Are you aware that Sony Ericsson provides developers with technical support for their development projects on Sony Ericsson platforms? If not, read about a real support case submitted by the US based company Cutting Edge Software regarding the development of a P800 application.

Joel Shafer, the Director of Development at Cutting Edge Software contacted the Sony Ericsson Developer Support team with a problem:

"We are attempting to follow the UIQ style guide by implementing extended category support in our P800 application. Specifically, there are two items in the video player's category menu "---internal storage---" and "---memory card---" that appear in the menu as separator items with text. How is this done?"

The support team quickly responded and provided this answer:

Deep within the SDK documentation, you will find information on CQikMediaFolderMonitor. This API implements a standard dialog with an extended category menu.

To make a menu separator with text, you simply create a menu item and add the flag called EEikMenuItemRefusesHighlight to it. The following code example illustrates this technique:

         MENU_ITEM
            {
   &nb sp;        txt=STRING_r_menu_example_text;
      &nb sp;     flags=EEikMenuItemRefusesHighlight;
          ;   }

In addition, if you want to obtain a drive's name, you use the Volume() method of the RFs class. You get the RFs instance from the control environment  by calling CEikonEnv::Static()->FsSession().

The code should look something like this:

         TVolumeInfo driveInfo;
    TName driveNameExternal;
    iEikonEnv->FsSession().Volume(driveInfo, drive);
    HBufC* folder = driveInfo.iName.AllocL();
    HBufC* format = iCoeEnv-AllocReadResourceLC(R_QIK_DRIVE_DISPLAY);
    driveNameExternal.Format(*format, &*folder);

It's recommended that you check that each drive really has a name. If not, you can use the default name resource strings named R_QIK_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and R_QIK_INTERNAL_STORAGE.

These resource strings are located in qikdlg.rsg.

As a developer of Office applications (i.e. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) for Symbian, Cutting Edge Software needed reliable, prompt and knowledgeable developer support.  "Typically we solve technical problems using an escalating scale of support" says Joel Shafer, "The first line of support is to consult the Symbian OS documentation and source code. Peer review is the second line of support that we use.  Next we browse Symbian newsgroups, and lastly, we contact Sony Ericsson Developer Support directly for the most difficult issues."

By the time Joel and his team contact Sony Ericsson Developer Support they have a serious issue that needs immediate assistance.  With help from the support team they were able to get their issue quickly resolved and get back on track.

"The Sony Ericsson team was able to provide answers much more quickly than I have experienced with other vendors. Additionally, the answers they provided were always correct and on-target," said Mr. Shafer.

"I would like to personally thank the Sony Ericsson Developer Support team for the highest quality developer support. I've been in this industry for quite some time and have dealt with customer support from Palm, Nokia, Sony, and Symbian directly, and I'm pleased to report that your level of service is far and above anyone else!"

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