One of the most commonly asked questions at conferences and events is about detecting when a device receives and looses network connectivity. For a long time, the answers available for providing a generic solution to detecting changes in network connectivity were not that good. Finally, Windows Mobile 5.0, provides a good solution with the new State and Notifications Broker.
The Windows Mobile 5.0 State and Notifications Broker provides a generic solution to detecting changes in device state including such things as changes in network connectivity, start and end of a phone call, the start of Media Player playing a song, device being plugged into and unplugged from power, changes in battery state, and a whole lot more.
My latest column on MSDN is part 1 of a 2 part discussion of the Windows Mobile 5.0 State and Notifications Broker. This month's column covers the architecture of the State and Notifications Broker, how to retrieve state values and the basics of receiving notification of state changes. Since both C++ and .NET Compact Framework are both widely used in Windows Mobile solutions, the column covers the usage from both.
Part 2 of the column is still in the works. It covers some of the more advanced notifications scenarios including using separate notification threads, automatically starting applications based on a state change, and how to extend the State and Notifications Broker to provide your own application-specific notifications. Part 2 should be up on the Microsoft Partner Program site in a couple of weeks and then on MSDN a few weeks after that.
In my opinion, the State and Notifications Broker is one of the most significant enhancements to the Windows Mobile platform. If you do any Windows Mobile application development, you'll definitely want to explore and understand the State and Notifications Broker. It's one of those platform enhancements that opens up whole new possibilities in application development.
Posted
Feb 18 2006, 09:06 AM
by
jim-wilson