Building Mobile Web Applications with .NET Mobile Web SDK & ASP.NET

by Srinivasa Sivakumar.S

Pros and Cons Of The .NET Mobile Web SDK

There are a few pros and cons of using the Mobile Web SDK.

Pros

1. No need to do browser checks and deliver WML or HTML content based on the target device.
2. Only thing to learn is ASP.NET and .NET Mobile Controls. No need to learn WML.
3. Easy to use programming model and drag and drop application development with Visual Studio.NET
4. Server-Side event handling support.
5. Automatic paging support.

Cons

1. You are limited to Microsoft products and operating systems.
2. When a new version of WML or HTML is released, you’ll wait until Microsoft announces support for the new version with its Mobile Web Controls.

Supported Devices

The .NET framework is still in development (Beta 1). Currently .NET Mobile Web SDK has been fully tested on following devices:

• Pocket PC with Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer version 4.5
• Mitsubishi T250 phone
• Nokia 7110 phone
• Nokia WAP Toolkit 2.0 Beta simulator for the Nokia 7110

The .NET Mobile Web SDK has undergone limited testing on the following devices:

• Samsung Touchpoint phone
• Sony CMD-z5 phone
• Microsoft Mobile Explorer™ v 2.01 simulator
• Phone.com UP.SDK 4.0 simulator with the generic skin
• Phone.com UP.SDK 3.2 for WML simulator with Mitsubishi T250 skin

Many other devices are supported but have not yet been tested with the .NET Mobile Web SDK. You will notice that I've used an untested skin with the Phone.com WAP simulator in this article.

Summary

In this article, we’ve demonstrated the capabilities of the .NET Mobile Web SDK and how .NET Mobile Web SDK supports various devices. We’ve also seen a sample used to generate Mobile Applications with .NET Mobile Web SDK. For further information about the .NET Mobile Web SDK check out the related links that I’ve included.

Until next time, Happy Programming!

Related Links

Download: .NET Framework SDK (Beta 1)
Download: .NET Mobile Web SDK (Beta 1)
Download: .NET Documentation
Resource: .NET Development Center @ Microsoft