Overview

SprintDB Pro allows you to create a fully professional Pocket PC User Interface design. This section is intended to assist you with some of the special techniques required when laying out your application for both usability and functionality.

Because of the limited space available on the Pocket PC it is important to put some serious consideration into the use of logical layout and color.

Control Creation and Placement

When placing a new control on a Form containing a number of pre-existing controls, it is not always wise to attempt to place the control in the desired location directly after creating it. This is particularly important if you need to locate to control very close to another control. It is better to create the new control and place it in an empty area of the form and use the stylus to drag it into position. If you have difficulty accurately placing it, use the Control Navigation buttons to 'micro-adjust' the control's position.

If you need to place controls very close to each other - or - even touching one another, and you notice some overlapping, use the Properties > Bring to Top menu item to set the order.

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Placing Controls on a Tab

When creating a new control to place on a Tab, make sure the required tab is active, but ensure that the Tab control itself is not selected - i.e. you have not double-tapped it. If you create a new control to place on a tab, make sure to pace it as close to the center of the tab as possible. This will avoid the problem of it being hidden underneath the tab.

Selecting Controls

Sometimes when attempting to select a control, particularly when the control is on a Tab, you may find it difficult to highlight the resizing handle. The solution is to hold the stylus down in the required position - and usually the highlighted handle will appear. If it doesn't, tap the Form or another control and then select the required control again.

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Choosing Fonts

When choosing a font to display data in a control, take into consideration whether the control for example, an EditBox or List control - is to be used to display text or numeric data. If you want to keep displayed text small and compact, you may choose Frutiger Linotype at 8 point. If you display numeric data at this size, with this font, you may find it's difficult to distinguish some letters from numbers. As a general rule, it is better to Tahoma for displaying numeric data.

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Guide to Color Use

Generally speaking, the best way to use color in your applications is to base your designs on what you consider to be the easiest to use or best looking Windows desktop programs. You will notice that these programs generally use one color for the button face and another color for the caption - usually black. Users become accustomed to interacting with controls that use colors they are familiar with. These design principles make it easy for the user to distinguish a button from a field control. If you want to draw the user's attention to a particular button, use a different font color and/or bolding.

Keep it simple!

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Using Special Fonts

If you want to create non-graphic based direction "arrows" for your buttons and assure that your users will not have to install non-standard fonts onto their Pocket PC, you can use the "Bookdings" font. This font is used by Microsoft Reader and is normally installed on every Pocket PC.

To create "Previous" and "Next" buttons, use the following steps:

1. Create 2 new buttons, one for "Previous" and one for "Next".
2. Set the "Previous" button's Properties to: Caption: "3", Font: "Bookdings, 8".
3. Set the "Next" button's Properties to: Caption: "4", Font: "Bookdings, 8".

To get a listing of all the symbols available in the Bookdings font, use the Character Map application in Microsoft Windows.

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