APPA Mundi

Windows Phone Sessions at MIX Announced

Peter Foot — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:17:00 GMT

The covers have been lifted off of the twelve sessions at MIX in the Windows Phone track. Following on from yesterdays announcements that Windows Phone 7 development consists of Silverlight and XNA, these session descriptions tell more about the entire development experience including the Marketplace:-

http://live.visitmix.com/Sessions#/tags/WindowsPhone

New Windows Mobile 6.5.3 DTK

Peter Foot — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:33:00 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c0213f68-2e01-4e5c-a8b2-35e081dcf1ca&displaylang=en

This Developer Tool Kit acts as an add-on to the Windows Mobile 6 SDK. It adds in Windows Mobile 6.5 and 6.5.3 samples, APIs and Emulators. The download link includes separate Professional and Standard Edition packages along with a number of localised emulator images.

Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Developer Tool Kit

Pete Vickers — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:05:00 GMT

The Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Developer Tool Kit has been released, and is available at the Microsoft Download Center

The Windows Mobile 6.5.3 DTK provides documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images, and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.5 and 6.5.3.

It comes packed with some pretty cool new features you can add to your application like a Bing Map Control, Widget VS Integration, Bubble Tiles, Auto Dialog Layout, and more.

Windows Phone 7 Series announced.

Pete Vickers — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:52:00 GMT

Just in case you missed it, and don't read my colleagues' blogs Microsoft anounced the new Windows Phone 7 Series at MWC in Barcelona.

You can see lots of videos with full details and demos here

No announcement about development environments, but as Peter Foot points out in his blog entry, the full story should unfold at MIX10

Exciting times!

Windows Phone 7 Series Announced

Andy Wigley — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:27:00 GMT

Yesterday, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announced their new mobile phone strategy and platform.

As Peter Foot has already reported in his blog (http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/blogs/peterfoot/archive/2010/02/15/developing-for-windows-phone-7.aspx), the dev story will not be revealed until MIX 2010, which is next month: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wmdev/archive/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-going-big-for-developers-at-mix10.aspx .

What we can see from the news conference and other postings on the web such as http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsphone/videoGallery.aspx is that Microsoft has really made a clean break from the earlier generations of Windows Mobile phones. The OS is called 'Windows Phone OS 7' but no details have been released yet on how closely it resembles its predecessors and what it will be like as a platform for app development.

How all this will affect developers is yet to be explained, but clearly life is going to be exciting for those of us working in this space!

Bluetooth changes in Windows 7

Peter Foot — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:09:00 GMT

Since Bluetooth APIs were introduced into Windows (we are talking about the desktop OS here, not Windows CE / Windows Mobile / Windows Phone) there have been numerous updates and changes. Confusingly not all of these have been in Major updates or service packs but some changes are implemented in OEM only packages. We have been working on the 32feet.NET library to ensure we continue to support the new features in the Microsoft Bluetooth stack. There are a number of useful resources which describe the changes. Firstly Alan McFarlane, who has done a lot of really great work on the 32feet.NET library, has put together a detailed description of the changes in Windows 7 including a dive into the native header files. As you'll see one of the main area of changes is the support for Bluetooth 2.1 which introduces new authentication methods. You should read Alan's full article.

I also noticed that Microsoft have published a new FAQ on Bluetooth support in Windows. Interestingly this covers the entire history of Bluetooth on desktop Windows showing which releases implemented which Bluetooth versions. It goes into some depth on developing drivers for Bluetooth devices too - for example if you implement the Device ID profile you are able to integrate into the new Device Stage UI in Windows 7. The Download is a Microsoft Word 2007 document:-

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Bth_FAQ.docx

Developing for Windows Phone 7

Peter Foot — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:05:00 GMT

I've already had a couple of questions about how to develop applications for Windows Phone 7. At the moment the "developer story" has not been announced but over on the Windows Mobile Developer Blog they have announced that MIX10 will be where they discuss how to develop for Windows Phone 7:-

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wmdev/archive/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-going-big-for-developers-at-mix10.aspx

Attendees will have access to a dedicated Windows Phone track (currently the 12 sessions are unnamed) and access to the Windows Phone 7 developer tools:-

http://live.visitmix.com/News/Exclusive-Windows-Phone-7-Series-Offer-for-MIX10-Attendees-WP7

Error handling in .Net Compact Framework - And more

Pete Vickers — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:35:00 GMT

Error handling and tracing has always been a challenge, and many attempts have been made to automate error handling. I have tried various methods in the past, including writing my own error handler, that bolted in after the application had been written.

Being an MVP, we tend to get offers to try products. A couple of months ago, I got just such and invitation from EurekaLog. Being an old cynic, I originally thought 'another product that promises, but fails to deliver' - but I was wrong (don't tell my wife I admitted to being wrong). I downloaded the demo, and bolted it into a Windows forms application, and sure enough, it caught and reported my error. So I decided to take a look at the documentation. You can email yourself errors from your application. The email contains the error log containing a trace of your application, leading to the error, and optionally a screen shot of what was happening at the time. You can get it to fill in bug reports on Firebugs and Biaxial. Best of all it does this 'without code changes'. This is not strictly true, it adds 1 line to your application - and this it will do automatically. The product also contains a 'log file analyzer'. In addition to seeing your call stack, you can see which processes were running on the system, which modules were loaded, user details, system details and much more. ASP.Net application are also supported.

Now, for the best bit, for mobile developers - we have not been forgotten! .Net CF is supported, including emailing of logs. Obviously due to the limitations of the compact framework, you don't get as much as in the full framework, but it works really well. To test it out, I knocked up a small program to create an error part way through running. The sample shown is in VB, but C# (and Delphi) are also supported. The code was:-

I then deployed the application to the emulator.

Click on the 'Test My Error' button to generate the error, and EurekaLog kicks in for you.

Click on the 'View error report' to get more details....

Click on 'Send Error report', and the application opens a mail message, and adds your error log to it automatically. All your user has to do is send the email (I have a request in to the developer to make this happen automatically, as in the desktop version).

That is all there is to it. The code for EurekaLog is added automatically to your 'Sub Main' (or Sub Main is created if you don't have one!). The code added to your program is:-

EurekaLogSystem.ExceptionHandler.Activate()

For mobile developers, whose applications are generally remote, this is a great addition to our armory. Using EurekaLog along with the excellent MobiControl allows you to get details of your error, fix it, and deploy it remotely, all without leaving the comfort of your office chair.

I heartily recommend this tool as it addresses a real world problem, and solves it in an unobtrusive way. The support from the developers is excellent, and for a relatively small outlay, you get a product that will support Windows Forms applications, ASP.Net AND .Net Compact framework.

There is a 30 day trial you can download here, and the price of the full product is very reasonable. Give it a try - it may save your bacon!

SQL Search

Pete Vickers — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:38:00 GMT

I am a great fan of Redgate tools for both SQL Server and .Net development.

They write superb tools for developers - I find SQL Toolbelt invaluable for working with SQL Server.

The have just produced a new FREE tool call SQL Search which does exactly what it does on the tin.

It integrates on your toolbar on SQL Server Management Studio, and allows you to quickly search your database(s). You can find all fragments of a string for example, or assess the impact of changes. You can search for a field name, and it will tell you in which tables, store procedures, triggers the field occurs, and then quickly navigate to them. It is very fast in operation, after it has initially indexed your databases.

It is a great addition to their range of excellent SQL Server tools. I was involved in the 'beta', and since loading it, I have probably used it every day and would now be lost without it.

Only bad news for us mobile developers, SQL Server CE is not currently supported.

Did I mention it was FREE?

Win a trip to PDC in Los Angeles

Peter Foot — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:42:49 GMT

Microsoft New Zealand are running a competition to win a trip to the next Microsoft PDC event in Los Angeles. It is open to all developers living in New Zealand. All you need to do to enter is help them out with questionnaire:-

“Targeted towards NZ developers, we want to get a better understanding and better cater our resources, events and training in the future. The survey is from now until the end of April. One lucky NZ developer will win an all expenses paid trip to the next PDC in LA.”

Click here to complete the survey

Application and File Icons with Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:16:12 GMT

There are a number of scenarios in which you want to retrieve the icon associated with a particular executable or other file type. One example is when building a file browser, you might also want to extract the icon associated with your application or another. The full .NET framework contains Icon.ExtractAssociatedIcon() for this very purpose. Mobile In The Hand includes a helper function to achieve the same result from the Compact Framework. Simply use the following code:-

 Icon i = IconHelper.ExtractAssociatedIcon(filePath);
 

filePath is the full path to any file. The icon will either be the icon associated with a particular file type or in the case of executables will be the embedded application icon (or a generic application icon if not present). The result is a regular System.Drawing.Icon type which you can draw using the Graphics class normally.

The documentation for the IconHelper class is available in the online library. For more information about Mobile In The Hand see the product page.

Interesting Windows Phone News for MIX10

Peter Foot — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:35:00 GMT

There have been rumours floating around all over the web about Windows Phone future versions. Microsoft have remained tight lipped allowing various tech sites to come up with all sorts of fanciful stories. However a tantalising news snippet has appeared on Microsoft's website for MIX10 the conference for designers and developers coming up in March in Las Vegas:-

http://live.visitmix.com/News/Windows-Phone-at-MIX10

It will definitely be worth keeping an eye on this event, hopefully more information will be released as the sessions and schedule are firmed up:-

http://live.visitmix.com/Sessions#/tags/WindowsPhone

New Development Certificates

Peter Foot — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:25:00 GMT

Microsoft have now released some replacement developer certificates for Windows Mobile. See this post for details and a download link:-

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wmdev/archive/2010/01/12/new-windows-mobile-developer-certificates.aspx

Expired Development Certificates

Peter Foot — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:52:00 GMT

As some of you may have noticed the development certificates which are shipped with the Windows Mobile 6 SDK all expired on 31st December 2009. There have been no updates provided yet so the only official workaround is to fiddle with the date on your development PC and devices to set it before 31/12/2009. A ray of hope has been cast by moderator "Chunsheng Tang" on the MSDN forums:-

"FYI. The issue will be addressed in the next SDK update in the near furture. Besides the workarounds mentioned in this thread, you can also temporarily change the date of the development PC and the devices backward (make sure it's before 12/31/2009)."

Replacement for Type.GUID

Peter Foot — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:12:00 GMT

A question came up on the newsgroups of how to get the Guid assigned to a Type via a GuidAttribute. Typically this will be defined when creating a manged Class/Interface to match a COM exposed CoClass/Interface. The desktop exposes a GUID property of the Type class. The workaround for the Compact Framework is fairly straight-forward and for convenience I have posted an amendment to my solution below in the form of an Extension method. This means that from your code you can achieve the desired result with Type.GetGUID() – which is as near as can be to the desktop syntax:-

/// <summary>
/// Extension method to get the GUID associated with the Type.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="t">the Type.</param>
/// <returns>The GUID associated with the Type.</returns>
public static Guid GetGUID(this Type t)
{
    Guid typeGuid = Guid.Empty;
    object[] attributes = t.GetCustomAttributes(false);
    foreach (object o in attributes)
    {
        if (o is GuidAttribute)
        {
            //has GuidAttribute - get the value
            GuidAttribute ga = (GuidAttribute)o;
            typeGuid = new Guid(ga.Value);
        }
    }
 
    return typeGuid;
}

I have switched to using Live Writer for blog posts (no idea why I didn’t try it before) and it has much better support for code formatting especially with the “Paste as VS Code” plug-in.

Happy New Year

Peter Foot — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:03:00 GMT

My last post of 2009 is just a quick message to send all the readers of this blog best wishes for 2010 and to thank you for your support this year. 2009 was a very busy year and not just on the work front as this year I got married and moved half way across the world with my amazing wife. In hind-sight trying to organise both at the same time was very ambitious but it all worked out great and we've had some wonderful adventures! I can only hope that 2010 will be as exciting and rewarding.

Email Configuration with Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:48:00 GMT

One of the new items introduced in version 4.0 is a wrapper for the Email configuration provider. This provides a one-stop-shop to access and modify email account settings. This is used for all email account types except for Exchange synchronisation. Each account is identified by a unique Guid so to work with account settings you'll need to know this. This is exposed through a property of the EmailAccount object, for example the following code loops through all available EmailAccounts for which there is a unique ID (excludes the Exchange account).

foreach (EmailAccount ea in os.EmailAccounts)

{

if (ea.Properties[AccountProperty.UniqueStoreID] != null)

The UniqueStoreID is a Guid property and so can be cast to the Guid type (the Properties collection returns items of type object because it caters for all different types of properties).

Guid g = (Guid)ea.Properties[AccountProperty.UniqueStoreID];

The EmailAccountConfiguration class is located in InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Configuration.dll in the InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Configuration.Providers namespace. A new instance is created by passing the Guid into the constructor:-

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Configuration.Providers.EmailAccountConfiguration eac = new InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Configuration.Providers.EmailAccountConfiguration(g);

Once created you have access to a number of properties which describe the account, you can change any of these and push your changes by calling the Update() method. Properties available include the incoming and outgoing servers, the ServiceType - either "POP3" or "IMAP4", DownloadDays (number of past days to download) and many more. The documentation for the class is available in the online library. For more information about Mobile In The Hand see the product page.

Internet Connection Sharing with Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:47:00 GMT

In Mobile In The Hand 4.0 all the Windows Mobile networking features are found in the InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Net assembly. This contains support for Connection Manager, Internet Sharing and Wireless Manager. This post will look at the Internet Sharing classes. Internet Sharing was introduced in Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU 3 but is generally associated with Windows Mobile 6. You can share an internet connection over a USB connection or over Bluetooth using the PAN (Personal Area Network) profile. To enable or disable a sharing session from your code you need only call a single method which looks like this:-

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Net.InternetSharing.Enable(InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Net.SharingConnection.Bluetooth,"O2")

The first argument is a member of the SharingConnection enumeration which contains values for Bluetooth and Usb. The second argument is the name of the internet connection to use - this is the name of the GPRS connection which will be dialled. A simple Disable method exists to shut down the sharing connection:-

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Net.InternetSharing.Disable()

You must remember to disable the connection once you have finished using it.

A full online library of class documentation for all this and more is available. For more information about Mobile In The Hand see the product page.

More on "My" Functionality in Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:44:00 GMT

In the last post on "My" functionality I showed you how to get started adding the My Extensions to your project. In this post I have assembled a detailed tree of all the "My" functionality added in Mobile In The Hand 4.0.

My
- Application
  - Culture
  - Info
    - AssemblyName
    - CompanyName
    - Copyright
    - Description
    - DirectoryPath
    - ProductName
    - Title
    - Trademark
    - Version
  - UICulture
- Computer
  - Audio
    - Play()
    - PlaySystemSound()
    - Stop()
  - Clipboard
    - Clear()
    - GetData()
    - GetDataObject()
    - GetImage()
    - GetText()
    - SetData()
    - SetDataObject()
    - SetImage()
    - SetText()
  - Clock
    - GmtTime
    - LocalTime
    - TickCount
  - FileSystem
    - CombinePath()
    - CopyDirectory()
    - CopyFile()
    - CreateDirectory()
    - DeleteDirectory()
    - DeleteFile()
    - Drives
    - FileExists()
    - GetDirectories()
    - GetDirectoryInfo()
    - GetDriveInfo()
    - GetFileInfo()
    - GetFiles()
    - GetName()
    - GetParentPath()
    - GetTempFileName()
    - MoveDirectory()
    - MoveFile()
    - OpenTextFileReader()
    - OpenTextFileWriter()
    - ReadAllBytes()
    - ReadAllText()
    - RenameDirectory()
    - RenameFile()
    - SpecialDirectories
      - CurrentUserApplicationData
      - MyDocuments
      - ProgramFiles
      - Programs
      - Temp
    - WriteAllBytes()
    - WriteAllText()
  - Info
    - AvailablePhysicalMemory
    - AvailableVirtualMemory
    - InstalledUICulture
    - OSPlatform
    - OSVersion
    - TotalPhysicalMemory
    - TotalVirtualMemory
  - Keyboard
    - SendKeys()
  - Name
  - Ports
    - OpenSerialPort()
    - SerialPortNames
  - Registry
    - ClassesRoot
    - CurrentUser
    - GetValue()
    - LocalMachine
    - SetValue()
  - Screen
- User
  - Name

A full online library of class documentation for all this and more is available. For more information about Mobile In The Hand see the product page.

Vibration and Profiles with Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:58:00 GMT

One of the goals of the Mobile In The Hand library has always been to provide a consistent managed API regardless of which specific flavour of Windows Mobile device you are using. One example of this is using the Vibration feature used to alert the user. The APIs are completely different and so we have provided a simple managed API composing of just two static methods:-

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Forms.Vibrate.Play();

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Forms.Vibrate.Stop();

You generally won't want to vibrate the device for very long because it would be both annoying, and a battery drain. To avoid holding up your UI thread you can call the methods on a separate thread. Just remember you must call Stop() to turn off the vibration.

Another example of functionality which is implemented differently between touchscreen and non-touchscreen devices are Profiles. Standard Edition devices can feature a number of profiles for different scenarios, touch screen devices have just three - On, Vibrate only and Off. To retrieve all of the available profiles use the following code:-

foreach(string profile in InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Forms.MobileDevice.Profiles)

{

MessageBox.Show(profile);

}

You can set the device profile using a call to SetProfile:-

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Forms.MobileDevice.SetProfile("Vibrate");

The name of the currently selected profile is available from the CurrentProfile property:-

MessageBox.Show(InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Forms.MobileDevice.CurrentProfile);

A full online library of class documentation for all this and more is available. For more information about Mobile In The Hand see the product page.

Using Bluetooth Headsets with Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:31:00 GMT

A commonly requested feature is the ability to switch audio to play through a Bluetooth headset device. Mobile In The Hand 4.0 brings this functionality to .NET Compact Framework developers allowing you to play any device audio through a paired headset device. It also includes classes to playback sounds too.

The AudioGateway sample application which ships with the library contains the functionality to playback a sound file and toggle between the device speaker and a headset. The code to perform the switch is incredibly simple:-

private BluetoothAudioGateway bag = new BluetoothAudioGateway();

The BluetoothAudioGateway exists in the InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Media namespace. A CheckBox control toggles the output using the following code:-

private void chkGateway_CheckStateChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (chkGateway.Checked)

{

bag.OpenAudio();

}

else

{

bag.CloseAudio();

}

OpenAudio opens the connection to the headset and sends audio output to it. CloseAudio closes the connection and returns output to the built in speaker. The SoundPlayer class is used to play back a sound file:-

InTheHand.Media. SoundPlayer sp = new InTheHand.Media.SoundPlayer(txtFilename.Text);

sp.Play();

A full online library of class documentation for all this and more is available. For more information about Mobile In The Hand see the product page.

Windows Mobile Provisioning using Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:53:00 GMT

In the last post we saw the new My Extensions template which adds access to new Visual Basic features. In this post we will look at another new item introduced with Mobile In The Hand 4.0 - Provisioning XML. Visual Studio has a rich XML Editor built in, Windows Mobile uses provisioning XML documents for everything from adding a browser favourite through to configuring a new GPRS network. The new template allows you to quickly create an empty Provisioning XML document and includes the schema to ensure your document is valid. Let Visual Studio's Intellisense help you quickly build a provisioning document.

As with the Visual Basic example you start with an existing device project, in this case it can be either C# or Visual Basic. Select Add New Item and choose Provisioning XML from the list:-

In this example I have called the file AddFavourite.xml (no prizes for guessing what task we will be performing). The document is created with a skeleton provisioning document. Notice the namespace is provided which links to the schema we installed for you.

You can now add the required code between the wap-provisioningdoc tags. As you start to type the IntelliSense will suggest valid elements for you based on the schema:-

This makes it very easy to quickly build up a complete document:-

You can process a configuration document like this using the ConfigurationManager class. By setting the document as an embedded resource you can use the following code to load it and pass it to the ConfigurationManager:-

Dim xd As New System.Xml.XmlDocument

xd.Load(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream("VisualBasicDeviceProject.AddFavourite.xml"))

InTheHand.WindowsMobile.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ProcessConfiguration(xd, False)

After running this code you can check your Internet Explorer Mobile favourites:-

For more information about the library see the product page.

New "My" Functionality in Mobile In The Hand 4.0

Peter Foot — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:38:00 GMT

This blog post will walk through the process of adding the additional "My" functionality added in InTheHand.VisualBasic. To start off, open Visual Studio 2008 and create a new Visual Basic device project (or open an existing one). At this point you'll end up with a solution window which looks a bit like this. Note the inspired project name in this example:-

The next step is to right-click the project and select Add > New Item... from the menu:-

This will bring up the Add New Item window from which you should see MyExtensions among the list. Select this (you can change the default name if required) and click Add.

The new code file is added to the project. You don't need to edit this and you won't be interacting with it directly from your code. Your solution window will now look like this:-

You can now get on with building your application. Any time you start to type My you'll see a much longer list of options:-

Application, Computer and User are new items added by this library and provide additional functionality, all remaining a direct subset of the desktop experience. For example I added a button and in the Click handler added this simple code snippet:-

MessageBox.Show(

My.Application.Info.ProductName)

On running the code the Product Name is retrieved from the assembly information:-

In a future post I'll run through the various items available through the "My" syntax. For more information about the library see the product page.

Mobile In The Hand 4.0 Released

Peter Foot — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:29:00 GMT

Today we put the final touches to Mobile In The Hand 4.0 and have released this latest version of the suite. This is a major reworking of the code and the library is now broken into 10 separate dlls so you only need to deploy the specific functionality you require in a project. We have also added some additional functionality alongside the code libraries themselves to add "My" keyword functionality for Visual Basic users and make it easier to incorporate and edit provisioning XML documents. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a number of blog articles to highlight new features and elaborate on some of the less visible features.

Full details of the library are available on the product page.

Windows Mobile 6.5 Tab Control

Peter Foot — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:09:00 GMT

If you've seen screenshots or played with the emulators then you'll know that a few (sadly not all) of the controls have been skinned with a new look. Specifically scrollbars and tab controls have a new look and one that can be customised using themes. These are now drawn using bitmaps so a theme can change the look and feel of the tab controls, message boxes and scrollbars beyond just changing the colours. If you run a .NETCF application on WM6.5 you'll find that the Tab Control is painted in the "old" way and does not take on the same appearance. I had a dig around and found that this was due to slightly different window styles applied to the native control. I put some code together to change the styles and lo and behold it worked (some styles can only be set when you create a window and cannot be later modified). The attached file is a source listing in C# which will apply this change to a tab control. Since this workaround is not documented it may break or change the behaviour in future updates so realise that this is provided as-is.

It is a shame that only a handful of controls have been updated, this actually makes some screens look odd because they have a mixture of curvy controls and old fashioned buttons etc - it would have been nicer to see a consistent approach across all the standard controls and ideally one where existing .NETCF code would get the benefit of any improvements without having to hack!