Stupid .NET CF ...

Maybe this stuff will be/is fixed in Whidbey, I don't know. The May Preview of VS.NET2005 is so busted for me, I can't even create a new smart device project.

There's two programs I'm trying to write in my spare time. The first is a Weight Watchers Points calculator for the Smartphone, the other is a Weight Watchers virtual diary application for the Pocket PC. Both have been a struggle.

First, with the calculator app, I can't find a way to create a NumericUpDown control, or worse yet, I can't find a way to create a text box that only accepts numbers. For a phone device, these oversights are simply unforgivable. Yes, I could do this kind of stuff with custom programming, but I'm trying to make these apps as simple as possible.

With the diary application, I'm trying to use a datagrid to display information in a friendly and readable format. Since I'm not connecting to a database or anything, I figure that the best method would be to use an XML data store. Pretty simple, I figure. .NET's serialization can easily transform data from objects to XML and back. It's extremely cool and convenient and many programs I've used lately have made use of it. But, the .NET Compact Framework doesn't support this. Damn~! Apparently, Whidbey supports this, but since I can't get VS.NET 2005 to work, it's kind of a moot point.

I was going to install VS.NET2005 in a Virtual PC since installing it on my XP box completely hosed the .NET FW support for many of my existing applications. I read that VPC doesn't support the Windows Mobile device emulator so I may be SOL until a more stable version of VS.NET2005 comes out. *sigh*