Mobile news reader

Question

I'm using C# and probably .Net compact framework. How should I design mobile news reader (RSS, Atom...).

What are risks I should be aware before I start? What libraries are there to help me read and parse data and synchronize it when going from offline mode?

Answer 1

When you want to use C# for writing an application for WIndows Mobile, you've got two choices:

• Use .NET Compact Framework (Windows Mobile 5-6)
• Use Silverlight (Windows Phone 7)

Keep in mind that WP7 applications are not backwards compatible and that WM5/6 apps will not work on WP7.

Reading and parsing the data is easy. There are a lot of examples out there to parse either one or several common formats (rss, Atom) WP7 has built in support.

Further, I don't really understand what you mean with risks and synchronization? When you're offline you're simply unable to retrieve the data. Besides that there's only one-way synchronization since you can only read feeds and not change.

Answer 2

There's the OpenNetCF library that contains the class OpenNETCF.Rss, but it's a commercial product though:

http://www.opennetcf.com/library/sdf/html/e74e8115-1f33-72d9-a221-8a92e072e3d6.htm

I've never used it so I can't say anything about the quality etc.

Answer 3

Alex Yakhnin has a sample on his blog.