If you're a content author, you should think carefully about the type and size (in terms of bytes to download) of information you're going to give to your Mobile Channel visitors. The words "keep it simple" should be words to live by when doing your design. Even with a simple design, you can still achieve a great deal with a Mobile Channel.

Here's one design hint: one of the things I've discovered from the feedback of my Mobile Channel users is that they don't want to scroll up and down much to find a particular piece of information. Since your users will typically have a small, pocket-sized device with them, it would be better if you separate your information into smaller pages.

The reason I chose to write my channel the way I did was because my pages don't have a lot of repetitive data in them and those pages are split into clear topics.

Before we go on, you should know that Mobile Channels are capable of a great deal more than I discuss here. If you are looking to build a channel that contains a lot of repetitive data or has data that you want to change without effecting your page layouts, then you'll need to check out the Microsoft MSDN documentation for "Scripted Mobile Channels".

Basic elements of a Mobile Channel
A channel, in its simplest form, is made up of two components, a Channel Definition File (CDF) and a content file (HTML). Both will need to reside on your server. Most channels, however, are made up of a CDF file, graphic files (i.e., a logo and a channel graphic file) and one or more HTML files.

Before we go on, here's a useful enterprise-related tip: Mobile Channels aren't just for Internet sites, some of the best channels I've seen have been on corporate intranet's. With no extra software required on the Web server, anyone whose desktop browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x or above can make use of a Mobile Channel.

The main goals I had in mind when I wrote my channel were that I wanted it to be useful and I wanted it to contain information that visitors to my site would like to read when offline.

I decided I was going to have pages in my channel that covered Software, Hardware, Tips, News and an About Me page. Each of these pages correspond to a file. Once you know what files you are going to have in the channel, it's quite straightforward to progress into coding the channel.

Writing your CDF file (Channel Definition File)
The CDF file is the core of your whole channel. The CDF file contains information such as the location of the channel (its URL on the Internet or intranet), its title, a quick abstract text description, and details of all the contents.

The CDF file also lets the synchronization process know to download graphics for your pages. Even if you have a graphic on a page deep into your channel, you must describe it in the CDF file otherwise your visitors will get page errors. The graphics files that you use in your channel have to be of a certain size. These are listed and explained in the image section of the code. As I go through the code you'll see some statements on multiple lines.