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This Visual C# and Visual Basic .NET Starter Kit is a complete Mobile PC and Tablet PC application. The starter kit contains a semi-transparent form for taking notes and keeps them synchronized through a Web Service. It also supports battery awareness and online and offline data, two key features of a great Mobile PC applications. The project comes ready to compile and run and it's easy to customize with only a little extra programming. Download it from here.

Download Mobile Ink To-Do Starter Kit

The Real Time Stylus API provides an alternate way to receive pen input pen. This high performance API provides a great level of control to developers for a small penalty in added effort.

Unless your battery is really, really good, you'll eventually want to store your Ink. Simple file storage or XML serialization is sometimes sufficient, but usually, you'll want to move Ink into and out of a relational database. Here's how.

In addition to text recognition and similar capabilities, Ink can also be useful for image annotation and markup, such as in medical and insurance applications, where marking up images can be a valuable and critical form of input.

Development for Tablet PCs requires a skill set similar to development for regular PCs, plus an understanding of digital Ink collection, management, and analysis. Developing for Tablet PCs is surprisingly easy and powerful at the same time.

Standard Ink collection is incredibly easy using the Tablet PC SDK.For scenarios that require more control or non-default behavior, default Ink collection may not be the best choice. The Real Time Stylus API provides lower-level, higher performance access to stylus input, making this the API of choice for power-developers.Standard Ink collection is incredibly easy using the Tablet PC SDK.For scenarios that require more control or non-default behavior, default Ink collection may not be the best choice. The Real Time Stylus API provides lower-level, higher performance access to stylus input, making this the API of choice for power-developers.

If you are familiar with development on PCs using Microsoft's tools, you know most of what you need to develop for Tablet PCs.The main addition in the Tablet PC development arena is that of Digital Ink and the features that go along with it, such as Ink collection, Ink management, and Ink recognition. There are also a few minor additional things, such as new user interface considerations and screen operation in portrait mode.

You can get your TabletPC applications up and running really fast using built-in controls like InkOverlay. But if you want more power and more control, you'll need the Real-Time Stylus API. Windows guru Charles Petzold takes you on a tour.