Guest Zorglub Posted February 24, 2003 Report Posted February 24, 2003 It's a pleasure to announce that, after a few months of development, Stock Manager has now been released for the Smartphone platform. More information: http://www.tinystocks.com/sm.html Online documentation will be online soon, please be patient :) Current version works only on unlocked phones, I'm trying to get the certification sorted out. Let me know if you have any questions/comments - it's my first Smartphone release!
Guest Paul [MVP] Posted February 24, 2003 Report Posted February 24, 2003 Well done Zorglub, i've been waiting for this for a while! P
Guest Zorglub Posted February 24, 2003 Report Posted February 24, 2003 Documentation is now available here: http://www.tinystocks.com/docs_sp.html
Guest marksankey Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 I'm not able to carry out an update of stock prices using Active Sync, though I've successfully done this using the update via GPRS. The Stock Manager icon appears in the list of available information types (along with calendar, contacts, etc) but is not double-clickable as the instructions state. The settings box is also diabled when this icon is selected. Any ideas on why this happening?
Guest Zorglub Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Contact [email protected] for help resolving these issues. I dont think Paul appreciate transforming this forum into a support forum for a particular app.
Guest lutzh Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 hi zorglub, i really love tinystocks, i bought it years ago for my ipaq but as time (and device) goes bye i'll need to buy it again! i would like to see one more feature - the one i always missed on my ppc: an auto update funktionallity where i can tell tinystocks to go for the closing rates every day at 8 pm via gprs. now that would be fantastic, because i can look at the courves at the end of the week (or whenever i feel like crying).... is it possible to include that? thanks in advance! cheers, lutz
Guest Zorglub Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Actually that should be easy enough to implement, the only thing is that if I do then Stock Manager will not pass the Microsoft Logo certification and so goodbye any chances to get it signed by Orange. The logo program says that no timers can be running in the background which would be the easy way to implement this. I dont know if on the Smartphone there is a way to set a system alarm that will wake up an application. This is possible on the Palm OS.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Are you not allow the timers even if they are off by default and the user can activate them when they like?
Guest Zorglub Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 The logo certification says that timers should be turned off when the application is in the background. The reasons for this is that they consume a lot of battery. It is hard to argue with the guys that do the logo certification as they have a set of strict rules from Microsoft to comply with.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Yeah i was reading through them the other day. There are some fairly specific/stupid requirements in there imho...
Guest Cent Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Nice one .. I was just about to write too :)
Guest Zorglub Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Yeah, dont get me started on them... the other day I was again discussing with a Microsoft person the stupidity of not having an Exit button and that one the first apps released for the SPV was a task manager ! Anyway I think the ones for the Pocket PC are even more ridiculous - you cannot have a button in your app that says "New", it must be the left most menu item. Well I like having a New button in my app and if I dedicate one menu bar spot just for New then the rest of my menus/icons dont fit in the bar.
Guest lutzh Posted February 25, 2003 Report Posted February 25, 2003 Hi Zorglub, would it be too much hassle to just set it up for me??? You'll get my own private certification for it (e.g. "This application passed the Haedrich test"), I pay for it and I don't care about the certification anyway (how about offering both versions or the unsigned timer equipped version upon request). Please... Thank you very much, Lutz
Guest Zorglub Posted February 26, 2003 Report Posted February 26, 2003 The more I think about this the more I realize that it might not be entirely possible to do this on a Smartphone. When your application is in the background, it might be closed by the OS at any time if the OS needs extra memory for other applications which are in the foreground. Once Stock Manager is closed then it's timer will be deleted. To make this work you would have to start Stock Manager and not start any other applications because they might require memory and the OS will shutdown SM. On the Palm OS there is a mechanism where you can tell the OS to launch an application at a certain time. But this does not exist on the SMartphone platform.
Guest Shuflie Posted February 26, 2003 Report Posted February 26, 2003 I'm a bit confused about the timers buisness, if you aren't allowed them for a legal smartphone program then how can poutlook sit around in the background and collect email on a timed basis? Perhaps it all gets tied in to the system clock. As for the OS shutting down programs when memory is needed then what about dockware? It runs a process in the background that starts the main dockware program after being connected to the the powersupply/cradle for a specified time. Other programs, such as listpro, generate alarms too . I can understand the need for Orange certification if you are going to be accessing the GPRS network but possibly your solution could be to make an add-on app that runs as a process and only needs to access the unpriviliged side of things then calls your stock manager when required. That way you could get full logo certification for the main program and just get Baltimore to sign the unpriviliged app.
Guest Zorglub Posted February 26, 2003 Report Posted February 26, 2003 You are allowed to have timers but you are supposed to disable them when your app goes to the background. When the OS needs memory to start new programs it sends some messages to your app asking you to free memory and enventually it asks your program to quit. These are the rules, I dont make them and I dont necessarily agree with them. But as a developer I have to abide by them. As to how other apps do it? I have no idea. You should not complain to me but to those who made these rules.
Guest Zorglub Posted February 26, 2003 Report Posted February 26, 2003 Oh and BTW, many of Microsoft's programs (on Windows, Pocket PC and Smartphone) dont pass their own logo specifications on. But since they are Microsoft and they make the rules, they dont care :-) About Listpro - do they just set an alarm that will alert you of something (as in a reminder) or do they actually have the program take certain actions at certain times? For the 1st case you dont need to have you program running, you can just add the alarms to the general alarm facility (if there is such a thing).
Guest spacemonkey Posted February 26, 2003 Report Posted February 26, 2003 Microsofts specs to me are for the frontend part of any given application and yes you definitely need to follow those rules. Even if not going for certification, cos at the end of the day, when my phone rings I need to answer it whether I'm playing Doom, or checking stocks or whatever. But outside of what they document about some applications need (and must therefore be allowed in M$ certification schemes) a back end component. This component needs to be lightweight, low memory usage, and not use loads of battery. This is for things like, the GPRS traffic usage thing, has a background task that actually watches your GPRS connections and saves the usage. Voice Dial type software, has a background portion that listens to the microphone for a key word to start voice dialling. Automatic email receiving, needs a listener to notice when a notification that email has arrived is sent so it can call the main app to retrieve the email. I would think it would be entirely appropriate to write a very lightweight backend timer that would, after the specified time, launch (or re-activate) the main stock checker app and get it to refresh data. The down side, is if you have loads of these little background things stacked up on your phone battery usage and general performance will get worse as there's more just general clutter wasting processor cycles on your phone. As to GPRS, I haven't looked at this end of things myself, but, do you need to Orange sign your app to use GPRS or is there some network library allready there that you can through normal TCP/IP traffic at without "privilege"?
Guest Zorglub Posted February 27, 2003 Report Posted February 27, 2003 You can access the Internet (ie GPRS or dialup) without using priviledged APIs. Look for URLDownload....()
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