UI Components for Windows Mobile Applications (.NET Compact Framework)

Question

Applications which run on mobile devices have special user interface requirements. I think Apple did a great job introducing innovative controls on the iPhone/iPod touch platfor

Answer 1

I picked up Mirabyte's Touch Controls v1.0 offering on the weekend.
[Version 1.5 has now been released]

The positive:

• When you get it working, it can look very nice and the kinetic scrolling is nice.
• You get swiping left and right to go back and forth.
• Questions asked on the forum seem to be answered pretty quickly.
• You can do alpha transparent images using their resource based image
• They seem to be doing a lot of work to improve things requested on the forums.

The negative

• The architecture used in the demo isn't what I consider best practice. (There's a single PageHandler class that handles everything from spinning up buttons, pages, menus etc that's split using partial classes across 5 files).
• There's no documentation or comments.
• The mechanisms for using transparent images are heavily reliant on strings, lack of dynamic ways of using your own images.
• It's a very list based UI you're likely to end up with which may or may not be to your taste.
• Few entry points for inherited controls, no source.

All in all, I'd recommend them, they give you a nice way of creating iPhone like UIs. Just be aware there are still teething problems and a lack of documentation.