.NET Compact Framework

The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework (.NET CF) is a version of the .NET Framework that is designed to run on resource constrained mobile/embedded devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, factory controllers, set-top boxes, etc. The .NET Compact Framework uses some of the same class libraries as the full .NET Framework and also a few libraries designed specifically for mobile devices such as .NET Compact Framework controls. However, the libraries are not exact copies of the .NET Framework; they are scaled down to use less space.

It is possible to develop applications that use the .NET Compact Framework in Visual Studio .NET 2003, in Visual Studio 2005 and in Visual Studio 2008, in C# or Visual Basic .NET. Applications developed with Basic4ppc are also eventually compiled for the .NET CF. The resulting applications are designed to run on a special, mobile-device, high performance JIT compiler.

The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 3.5 Redistributable contains the common language runtime and class libraries built for the .NET Compact Framework. In addition to version 3.5 support, it also supports applications developed for version 1.0 and 2.0. The .NET Compact Framework 3.5 provides new features such as Windows Communication Foundation, LINQ, SoundPlayer, new runtime tool support, and many other features.

The UI development is based on Windows Forms which is also available on the desktop version of the .NET Framework. User interfaces can easily be created with Visual Studio by placing .NET Compact Framework controls like buttons, text boxes, etc. on the forms. Also features like data binding are available for the .NET CF. A major disadvantage of the UI development is that modern looking applications with support for finger-based touch screen interaction are not that easy to implement. This is mainly due to the desktop-oriented user interface concept on which Windows Forms is based, although some third party libraries with custom controls for this purpose are available.

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