There’s been quite a bit of talk since the early CTP/Beta release of Visual Studio 2010 regarding the lack of support for Windows Mobile development. However, what most people fail to pick up on is that you can build Windows Mobile Widgets using either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010 (in fact you can probably do it using earlier versions of Visual Studio but I haven’t tried it). Interestingly an update to the Developing Widgets for Windows Mobile 6.5 MSDN article talks about coming support within Visual Studio for doing widget development:
Starting with Windows Mobile 6.5.3, developers can create Windows Mobile widgets using Visual Studio.
Given that you can already do most of the development within Visual Studio this would suggest better IDE support for perhaps debugging or packaging your widget…. This is pure speculation but if you want to get a bit of a heads up on widget development using Visual Studio, try the following posts.
- Windows Mobile Widget 101 – Getting Started (https://blogimages.builttoroam.com/nick/archive/2009/12/20/windows-mobile-widget-101-getting-started.aspx)
- Windows Mobile Widget 101 – Start Menu Icons (https://blogimages.builttoroam.com/nick/archive/2009/12/21/windows-mobile-widget-101-start-menu-icons.aspx)
- Windows Mobile Widget 101 – A Gadget Side Note (https://blogimages.builttoroam.com/nick/archive/2009/12/22/windows-mobile-widget-101-a-gadget-side-note.aspx)
- Windows Mobile Widget 101 – Handling Form Factors (https://blogimages.builttoroam.com/nick/archive/2009/12/22/windows-mobile-widget-101-handling-form-factors.aspx)
The version of Windows Mobile mentioned in the MSDN article and by Mary Jo in Is Microsoft (slowly) picking up the pace with Windows Mobile? must be a reference to some of the leaked builds that I’ve been piloting on my Touch Pro (see New Windows Mobile build with Zooming for the latest ROM I’m running).