.NET Compact Framework
The Microsoft .Net Compact Framework is a streamlined version of the .NET Framework that is designed to run on mobile devices with limited memory, resources, and battery power, including smart devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and set-top boxes. The .NET Compact Framework includes the base class libraries from the full .NET Framework and a few libraries designed specifically for mobile devices such as Windows CE InputPanel.
Developers can create applications for the .NET Compact Framework in Visual Studio .NET 2003, using Microsoft Visual C# .NET or Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. The resulting applications are designed to run on a special, mobile-device, high performance JIT compiler.
To run .NET Compact Framework applications, the platform must support the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework runtime. This includes Windows CE.NET, Windows CE 4.1, Microsoft Pocket PC, Microsoft Pocket PC 2002, or Smartphone 2003.
Architecture The .NET Compact Framework is a subset of the .NET Libraries. It includes only those aspects of the .NET Library that are essential for the functionality. Several namespaces and classes are used exclusively in the .NET Library. Other namespaces, classes and methods are in both the .NET Library and the .Net Compact Library, and there are namespaces and classes that are exclusive to the .Net Compact Library.
