.NET Compact Framework for S60
South African based Red Five Labs are producing a .NET compact framework for the Nokia Series 60.
While I know some people don’t like me saying it, Symbian development is significantly more difficult and time consuming than Windows Mobile development. This is mainly due to poorer documentation and poorer tools. Being able to program against Microsoft documentation and using Microsoft tools (Visual Studio .NET) significantly improves the development process. I have seen this when I have used Appforge for S60 and UIQ development.
Appforge uses it’s own client program format and runtime rather than just a compact framework compatible runtime. Red Five Labs aim to go the whole way and produce a runtime that will allow Windows Mobile Compact Framework applications (more specifically Smartphone 1.0 apps to start with) to be run directly on Nokia Series 60 devices.
This setup should allow…
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Running of Smartphone apps on the S60
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Easier and quicker coding of new S60 apps
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Single codebase across Windows Mobile and S60
This is a major undertaking by Red Five Labs. Here are just some of the thorny issues they will have to consider…
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Use of platform UI specific compound controls to maintain the S60 look and feel
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How developers can extend the API via platform invoke to the underlying Symbian/Nokia API
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Support for Symbian 9.1, in particular platform security (and signing implications) of user apps
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Debugging on emulator (and possibly target)
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Wrapping the creation of an install (SIS file) into a single, simple operation
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Maintenance of backwards compatibility when new apps/runtimes are released
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Use under other similar platforms (UIQ 3.0)?
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Licensing (In my opinion selling runtimes limits the usefulness of Appforge for use by many ISVs)
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