Last week we quietly launched a fantastic new promotion for our Padarn Web Server product:

Padarn is a lightweight, single-purpose web server that supports a growing subset of ASP.NET. It is written entirely in C# and can be used as stand-alone web server, or embedded into an existing application. Padarn can be used to create elegant, data-driven web sites using SQL Server Compact Edition, or interface with a whole myriad of hardware peripherals, such as web cams, sensors, controllers, etc.

If you would like more information on Padarn, please send an email to padarn@opennetcf.com.

If you open the SDF Public Source solution that ships with Smart Device Framework 2.3 and then build the source, you'll come across the following error:

Friend access was granted to 'OpenNETCF,PublicKey=...', but the output assembly is 
named 'OpenNETCF, Version=2.3.0.21, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. Try 
adding a reference to 'OpenNETCF,PublicKey=...' or changing the output assembly name 
to match.

(Note that I've replaced the actual public key with ellipses in the above. You will see an extraordinarily long hexadecimal number in your errors list in Visual Studio.)

The easiest way to remedy this is through a quick search & replace. Hit Ctrl-H to bring up the Find & Replace window. In the Find what text box, enter the following:

,PublicKey=00240000048000009400000006020000002400005253413100040000010001002beeba3
bfe7c548e085cffb8c2b6fd61ddd02b06d70864bb7de8bb22473edf5ab4b2196ff98e232c3e87f11fd
7986b743d5d3fdd6ecaf624bacfed116e1cefa50cd652365371d0ebd2702eb1084fed46df79ac0f59f4
d66c547918613d56dcf106843f3458516d3cd26f057a346d9f645fc24a7410a095c754835916e13cdbe

Make sure the Replace with text box is empty and the Look in combobox is showing Entire Solution. Click the Replace All button. When the search & replace has completed, build the solution again and it will succeed.

If you wish to do this manually (you may only want to use 1 or 2 of the 16 projects), you will need to modify the AssemblyInfo.cs file for the following projects:

• OpenNETCF
• OpenNETCF.Configuration
• OpenNETCF.Net
• OpenNETCF.Windows.Forms

Today, we released Smart Device Framework 2.3. This is the long awaited release of the Smart Device Framework for Visual Studio 2008.

It's been a painful path to get to this point, what with contending with frustrating bugs in Visual Studio 2008 forms designer and all, but we finally got there. Thanks for you patience and understanding.

Along with the new version is a new naming convention. We've dropped the name Smart Device Framework Extensions for Visual Studio with its Standard and Premium editions. Instead, say hello to Smart Device Framework Standard Edition and Professional Edition. Be sure to check out the new feature matrix to find out how each edition differs.

We've got some pretty cool stuff features in the libraries, notably OpenNETCF.Core which contains a dozen or so extension methods for common scenarios, as well as OpenNETCF.Net.Mail, for sending mail via SMTP directly from the device -- this eliminates the need to configure a mail account on the device.

When you reference an assembly compiled against .NET Compact Framework 2.0 in a project targeting .NET Compact Framework, it's quite likely you will receive a number of ResolveAssemblyReferences warnings, similar to this:

ResolveAssemblyReferences:
  Consider app.config remapping of assembly "System.Windows.Forms, Culture=neutral, 
  PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" from Version "2.0.0.0" [] to 
  Version "3.5.0.0" [C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework\v3.5\
  WindowsCE\System.Windows.Forms.dll] to solve conflict and get rid of warning.

This warning occurs when the compiler has loaded the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 base class libraries (BCLs) and the referenced assembly, but the metadata contained in the referenced assembly references the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 BCLs.

To remove the warnings you can add an App.Config to your project and redirect the assembly bindings from the 2.0 versions to the 3.5 equivalents. Below is an example of the XML required in the App.Config to redirect the 2.0 version of System.dll to the 3.5 version.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <runtime>
    <assemblybinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <dependentassembly>
        <assemblyidentity name="System" culture="neutral" publickeytoken="969db8053d3322ac" />
        <bindingredirect  newVersion="3.5.0.0" oldVersion="2.0.0.0" />
      </dependentassembly>
    </assemblybinding>
  </runtime>
</configuration>

You will need to add a dependentassembly element for each of the ResolveAssemblyReferences warnings that you receive.

Make sure the Build Action property of the App.Config is set to Content and the Copy To Output Directory property is set to Only if newer. Then, rebuild your solution and the warnings should not appear.

There's been a lot of internal discussion today on how to leverage C# 3.0 features without requiring .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Mark has the low down on using extension methods with a little compiler misdirection hack.

The discussions kicked off because I discovered that you can use lambda expressions with .NET Compact Framework 2.0 projects in Visual Studio 2008. I even twittered about it yesterday. (Note: it didn't take me too long to realize it's not a bug, but due to Visual Studio 2008 using the C# 3.0 compiler.) Code like the following just works -- no hacks required:

delegate double PowerOf(double x, double y);

static void Main() 
{
    PowerOf pwr = (x, y) => Math.Pow(x, y);
    double result = pwr(2, 3);
}

If you are using Visual Studio 2008 and still need to target .NET Compact Framework 2.0, the little things like this go a long way to creating and maintaining reusable code.

Over the last few months we've been working hard to attain the Gold Level partner status in the Microsoft Partner Program and I'm extremely pleased to say that we've done it! For our customers, this is an assurance that by choosing to work with OpenNETCF products and our consultants, you really are choosing a high calibre company.

Massive amounts of credit for Mark for driving this internally. Good job!

The next Smart Device Development Chat will take place on MSDN at 10am PST on Wednesday, July 16.

Please join experts from the Windows Mobile, Windows CE, SQL Server CE and .NET Compact Framework communities in a chat around application development for smart devices. These chats are a great opportunity to have your questions answered by experts from around the world.

Add to Calendar

If you cannot attend the MSDN Chat, there is a permanent chat room available on the web and via IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net/mobiledev). Engage with your peers online today!

I got an email last week asking about how to disable a particular network connection under Vista. The specific scenario, how to disable an active 3G connection, is not something I'm going to cover, but what I present below could be used as basis for that scenario.

With Vista, Microsoft introduced two new methods to the Win32_NetworkAdapter class under WMI: Enable and Disable. Before can call either of those methods, we need to know how to enumerate the network connections.

The .NET Framework SDK provides a helpful utility called mgmtclassgen.exe, which can be used to create .NET-friendly wrappers of the WMI classes. Open up a Visual Studio command prompt and enter the following:

mgmtclassgen Win32_NetworkAdapter -p NetworkAdapter.cs

This will generate a file called NetworkAdapter.cs which will contain a C# representation of the WMI Win32_NetworkAdapter class. You can add this source code file to your C# project and then access all the properties without too much extra effort.

To filter and disable the specific adapters, you do something like this:

SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery("Win32_NetworkAdapter", "NetConnectionStatus=2");
ManagementObjectSearcher search = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
foreach(ManagementObject result in search.Get())
{
    NetworkAdapter adapter = new NetworkAdapter(result);

    // Identify the adapter you wish to disable here. 
    // In particular, check the AdapterType and 
    // Description properties.

    // Here, we're selecting the LAN adapters.
    if (adapter.AdapterType.Equals("Ethernet 802.3")) 
    {
        adapter.Disable();
    }
}

Don't forget to add a reference to System.Management.dll!

A little later than I intended, but here is the transcript to Smart Device Development chat from May 13, 2008: Read it here

I was browsing around over lunch when I came across an upcoming title from Wrox that I thought might be interesting to someone out there.

The book, being writing by Samuel Phung of ICOP, is titled Professional Microsoft Embedded CE 6.0. A book like this is sorely needed as most of the knowledge exists primarily in the embedded newsgroup or scattered around in a handful of blogs.

The 20-chapter book will cover everything from creating an image to development in C# and VB.NET, as well as C++ and is scheduled to be released in November. Wrox have made a number of chapters available through their Wrox First subscription service.