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With that out of the way I'd like to
demonstrate how to use some of the functionality provided
by IDSSAPI. After creating a reference to IDSSAPI in your
project, the next step is to create an instance of each
class it provides that you intend to use. Being that we
will want to have access to IDSSAPI from anywhere in the
program, add a new module to your project and put the following
code in it:
Option Explicit
'define an object for each class in IDSSAPI
Public IDSS_Core As IDSSAPI.Core
Public IDSS_Reg As IDSSAPI.Registry
Public IDSS_Pwr As IDSSAPI.Power
Public IDSS_Mem As IDSSAPI.Memory
Public IDSS_Win As IDSSAPI.WindowHelper
Public IDSS_Lst As IDSSAPI.ListViewHelper
Private Sub main()
'create an instance of each class in IDSSAPI
Set IDSS_Core = CreateObject("IDSSAPI.Core")
Set IDSS_Reg = CreateObject("IDSSAPI.Registry")
Set IDSS_Pwr = CreateObject("IDSSAPI.Power")
Set IDSS_Mem = CreateObject("IDSSAPI.Memory")
Set IDSS_Win = CreateObject("IDSSAPI.WindowHelper")
Set IDSS_Lst = CreateObject("IDSSAPI.ListViewHelper")
Form1.Show
End Sub
Next, in the "Project Properties"
dialog box, select "Sub Main" from the "Startup
Object" list. You will want to remove lines from the
above code that refer to portions of IDSSAPI that you don't
plan on using as well as changing the "Form1.Show"
if the main form in your program is not named "Form1".
Now that this is done, using the functionality of IDSSAPI
is very straightforward. For example, you can play a .WAV
file from anywhere in your program by simply adding a single
line of code such as:
IDSS_Core.PlaySound "\windows\alarm1.wav"
For the remainder of this article,
we will examine a project I've put together to demonstrate
how to use a variety of IDSSAPI's features. But first, I'd
like to reiterate that the IDSS web site is an excellent
source of sample code demonstrating many more features
as well as how to achieve some of those things by accessing
the WinCE API directly rather than using IDSSAPI.
Personally, one of my favorite features
of IDSSAPI is the ability to hide specific portions of the
PocketPC user interface (such as the SIP menu) and even
make a form appear in full-screen mode. To make a form appear
in full-screen mode, simply change the "Form1.Show"
line in the above code to read "FullScreen Form1"
and add the following function to the module:
Public Sub FullScreen(frm As Form)
frm.Show
IDSS_Win.HideMenu frm.hWnd
IDSS_Win.HideTaskbar frm.hWnd
IDSS_Win.HideStart frm.hWnd
IDSS_Win.MakeFullScreen frm.hWnd
End Sub
This displays the form and then uses
the WindowHelper class in IDSSAPI to hide the various PocketPC
GUI features and then resizes the form to take up the entire
screen. Note that it is important to do things in that order
to get the desired results. Next, let's expand our full-screen
form to act like a splash-screen with a progress bar. You've
probably noticed that eVB does not come with a ProgressBar
control, but with the use of IDSSAPI, we can easily create
something that gives the same effect. Simply add the PictureBox
Control Component to your project and place a PictureBox
control on your form. The following code demonstrates how
to implement a ProgressBar:
Dim i As Integer
Dim xpos As Long
xpos = 0
For i = 0 To PictureBox1.Width Step PictureBox1.Width /
100
PictureBox1.DrawLine xpos, 0, xpos + i, PictureBox1.Height,
vbRed, vbLineBoxFill
xpos = xpos + 1
IDSS_Core.Sleep 5
IDSS_Core.DoEvents
Next i
In an actual program, we would want
the progress bar to increment as the program loads data
or performs other "processor intensive" operations
- but since this is merely a demonstration program with
no such operations, we'll take advantage of IDSSAPI's Sleep
function which pauses execution of the program for a given
number of milliseconds to simulate doing something significant.
The most important part of this is the call to IDSSAPI's
DoEvents. DoEvents, among other things, tells the operating
system to take a moment to update the user interface - without
this call to DoEvents, the operating system would wait until
the entire loop has been completed before updating the display,
preventing the user from seeing the progress bar move.
For the rest of this sample, we will
create a small dialog box which is controlled using the
hardware buttons (the ones below the PocketPC screen marked
with icons for calendar, contacts, etc.) that displays memory
load and battery life statistics. We'll design it so that
pressing the first hardware button causes memory load information
to be displayed, the second displays battery life, and the
third (just for kicks) causes the device to perform a soft
reset. Since this dialog box is not showing very much information,
we will not make it fill the screen.
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