Windows Phone Thoughts: .NET Compact Framework SP2 Re-Release

Not long ago Microsoft released .NET Compact Framework Service Pack 2. After detecting a critical bug shortly after the release, Microsoft decided to pull it. Now, the bug is fixed and Service Pack 2 is available for download again. All Windows Mobile Software 2003 includes .NET Compact Framework and I would love to see Microsoft work out a process with OEMs that would make this update available as a XIP ROM update instead of this RAM update. More and more applications are written using .NET Compact Framework and as a developer I would like to be able to point the users to a ROM update download location instead of having to re-distribute .NET Compact Framework with all of my applications... for a RAM install. But that is another story! Now, I am celebrating the following list of .NET Compact Framework improvements!

Performance & Other Improvements List:
- Improved performance of many data tasks, including populating DataSets, searching DataTables, DataSet.ReadXml() method when a schema is used, finding and indexing operations, setting DataSet.EnableConstraints property
- Improved resource loading performance
- Minor GUI performance improvements
- Extend keyboard events to be enabled on all controls (Control.KeyUp, KeyDown, KeyPress)
- Added support for ForeColor &/or BackColor for Button, Checkbox, ComboBox, DomainUpDown, Label, Listbox, ListView, NumericUpDown, RadioButton, Trackbar, TreeView
- Added support for new Smartphone languages: Finnish, Czech, Romanian, Slovakian, Norwegian, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Russian
- Improved Control.Enabled and Control.Parent property changing performance
- Support menu hotkeys on Pocket PC
- Support raising context menus from assigned hardware key, Pocket PC
- Tab support for Pocket PC based on Z-Order
- XmlTextReader performance improvements

Defect Fix List:
- Fixed crash when SQLClient or SQLServerCe is installed.
- DataRowCollection.Find() method throws wrong exception
- Fixed erroneous parsing of HttpWebRequest response stream
- Form does not get the focus when all controls are removed from the form
- InputPanel Button disappears from MainMenu on Pocket PC 2002
- InputPanel's EnabledChanged Event fires inspite of setting the enabled property to the same value.
- IrDAClient.DiscoverDevices device names garbled
- Memory leak in the NumericUpDown, DomainUpDown, ComboBox and TextBox controls
- Native Exception occurs when using the get accessor for Control.Capture
- Navigation bar flickers when new form is being loaded.
- ObjectDisposedException occurs when DataBinding a control to a form shown via Show()
- OK button eventually goes away when re-using recycled form for ShowDialog()
- Setting the InputPanel.Enabled property when the form is closing throws an exception
- SIP button does not go away when the toolbar control is removed from a form that does not have a menu
- The Focus method does not work correctly for the NumericUpDown and DomainUpDown controls
- The Text property of a ListView column is reset to “” when removing the column from the ListView and then adding it back.
- ContextMenu: Fixed TreeView issues on Pocket PC 2003
- ContextMenu: Fixed side effects on controls like Scrollbar and Label
- ContextMenu: erroneous functionality when bound to ListBox
- ContextMenu: Showing a context menu on Pocket PC for a textbox unselects the selected text in the textbox
- ContextMenu: Empty ContextMenu on Pocket PC should not pop up
- Web services: After repeatedly canceling asynchronous web request, all web service calls fail
- conversion of 0.0F to a string and results in a memory leak
- Web services: An XmlException is thrown when deserializing a qualified name that has no prefix and there is no default namespace defined
- Web services: Incorrect handling of null headers in SOAP message