How to use ASP.NET Web for Windows phone

Question

I want to create an ASP.NET web site. I have not been using ASP.NET for quite a while and I need help. As you know already there is an IE9 mobile browser for Windows phone, I have these questions:

1) Which version of ASP.NET is supported by the IE 9 mobile browser in Windows phone? I means all the output of html is ok.

2) Can all controls in all versions of ASP.NET be used for the IE9 mobile browser?

3) What di I need to set in the Declaration part < !Doctype.......> in my ASP.NET pages ? Will ASP.NET output it according for IE9 MObile Browser?

4) Does the Div control work ? Will this work Div.html = "........html ...."

5) What should not be used from ASP.NET for the IE 9 mobile browser?

6) How do I make the fontsize bigger or which fontsize is best for Wp screen?

------- Update I have ASP.NET V1.1 with JQuery ( not the latest) , My Windows phone 7 HD7 can not work with the JQuery? Does JQuery have diff version for mobile than ASP.NET?

Any info on what version of Html spit out by ASP.NET V1.1,2.0, to the ASP.NET 4.0??

Using Plain HTML wont help much on the server for many server tasks.

Any resource link on how to build aspnet for windows phone 7 would be appreciated.

Answer 1

See the Web Development for Windows Phone details on MSDN as it provides specific guidance on developing for the phone and details of what is not supported on the phone (but is in the full version of IE9).

The phone uses the same code base for the rendering and javascript engine as the desktop version of IE9 does so most things should work.
If you're build a site specifically targetting the phone you will probably see better results if using jQueryMobile rather than the full version but be sure to test fully.

I'd recommend building a HTML 5 site rather than any (X)HTML 4 variation. The browser supports a lot of the newer functionality and you'll get a cleaner layout as well as backwards compatibility for other devices.

You'll also find lots of useful relevant articles at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/iemobile/ and http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/tags/ie9/

Answer 2

ASP.NET is a server side technology so it is not related or constrained by the client devices which access to it, you can use Windows based computers, ITab, Max, Linux, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry phones... to connect to the web site and in any case all the server side processing is performed on the web server (or other back end app servers depending on configuration), on the clients will only arrive html to be rendered and this could contain javascript to be executed locally.

in general modern mobile browsers are very good, I had the best experience with Android devices on mobile devices, which run some kind of Chrome compatible browser, iPhones and iPads run safari, also available for PC and Mac.

if you test your application from a PC with multiple browsers like Chrome, Safari and IE and everything works fine, it will most likely work fine, in general JavaScript abstraction libraries are used to write fully cross browser and cross platform javascript, one of the most popular is JQuery.

I am convinced that the version of IE9 (or similar one, it's not 100% the same IE9 of desktops) included in Windows Phone is probably advanced enough to support all HTML 4 tags and probably has a very advanced Javascript engine as well.

To detect from the server which user agent (device, browser) is connected and render different content or format layout with specific style sheets, check this question here in SO:

how to detect a mobile phone in a web application