I’ve just inherited a new windows ce 6 C# project. I’d like to use something other than the standard built in button/label controls. I found a handful of 3rd party libraries, but none of them seem appropriate for the industrial look I’m going for.
My question is this: Is it possible to use standard windows forms .NET controls in windows CE with the CF framework? If these controls only use classes that weren’t stripped out of CF, would the controls be portable to this platform? Or am I stuck using the controls that specifically say they support CE?
Unless you have the source code of those 3rd party controls and that they do not use any class or method not available in .NetCF, I would say that you are stuck using the controls that specifically say they support CE.
I can give you two reasons for this (there might be many more):
-If you do not have the source code you are out of luck, since .net assemblies generated for the full framework will not work on .NetCF. The other direction does work by the way, assemblies generated for .netcf will work in the full framework if all the dependences are available and p/invoke is not used.
-Most of the GUI controls for WinCE that I know, rely on P/Invoke for many of their features, and the libraries where each function is located in WinCE are almost never the same as in the desktop version of Windows.
Additionally, I would recommend you to take a look on Resco MobileForms Toolkit. I have used them in the past with good results.