Mobile Web Development in ASP.NET - Part 1

Introduction


The Microsoft® Mobile Internet Toolkit (MIT) provides the tools for creating new applications that target mobile devices. This toolkit allows developers to create a mobile application that will be adapted to the display of multiple mobile devices: Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) such as the Pocket PC, Web-enabled cell phones, pagers, etc.

MMIT


The ASP.NET mobile forms and controls are formerly known as the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit (MMIT). They extend the power of the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET to build mobile Web applications by enabling ASP.NET to deliver markup to a wide variety of mobile devices. It contains server-side technology that enables ASP.NET to deliver content to a wide variety of mobile devices.

The .NET Framework version 1.1 provides support for mobile device development with ASP.NET mobile controls, support for Internet Protocol version 6, and ADO.NET classes for native communication with Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) and Oracle databases. It also enables the use of code access security to further lock down and isolate ASP.NET applications.

ASP.NET mobile controls consist of a set of ASP.NET server controls and device adapters that can intelligently render your application. Knowledge of ASP.NET and Web Forms helps you use mobile controls to build mobile Web applications. You can build mobile Web applications using the ASP.NET Mobile Designer in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET or a text editor, and any programming language supported by the common language runtime. The .NET Framework and the ASP.NET mobile controls together form a powerful, flexible, and extensible platform for developing and deploying mobile Web applications.

Testing the Mobile Application using Emulators


The manufacturers of most mobile devices provide emulators that simulate the operation of their hardware and browsers. Emulator software enables you to view your ASP.NET mobile Web Forms application as it might appear on the manufacturers' hardware devices.

To install an emulator as the Visual Studio application browser
1. Install and test the mobile device emulator on your development computer. See the emulator's documentation for instructions.
2. From the File menu, select Browse With. Visual Studio displays the Browse With dialog box.
3. Click the Add button to display the Add Program dialog box.
4. In the Program name field, enter the name of the emulator software's executable program file. Alternatively, select the Browse button to browse to the file's location.
5. If the emulator supports command-line arguments, supply them in the Program name field. For example, you can specify the starting URL of the application, select a "skin" for the browser, or supply other start-up information that your browser might use. For more information about skins and specific start-up information, see your emulator's documentation.
a. Use the %URL variable to specify where the application's start page should be substituted on the command line. This variable name is case sensitive.
b. If supported, specify a skin name. Testing with multiple skins requires multiple instances of the emulator in the browser list.
c. Supply any other arguments the emulator needs. See your emulator's documentation for details.
6. In the Add Program dialog box's Friendly name field, type the name of the browser as you would like it to appear in Visual Studio.
7. Click OK to close the Add Program dialog box.
8. In the Browse With dialog box, select the emulator from the list of browsers, and click the Set as Default button. Click Close to close the Browse With dialog box.
Note After you add an emulator to the list of browsers, you cannot modify its settings. You must delete it and add it again with the new settings.
9. In the Solution Explorer, click on the name of the project file.
10. From the Project menu, select Properties. The Property Pages dialog box appears.
11. Click Configuration Properties.
12. In the list of configuration properties, select Debugging. The dialog box displays the debugging configuration properties in the right-hand box.
13. Set the Always use Internet Explorer property to False.

Openwave Simulator


Mobile Web applications developed in ASP.NET (using the ASP.NET mobile controls), can be tested with Openwave mobile browser simulators without leaving Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. This is done by configuring Visual Studio .NET to take advantage of the command-line arguments supported by the Openwave SDK 4.1.1 and Openwave SDK 6.1. (These Openwave SDKs are available for free from the Openwave Developer Web site.)

Openwave SDK 4.1.1 contains a simulator for Openwave mobile browser 4.1, which adheres to the WAP 1.1 standard and renders content in WML. SDK 6.1 contains Openwave mobile browser 6.1, which adheres to the WAP 2.0 standard and renders content in XHTML Mobile Profile and CSS. You can use either or both simulators, depending on your needs and the target devices for your market.

Summary


The first part explained the basic ideas on Mobile ASP.NET environment and tools; the next part will take you how to develop simple mobile applications in ASP.NET.


Regard


Prateek