An introduction to Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit (MMIT)MMIT or .NET mobile extends the functionality of .NET framework and enables to develop mobile applications for mobile devices like cell phones and PDA’s. Actually with the use of .net framework we can create two types of mobile applications: web based or local. For web
based mobile applications where applications are executed on the server
and can be accessed from the mobile device via Internet we need MMIT.
Local applications are those which run on the mobile devices.
There are some software requirements while developing these MMIT based mobile applications. Firstly we need Windows 2000 coupled with its all service packs and IIS 5. Also there is requirement of Internet explorer 5.5 or more advanced version, MMIT and ASP.NET framework. By using .NET mobile we can create a single application for a variety of mobile devices. Actually MMIT translates the code of application according to the target device like it will produce WML code for the cell phones with WAP support. As we have web controls in ASP.NET framework, there are mobile controls in .NET mobile specification. Along with mobile controls, there are three other things in .NET Mobile specification which should be discussed. First is mobile page which contains the mobile application. Next are mobile forms which are the building blocks of page. Third one is mobile panel which constitutes the mobile form. Mobile controls can be divided into three groups: User Interface, utility and validation. First are User Interface controls which are contained in the user’s screen or user interface. Examples of this type are Form (represents the container for other controls), Image (represents an image), TextBox (represents a single line text box), TextView (multi line text box), Link (represents a hyperlink) and List (represents a list). Second category of mobile controls is of utility controls which are also displayed on the user interface but are more complicated. One of the examples in this category is AdRotator which displays an advertisement. Also there are Calendar and PhoneCall controls which represent a calendar and phone call utility respectively. Third group is of validation controls which are used to validate the information entered by the user. In this category we have controls like CompareValidator which compares the input provided by user to a fixed value or any other input. There is RangeValidator which checks the range of the input. Another example is RegularExpressionValidator which checks whether the input satisfy the specified pattern or not. So with the development of MMIT based mobile applications user can access information from anywhere and this has made these mobile devices more popular.
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