I started programming for Windows Mobile (Phone) even long before it was called that, even before it was called Pocket PC, and that was back in 1998 (it was actually called Palm PC at the time). I was amazed at the fact that my programming skills from the Windows platform was brought to a device that I could carry in my pocket. It had the same user interface controls that I was used to, and life was amazing.

Now, more than 10 years later I'm less amazed by using almost exactly the same controls in my mobile applications. A lot has happened in this time, but unfortunately this has not been reflected in the set of control that I have to my disposal. I know that many of my friends and fellow mobile developers have tried various ways of tweaking the existing controls into doing things that they were not meant to do. Some built new controls from the ground up, only to find that this they still didn't get all the way to were they wanted.

In my view, one of the more important things that iPhone brought to the table was a new set of controls that were designed specifically for mobile use. They were designed to be both easily controlled with a finger (or even multiple fingers at the same time) and good looking. Taking it one step further, they even added some fun (kinetics soft scrolling, sliding animations when changing views, etc) to the experience which has been really well received by the users. Recently, like in the latest version of Windows Mobile, or rather Windows Phone, WinPhone 6.5, some of these things have been made available in parts of the operating system. However, not much has changed in the tools available to us, the third-party developers, and especially when it comes to the controls.

I hope that will change soon, and that we will see a completely new set of controls for WinPhone designed with modern mobile user expectations in mind. It's probably not enough with just some of the enlargements to make them more finger-friendly that we can see in WinPhone 6.5. No, it needs to be a new set of controls that are designed for fingers that has a nice look, and even a bit of fun.

While waiting for that, I have put together a very simple (according to the KISS principle) framework called TouchUI that include some of the ideas I've been missing in the controls for WinPhone. But before we look more closely at it, I will look at some of the alternatives in the next part of this series.