One of my recent projects at Enterprise Mobile was creating a custom home screen (see above) for the new MotoQ9h and Blackjack II devices. The top row is the standard Windows Mobile “Icon Bar”. The second row has the clock, messaging center (SMS, Mail, Voicemail), and current profile. Below that is the status text and the application bar. (Everything below the icon bar is a single full screen plug-in.)

At first glance, I assumed this would be a breeze. I have a powerful layout, key handling, and paint framework that I use in every project I work on, and thought that creating a home screen leveraging that would make it trivial. Sadly I was sorely mistaken. Read the rest of this entry »