CF UI design - How best to display validation failures

I am thinking of using a messagebox to display validation failure messages in the windows mobile开发者_运维技巧 app. that I am currently working on. My thinking here is that there is such limited screen realestate that I'd struggle to dedicate an area on the main form specifically for displaying these validation failures. I am a little concerned as to the usability aspect as the user will be force to close the validation messagebox after a validation failure. Does anyone have any thoughts on this approach or experience that would suggest that there is a better way of doing this?

I know the ErrorProvider is not available within the compact framework. But maybe this would be a starting point on how to do it.

Like the ErrorProvider i would show a simple icon next to the input box that shows something is wrong. Due to the fact, that you don't have a mouse cursor to hover over it, i would in case of clicking on that icon show a concrete error message in a text box docked at the bottom that will hide again if you simply click it.

So the user gets a hint that something is wrong (maybe he already knows what) and can hit on the icon to get a clue. While the clue is showing he can still insert something within the form (he can't see everything, but currently he is only interested in this single box) and one click further (on the appeared text box) he gets back to full screen.

At a last step the box should maybe also automatically disappear if the focus is changed to another input box or the error is fixed.

I would show a message at the top of the screen (as browsers do) that summarizes the errors encountered, in the likes of "X required fields where not filled". And then a more detailed error closer to each of the fields that could not be validated.

That way, the information about the mistakes is still visible while the user is correcting them.