Orientation Aware Control 2008 Released!

Just last weekend we shipped Orientation Aware Control 2008, the latest stable version of the popular control for .Net Compact Framework from Clarius, formerly part of the Microsoft Patterns & Practices Mobile Client Software Factory.

You can find it in three different flavors:

• OAC 2008 Community Edition: A free version targeting small application development, supporting different horizontal and vertical layouts for the default form factor.
• OAC 2008 Professional Edition: Commercial version of the product. Take a look at the features comparison chart.
• OAC 2008 Trial Edition: Fully functional Professional Edition that randomly shows a trial message.

Why should I use OAC 2008 over the p&p OAC?

OAC 2008 is an evolution of the original p&p OAC. Beyond some bug fixes and VB.Net and Smartphone support, you can keep in mind:

• Visual Studio 2008 designer integration. As far as it targets VS 2005, p&p OAC doesn't support VS 2005.
• .Net CF 3.5 support
• It still being compatible with VS 2005.
• Includes SipAwareContainer, a pretty cool panel control which detects the software input panel (SIP) status and resizes itself accordingly.
• You can store layouts on satellite assemblies for reduced download time and use a tool for create separate .cab installers for each resolution/culture.

Wanna try it? You can go to the downloads page and take a look at it.

If you have previously installed Orientation Aware Control June 2008 RC Trial Edition over both VS2008 and VS2005 on the same machine, you should verify after uninstalling it and before installing OAC 2008 that the following files have been removed from your system:

Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\Clarius.UI.OrientationAware.Designer.2.0.dll (v.2.0.2.0)
Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework\v2.0\WindowsCE\DesignerMetadata\Clarius.UI.OrientationAware.*.asmmeta.dll

If any of these files remain on your system, please close Visual Studio and delete all of them before installing Orientation Aware Control 2008.

Hope you like the product. Remember to give us your feedback on the OAC Forum.

I'll continue posting about some of the features and usages of the OAC, so stay tuned!