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WindowsCE.[Essential Windows CE Application Programming].Jon Wiley & Son.zip

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<B>Essential Windows CE Application Programming</B>
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<I>(Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)</I>
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Author(s): Robert Burdick
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ISBN: 0471327476
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Publication Date: 03/01/99
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<H3><A NAME="Heading4"></A><FONT COLOR="#000077">Before We Move On &#133;</FONT></H3>
<P>Companies that hire my Windows CE consulting services quickly learn one very important thing about me: Like it or not, I tell it like it is. Being in the business of helping companies succeed in their development efforts requires nothing less.
</P>
<P>The hard part of this is that it often means telling people what they least want to hear. Pointing out serious problems with development plans or software designs can mean a lot of reengineering and taking large steps backward on a project. On the positive side, however, willingness to rethink products realistically is a key ingredient to getting a successful product to market.</P>
<P>So, before we turn our attention to the primary purpose of this book, writing Windows CE applications, I want to take a few pages to describe in general terms some of the biggest mistakes that are made which prevent successful Windows CE&#150;based products from getting to market.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B>The State of the Art</B></FONT></P>
<P>As this book goes to press, Windows CE finds itself in a somewhat precarious situation. The number of shipping Windows CE&#150;based product categories is small. The currently available ones include PC companion devices such as Handheld and Palm-size PCs. The Auto PC platform hopes to make it into all of our cars. Windows CE Jupiter class products fall somewhere between the Handheld PC and a laptop computer in features and complexity. And none of these are selling in droves.
</P>
<P>About two years ago I had the opportunity to discuss Windows CE at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Taipei with Frank Fite, director of the Windows CE Product Unit at Microsoft. Frank discussed the interest customers were expressing in Windows CE for products as diverse as slot machines, golf carts, and refrigerators. Today, Microsoft still discusses the queries it is receiving from companies interested in some day putting Windows CE in slot machines, golf carts, and refrigerators.</P>
<P>I do not make these statements to be glib. I make them to point out that to date, no one has come up with a product based on Windows CE that has generated a huge compulsion to buy in consumers.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B><I>What Happened to the Customer?</I></B></FONT></P>
<P>Each new version of the Windows operating system has been released to try and capture a new segment of the computer market. Windows 98 is intended to be the consumer desktop operating system of choice. Windows NT targets the business and software development communities.
</P>
<P>Windows CE was intended to take Microsoft into the brave new world of consumer electronics. Furthermore, many of the products based on Windows CE were meant to target consumers with very little experience with (or interest in using) computers.</P>
<P>This presents an enormous challenge for Microsoft. The majority of the products the company sells are software packages. And despite the fact that consumers use products like Microsoft Office for personal business, the majority of users of Microsoft software are paid between eight and twelve hours a day to use computers in their daily jobs.</P>
<P>Moving the Windows model to products aimed at the less computer- literate segment of the population has thus proved a very daunting task. And in my opinion, based on experience with numerous Windows CE software and hardware vendors, the reason for this difficulty is simple: Windows CE products today are far too complicated to use.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE="+1"><B><I>Build Benefits, Not Features</I></B></FONT></P>
<P>Many years ago, while working for Integrated System Corporation (ironically, a real-time operating system vendor and embedded systems integrator), the team I worked with was treated to an off-site meeting at our manager&#146;s beach house. As part of the work portion of the trip, he invited a speaker to discuss various topics with us, including how to sell a product.
</P>
<P>This speaker made a simple, yet for many companies, elusive point which has been forever indelibly imprinted in my brain. He said that no customer will care how high-tech a product is, how state-of-the-art the software behind it is, or how sexy the user interface is, if that customer does not get some benefit from using the product. In short, we won&#146;t care about the space-age metal used in a new line of ballpoint pen if it leaks ink all over our clothes.</P>
<P>Most Windows CE products suffer from such feature distraction. And nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in the area of Windows CE application user interface design. A trend is evolving where companies place more power and decision-making authority in the hands of user interface design teams than in the hands of the very engineering teams that must make products a reality. Time and again, features are insisted upon which, given the current limitations of Windows CE, draw out development schedules and cause deadlines to slip. And worse, such features are sometimes added to product requirements without a single potential customer expressing a desire for the feature.</P>
<P>The result is late products that are user interface&#150;intensive and far too difficult to use by the inexperienced customers to whom they are supposed to appeal.</P>
<P>Ironically, the most successful PC companion product to date, the PalmPilot, is not based on Windows CE. It has a very boring text-based user interface. But users love it. The reason is that the PalmPilot only tries to do a few things for the user. And the tasks it does do are very easy to perform. My wife used my PalmPilot for the first time to look up the phone number of our doctor. In ten seconds, she found the phone number she needed. That&#146;s a product benefit.</P>
<P>While writing and testing the applications in this book on Handheld and Palm-size PCs, I occasionally handed the devices over to my wife so she could see what was distracting me from spending more time with her. Just figuring out how to launch these applications required the assistance of the author of an entire book about Windows CE.</P><P><BR></P>
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