Designing and Placing Dialog Boxes

Windows CE for the Palm-size PC supports most common Win32 application programming interface (API) window and dialog box functions; however, dialog boxes for a Palm-size PC application must be much more dynamic than dialog boxes for other Windows-based platforms, because the input panel can appear and disappear frequently and unpredictably.

When you design a dialog box, keep the following guidelines in mind to ensure that it will work in conjunction with the input panel:

• Place text input and output controls outside the area used by the input panel when you design a full-screen dialog box. This will ensure that controls requiring input will not be hidden when the input panel is raised and lowered.
• Design the dialog box to resize, if necessary, to prevent the input panel from obscuring an area that accepts text or critical data. This may require that you move the controls to other panels.
• Size a dialog box to fit, without being cramped, above the screen area occupied by the input panel.
• Vertically center any dialog box that does not fill the entire screen. Center it in the area above the input panel, whether or not the input panel is currently displayed. If the dialog box is taller than the space available when the input panel is displayed, place the dialog box against the top of the screen.