And have added code for that, just have to test it a bit more before releasing it...

Well, I finally had the time to whip up a slideshow type screensaver. It supports GIFs (including Animated ones), JPEGs, and Bitmaps. Quite a few things are hard coded in (it pauses for 5 seconds between images, the background color is black, images are displayed in their normal size and not sized to fit the screen, etc), but I'll get to making a configuration for those later.

What's configurable now is the directory where the images are loaded from. If you don't configure this, it defaults to the root directory of your phone, and then loads all images from every sub-directory on your phone. You can configure this setting by creating the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareStrickland ConsultingPictureShow

And then create a new "String" value under that key named: "Image Directory" (without the quotes). Set that value to the directory you'll be placing your images in. I haven't played with putting images on a CF card or SD/MMC card in my PocketPC, but doing so should work.

Also, I couldn't compile this exactly for the SmartPhone, but it is compiled for the ARM processor, so it should technically run fine on the SP.

Let me know if it doesn't run properly.

One other note is that the animated GIF code can be quite slow at times (and so can the code that loads JPEGs) depending on the size of the images in the GIF and how many frames there are (there's alot of info stored in those files). I'll be tweaking that code for speed here soon.. So, you might notice delays of more than 5 seconds at times, and that's due to the loading of larger images.

Oh, to install, just unzip the file attached to this post, and then place it in your installed dir for PocketCandy Screensavers (which is probably Program FilesPocketCandyScreensavers unless you've modded it, of course I can't remember exactly which dir I set the install to for PocketCandy)

Very nice....... Runs great on my iPaq (200 MHz model).. About 30 fps avg...

Okay.. I've not been idle lately, even though I haven't posted any updates. Work has been on PocketCandy and on other screensavers, and I've been doing other research.. I've added functionality to PocketCandy to now allow screensavers to be configured, and the Matrix config screen's been redone by moomoomoo so that it fits on the SmartPhone. I've still got alot to do on that whole note.

But, I've actually run into a bit of a dilemma. Requests have been made that I turn on the backlight when a screensaver is launched, and then have it turn off the backlight after a set amount of time (only when the phone is on battery power). Now, technically, I've not run into any solution that I can turn on the backlight programatically (trust me, I've asked around).. The one possibility at this point (unless I find another solution) is that I keep the backlight on for the delay period, then for the time that the screensaver's supposed to run, and then have it turn off. So in essence, if your phone waits for 1 minute before launching the SS, then waits for 10 minutes while running the screensaver, then turns off the backlight, it will have had the backlight on for 11 minutes. Now, the timer's would all reset once fthe user interacted with the phone again (thus turning on the backlight, and starting the process over again). Does that sound reasonable and along the lines of what everyone was thinking about this backlight option?

On a side note, I've also coded my own GIF library, so I'll be porting TimePiece to the SmartPhone, and adding support for GIF's and JPEG's to the skin files (i.e. animated gif's and etc)

Yeah, in their thread, they didn't come to any big conclusion.. Thus the reason I brought the topic up again....

I've seen comments about this posted before in this forum, but the question was never truly answered (I think the last action on that thread was back in April).

So, does anyone know how to programatically turn on the backlight?

(We all know how to keep it on once it's on, but turning it on programatically is something totally different).

Any hints or other ideas would be greatly appreciated...

Sorry, but only screensavers that have been compiled for the SmartPhone can be used. Any screensaver compiled for the PC won't run on the smartphone.

Yeah, the GIF patent expired in June for US developers. Overseas developers have to wait until sometime in 2004 to use GIF code (or at least GIF code that uses LZW compression) without paying royalties.

AFAIK, there has never been animated GIF support on Windows CE (including on the SmartPhone build of the OS). But, with the influx of users saying it supports it, that got me to wondering whether the SmartPhone version had support added for it. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Most people say it supports animated GIF's because some of IA Style's applications allow for the use of animated GIF's. I would assume though that they had coded their own routines for dealing with these images, and that they've licensed the use of that format from whomever owns it now (since IA is selling the software, not giving it away)..

Aside from that fact, has anyone found a good lib/set of routines for adding GIF89 support (assuming that I'm going to give the software away that I write using it)?