As I explore the technicalities of building and deploying an ink-enabled web app, there is still the question – “okay, so now what?” It’s fun and cool and new, but…

I do have lots of silly ideas – for example, use someone’s picture as a background for the doodle.

I’m curious what people envision that they might want to do with this ability.

You have to think out of the box. The world does not totally revolve around business data entry applications. For example, what about some of the cool teaching apps that Loren Heiny has been doing, (such as MathPractice) but as a web version?

1) Make sure that you using the RTM (release) version of the Tablet PC SDK 1.7 when you are compiling your component if you want your control to work on the final bits of Windows XP SP2. 

The SDK is v1.7.2600.2180 and can be downloaded at msdn.microsoft.com/tabletpc or www.tabletpcpost.com.

2) Link the object, not it’s handle, to the InkOverlay/InkCollector.

One of the special things about version 1.7 is that it the ink controls can work in partial trust scenarios, but you need to construct your InkOverlay as 

 myinkOverlay= new inkOverlay(mycontrol)

rather than the normal way:

 myinkOverlay= new inkOverlay(mycontrol.Handle)

This way, the end user no longer needs to designate your website as “fully trusted“, however it is still necessary to list the site as a “trusted site“ in i.e. and that’s enough. My “trusted sties“ are set in .net 1.1 as “low trust“ and it does the trick – the component is pulled down into the GAC and you can ink away.

3) When deploying, place the dll for the control into the same folder as the aspx page that is calling it.
Maybe this is the norm for any windows control that is used on a web page – though this is my first time doing such a thing. My instinct was to put it in the bin with everything else, but my page did not work with it in the bin. It was happy when I put the dll alongside the aspx file. (Shawn van Ness explains that since this is not an ASP.NET dll, it does not go in the bin with the others. It is more akin to a jpeg in this use and needs to be in a folder that IIS will allow downloads from. I will to experiment with explicitly placing it in another folder. Of course, this is not special to TabletPC development. It just happens to be my first experience with embedding windows forms controls in i.e.)

4) Don’t expect to do any code-behind in working with the Windows Control.
The <OBJECT> tag cannot be set to runat=server. I got stuck having to do a lot of client side interaction with the inkable control in the doodle test page I put up the other day.

[Thanks to Stefan Wick (MS) and Casey Chesnut for some clarification on the first two problems]

Did you know that John Robbins is a Tablet PC geek? Here is his latest article on Tablet PC Development in the MSDN Tablet PC Developer Center: Optimizing Applications for Tablet PC

Posted from BLInk!

this guy is amazing.

Posted from BLInk!

I have 3 unfinished pet projects for Tablet PC.

The first of course is BLInk (blogging). I keep putting more u.i. demands on it and am not satisfied enough with it yet to send it out into the world.

The second is a little TSR copy/paste utility but it’s pasting can’t be trusted yet – I have had a hard timei with some win32 api stuff on it.

The third is an ink-enabled web app. I have completed it. I’m happy. But now I’m having trouble deploying it onto my web host. It seems I need to learn more than I have time for at the moment about Code Access Security to make it work.

Posted from BLInk!

Kent Tengels just got an Acer C100. I wonder if I influenced that one? 🙂

Kent, to answer your 3 questions:

… SDK1.7  is not supported with the whidbey beta… and I haven’t tried it yet to see what happens

…you can persist the ink data and stuff it into your database. Then rehydrate it at a later time.

…. all the lonestar goodies should be right there in front of you if you have SP2. Like this one!

Have fun!!

the tablet PC 1.7 SDK has rtm’d. go get it!

Posted from BLInk!

Jeff Richter has the same sentiment about his tablets as I do. Like me, he has the Acer C110 and the Toshiba M200. He seems to prefer the Acer for it’s size and has designated it as his travel machine, but prefers the power of the M200 which he will use when not travelling.

I dunno – the picture seems to be named “Tablet Dudes” – hey! I’m even wearing PINK for goodness sake. Three of the folks in the pic are from the Tablet Team, the rest are us students.

I had never met Neil Roodyn (aka Dr. Neil) before the DevLab. A super nice (and oh my god smart) guy. Here’s his take on the devlab I attended last week.

By the way “Dr. Neil” is not just some marketing moniker – he holds a PhD!

I have seen a few blogs that list some of the people at the devlab. Here is the full list. I’m going around the room in my memory since everyone seemed to stay in the same seats the whole time.

Martin Shoemaker who wins the prize for coming up with the most awesome ideas for improving mobile hardware.Martin is an INETA speaker and also author of TabletUML.
Jeff Richter, John Robbins and Charles Petzold (they sat together the whole time – there was a little glow coming from that part of the room)
Carl Franklin (Carl, dude, you’re not in the photo)
Markus Eggers Markus has written a bunch of Tablet stuff already in his Code Magazine.
Larry O’Brien who always wore the coolest shirts. Larry has written a bunch of Tablet articles for DevX like this one.
Jon Box  already a .NetCF guru, now he’s going to be a true Mobile programming guru!
Billy Hollis  – poor Billy, lower case “L“s are the most difficult letters for the hand writing recognition to pick up when you aren’t using cursive hand writing
Me
Dr. Neil Roodyn
Paul Yao (author of the first official published book on Windows programming)
Carl Prothman (INETA speaker and user group leader of .NETDA in Redmond)

It was a thrill and an honor to be part of this group.