Building Mobile Web Applications with .NET Mobile Web SDK & ASP.NET
by Srinivasa Sivakumar.S
Mobile Applications Design Concepts
The .NET Mobile Web SDK supplies three container objects: MobilePage, Form and Panel. The MobilePage control is the primary container
for the mobile application. A single MobilePage can have one or more Form controls. A Form control can have zero are more Panel controls.
Panels are used to group mobile controls.
Mobile Controls Shipped With .NET Mobile Web SDK
Mobile controls can be grouped into three main groups. They are User Interface (UI) controls, Validation Controls and Utility controls. The UI
controls are things such as Label controls that allow us to manipulate the UI. The validation controls allow us to validate the user input such
as RequiredFieldValidator control. These controls validate the data entered by the user before the data gets submitted to the server. The utility
controls are items such as the Calendar control, which supports the viewing a calendar with out writing any code.
The following tables show the controls shipped in the above categories.
UI Controls
| Control Name |
Description |
| Command |
A Command control performs actions such as submitting information. |
| Form |
Form control is a container for one or more mobile controls. |
| Image |
Displays an image on the mobile device. |
| Label |
Displays output text on the mobile device. |
| Link |
Creates a hyperlink in the mobile form. |
| List |
Displays a list of items on the mobile device. |
| MobilePage |
Container control for all mobile controls. |
| TextBox |
Displays single line text box. |
| Textview |
Displays multilane text box.
|
Validation Controls
| Control Name |
Description |
| CompareValidator |
Compares two mobile controls. |
| CustomValidator |
Custom validator provides us to call our own validation procedure from the control. |
| RangeValidator |
Range validator validates the data within a range. |
| RegularExpressionValidator |
Validates the data against the expression specified in the control. |
| RequiredFieldValidator |
Verifies that the user enter some data in these fields. |
| ValidationSummary |
Displays a summary of all the validation that occurred. |
Utility Controls
| Control Name |
Description |
| Call |
Supports calling a Telephone number. |
| Calendar |
Displays a calendar for date picking functionality. |
| AdRotator |
Displays random advertisement. |
Automatic pagination is one of the main advantages of the .NET Mobile Web SDK. The .NET runtime will take care of the paging for the targeted device.
The pagination is handled differently for each different Mobile control. For example, for the List control, the pagination is handled by the
PageSize property of the control. This property is set automatically based on the target device. When the paging takes place at
runtime the controls included in the panel control will stay together.
Next: A Simple Example
