Developing an Internet Client in Windows CE
I have 5 HP Compaq t5530 Thin Clients with Windows CE 6.0 installed. I have a Windows 2003 server. These 6 PCs must be used to view. And the user can view the hour and be able to extend the time. I need to develop a simple client-server program to control Internet usage.
How do I go about this? What I need?
FYI: I know Java and C-Sharp well.
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So you're after a time-driven browser app, and nothing else? First question: do you have a BSP (board support package) for this device?
Yes . Modify the source code of IESAMPLE, which is the browser that comes with CE, to have the display you want and remove things like the close button and maybe even the decal bar. Perhaps I even implement it with all the necessary shell functionality so that it can fully work as a device shell. an IEShell sample is a very good start. Then change HKLM \ Init in your project to trigger the reworked IESAMPLE startup on device boot and you're done.
No : it won't be that easy, but it's still doable. Create an application using the IWebBrowser2 COM control that has the UI elements you want (like the above suggestions). Change HKLM \ Init to start the application after explorer.exe (you will probably have to start explorer for the shell application), or if you do it in C ++, do the required shell functions. If you enable Explorer, you need your application to find, disable, and hide the Start bar when it initializes. How you can save your app depends on the hardware - I don't know anything about these devices.
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Another thought I had - if you have a BSP, you can probably create a custom wrapper that uses an RDP client that can connect to the server and use a browser. It will probably be easier for you to control the usage time as it can be configured on the server, but then you have the task of getting the RDP session to automatically start the browser and only use it. I'm much less familiar with this route, so I'd rather use the on-device browser mechanism I suggested, and then add time tracking to the server through something like a web service.
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