Book Review: .NET Compact Framework by Wei-Meng Lee

Review by Randy Buchner

.NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide, Wei-Meng Lee

Pros:

• Easy to read
• Short
• Lots of screen shots
• Three example apps

Cons:

• If you can program .NET already, you aren’t going to learn much new stuff here

Things I did learn from reading:

• I learned about the softkey
• Tips about using ActiveSync
• I learned about SQL Server CE, which I didn’t know existed
• .NET CE doesn’t have a Blue Tooth library, so the book has a nice example on how to do it using the com ports and COM InterOp services
• Drawback: this sample uses advanced methods the author doesn’t explain, namely, threading and delegates. Seems odd for a beginner book.
• Building CAB files for smart devices – I probably wouldn’t have discovered this very quickly on my own
• Deployment is different for smart devices, compared to regular apps. The book briefly explains some of this, such as different processors.

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