Ok, so I'm really more of a rich client kind of guy. Give me some Windows Forms, heck...even give me some ASP.NET. But even I have to admit that it is damn cool to access data across the country or even across the world through the air from your mobile phone or pocket pc.
So I dive right into the SmartPhone 2003 SDK and start making another front end for a little project I'm doing on the side. I already have a Web Service setup that my Windows Forms Smart Client calls so I figured it would be easy to setup a cool little phone app to do a scaled down version of the same thing (more details coming later when I get closer to the beta stages of this little project). I design a couple screens, slap in a little code here and there, etc. Then, I go make a Web Reference so I can call my WebService and bring it all together. I run the app...waiting...waiting, no dice... The WebService Proxy returns back that it can't connect to my WebService. I try a couple things, again, no go!
I head over to MSDN to see if the SmartPhone emulator can even connect to the internet. I know at work when I worked on a PocketPC app that the plugged in PocketPC I was working with could tunnel through my machine out to the internet, so why can't the emulator? I hit up microsoft.public.smartphone.developer and after a bit of searching (the search was actually useful on a Microsoft site...man, times are a changin' ;)) and there it is...the answer. Just so I don't forget and maybe to also help out a few needy souls, here's the answer:
- Go to Settings, then Data Connections (Shortcut: L, 8, 9, 2).
- Change Work Connection to NetCard (Is that short for Network Card? Who knows? *shrug*).
- Click Done.
- Go into Internet Explorer (Shortcut: L, 4).
- Click Menu, then Options (Shortcut: R, 7).
- Uncheck Automatically detect settings.
- Change Select Network to Work.
- Click Done.
You can now browse around with IE and your WebService calls will now work as expected. Well, almost...remember that when adding your Web Reference for the name of the server, use the name of your local development machine, not "localhost". The emulator doesn't get that when you say localhost, you really mean your machine. When are computers going to start thinking like me? Sheesh!
I guess I understand why this ability to get out to the internet isn't turned on by default. Microsoft's big push for "Secure by Default" is great, don't get me wrong, but when it makes everything ten times harder, I really start having a problem with it. Why isn't there just a simple menu option on the emulator to just turn internet accessibility on/off? Something so we newbies don't have to scour Google almost as much time in a day as we actually write code?
Well anywho, it's figured out and another 22.38 minutes of my life has been wasted yet again, but I'm a happy camper once more...back to coding...
I started my own "personal space" over on MSN and will be posting all of my personal content there if anyone is interested. I'll probably be talking about planning our wedding, cool things happening around me (family related or not) and just non-tech oriented stuff I find from time to time.
This blog will be devoted just to tech-oriented stuff.
Previously, I had
talked about a really cool
control. Since I started using it though I've had some strange problems. One example is that after I loaded a control into the placeholder, the first time I posted back (say...for a LinkButton.Click Event) it wouldn't fire off the event. Every postback after that however, it would. Looking into it further, I noticed that the ID of all the controls in the placeholder were changing (from say ctrl7_MyButton to ctrl6_MyButton). I wasn't sure why this would be because my structure wasn't changing as far as I knew. I e-mailed Denis (the creator of the control) and he gave me a few things to try. One was to give the dynamically added UserControl (in the placeholder) an ID. This of course fixed the problem because now the ID wasn't changing so all postback events register properly. I really should've thought to do that before, but I'm thankful Denis knew what to do! ;)
A bud at work had a sad experience with a remote control plane. Sorry this isn't about .NET but it's entertaining! :)
Remote Control Plane Flight
It was a cool little plane...until it was obliterated on the pavement. The body was made of styrofoam. The wings and nose were plastic with 4 electric motors. I got the honor of launching the plane into her first and last flight. By the time it was all over, she went down head first into the pavement where the whole front end promptly exploded into a snow shower of foam and plastic with two engines completely in piece, wires hanging everywhere.
I tried really hard not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. The inner devil in me wanted to see it again. Next time we do this, we're getting it on video!