Visual Studio 2008 & Smart Device Development

I recently had to create a small prototype for a Windows Mobile 6 application for a client's project and as I had not created any mobile applications with Visual Studio 2008 yet (Only 2003 and 2005), I looked around for the usual walkthrough articles and similar. I found the following to be very useful...

Walkthrough: Creating Windows Forms Applications for a Device

Describes how to develop a simple Windows Forms application and how to download it to a smart device.

Walkthrough: Authoring User Controls for Devices

Demonstrates how to author a user control in managed device projects.

Walkthrough: Adding a Simple Attribute to a User Control

Describes customizing user controls in device projects.

Walkthrough: Packaging a Smart Device Solution for Deployment

Describes how to generate a CAB file to hand off to end users for installation on a device, and how to use the IDE, instead of manually configuring the .inf file, to modify various settings.

...but a full list of very helpful walkthroughs can be found at...

Smart Device Walkthroughs
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xk96tah5.aspx

I also specifically wanted to target Windows Mobile 6 as well as .NET 3.5 so I had to download...

Windows Mobile 6 Professional and Standard Software Development Kits Refresh
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=06111A3A-A651-4745-88EF-3D48091A390B&displaylang=en
Brief Description
The Microsoft® .NET Compact Framework 3.5 Redistributable includes everything you need to test .NET Compact Framework 1.0, 2.0 and 3.5 applications.

.NET Compact Framework 3.5 Redistributable
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E3821449-3C6B-42F1-9FD9-0041345B3385&displaylang=en

On the whole the development of Smart Device applications has been made extremely easy (or rather even eaiser) and accessible to developers of normal Windows Applications in my opinion. The pains of non-autoresizing panels of old and limited framework access are largely forgotten and the new LINQ support in .NET 3.5, combined with the built in version of SQL Server CE in the Windows Mobile 6 ROM is great. The emulators that ship with the SDKs are really good for development and initial testing as well, including emulation of some of the more advanced hardware features many of these devices now have.