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REVIEW: Free, great Today launcher application Launcher

I’ve long been wanting to review Scott Seligman’s Launcher, which has always been one of the better and, what is more, free (!) Today launchers.
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Availability, compatibility
(Current, tested version: 1.40)
It’s available here (direct download link here) and is compatible with all WM2003+ operating systems (it’s NOT compatible with PPC2k / 2k2 - tested this on my Compaq iPAQ 3660.)
I’ve tested it on most (HTC Wizard (WM5; KTamas/bepe AKU3.2 RC1 ROM version), Dell Axim x51v (WM5; A12), HP iPAQ hx4700 (WM5; 2.01), HP iPAQ 2210 (WM2003; 1.10) and Pocket Loox 720) of my WM2003+ devices (along with memory / CPU usage meters) and had no problems on any of them.
Usage
Install it. After the first run (enable it in Settings / Personal / Today / Items), the \Launcher directory on your PDA will be populated with all the links in your Start Menu. You can, then, freely edit these and delete the ones you don't need.
Memory and CPU usage
Additional CPU usage is only measurable when there are a lot of links. On WM5 devices, shell32.exe consumes between 3 and 6 % on my three WM5 devices when the plug-in displayed (that is, when the Today screen is active) between 10 and 30 icons (the fewer icons, the lower CPU usage). On WM2003(SE) device, the CPU impact was far lower - almost impossible to measure.
The memory usage depends on the number of the displayed icons (because of the in-RAM icon cache). Upon just enabling the plug-in, the RAM usage only increases by about 60 kbytes; when you have, say, 25 icons, the additional memory usage will be about 300 kbytes (including the size of the app itself). This is a very good result, compared to the much larger memory usage of the alternate Today launchers.
When the Today screen is not active…
The CPU usage goes away but the memory isn’t freed up. The former is great news, the latter isn’t very (but at least it guarantees Today reloads very fast if you switch it back, thanks for the icon cache).
Native VGA compliance
Unfortunately, in native VGA, the icons become small as can also be seen in here. In this respect, Spb Pocket Plus and iLauncher are both better (but not Resco Explorer's Today launcher.)
Compared to the alternates...
As opposed to cLaunch, the other, well-known free Today launcher, it doesn’t have any kind of GUI or link editor. However, it’s very easy to edit links in the above-explained way. It doesn’t have categories (tabs) either (not that it’d really annoy me: on the contrary, I almost never use tabs. This, of course, only applies to me – some other users may prefer tabs.) It isn't able to display titles (labels) for icons either.
It, however, is fully VGA compliant, as can also be seen in the example screenshots (both the SE (standard) and the native VGA. This means it won’t mess up the Today wallpaper, unlike cLaunch.
The icons are navigable with the cursor pad on all WM2003SE+ devices - this is also very good news.
Verdict
Go get it, particularly if you still don’t have any Today launcher. After all, it’s free and has much better (much lower) memory usage than some of the alternates (for example, Spb Pocket Plus). With other free tools like the very good Magic Button, PIEPlus 2.11 (review here) and Spb Pocket Plus’ Safe Mode module only (nothing else! I tend to disable all its modules in its entirety because of the considerable memory usage and the, compared to PIEPlus 2.11 / MultiIE 4.0, really poor PIE / IEM plug-in), you can achieve the same as with Spb Pocket Plus – at a MUCH lower memory usage.
Other links
Today launcher/meter plug-ins - the complete roundup (alternates: MobilitySite, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, Brighthand). This is a bit old (I've published it a year ago), but is still worth checking out.
What to come?
A decent comparison of iLauncher 3 and Spb Pocket Plus 3.1. Hope I'll be able to publish it soon.

tdlaunch should also be mentioned, which was a precursor to claunch.
TDlaunch is great, claunch better - it's so good, I put my name on it, as they say.
V

vijay555 said:
tdlaunch should also be mentioned, which was a precursor to claunch.
TDlaunch is great, claunch better - it's so good, I put my name on it, as they say.
V
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, as soon as I have some time to rewrite the old Today launcher roundup with iLauncher3 and the like, I'll also include Tdlaunch.

New, 2.6 version of Pocket Internet Explorer plug-in Webby Released!

It was some months ago that the previous, 2.5 version of the Pocket Internet Explorer plug-in (enhancer) Webby was released. Now, the new, 2.6 version has just been released.
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I really recommend the above-linked article to see what the advantages and the disadvantages of the previous version were. Here, I “only” elaborate on the new features and whether the problems or, at least, missing functionality I’ve emphasized in the previous version(s) have been fixed / implemented.
Webby is available here. It requires CF2 to run (make sure you download and install SP1, NOT the old, original version), which also means it’s “only” compatible with WM2003+ devices (bad news for pre-WM2003 (PPC2k, PPC2k2) users).
It has two versions: a free, severely “dumbed-down” (two tabs at most, two buttons definable – hardly any good, particularly when compared to the generous 2-4-week fully functioning trials of all comparable products, except for the slightly less dumbed-down NetFront) and a full (Pro) version. The latter costs $20, which is, in my opinion, quite much compared to the price (and capabilities / speed / compatibility) of Opera Mobile, NetFront or PIEPlus, the best, highly recommended alternatives (not to mention the free Mozilla / Firefox port Minimo, which gets better and better all the time and, now, is a pretty decent alternative at least on WM5 devices), particularly taking into account that the new add-on extension mechanism (still) doesn’t work in Webby.
Pros; new functionality
Add-in modules
Probably they are the most important features of the new version. These (are supposed to) implement additional functionalities like the URL builder known from MultiIE / PIEPlus.
Their list can be found here. Note that you should only visit this page from either Opera or Mozilla / Firefox on your desktop computer; for IE, it only returns the first part of the page.
Installing them is (that is, is supposed to be) pretty easy: just go to the above-linked plug-in homepage from inside Webby (you can use the “Get More Extensions” link in the Extensions tab in Options) and click the extension you’d like to download and install. It’ll ask you whether it’s allowed to install it; after the install, you’ll need to restart the browser.
The problem with these extensions is that they (still?) don’t exist on the homepage of the developer. Webby states them to have been installed but, in reality, nothing is downloaded (you can also check this in the \Program Files\Webby\extensions\ directory in the file system of your Pocket PC if interested). To make sure I'm not missing something, here’s a HTTP-level communication trace (two pairs of requests from Webby / PIE and two 404 Not found answers (that is, there indeed isn't anything in there; not even the linked extensions remote folder!) from the server): 1 2 3 4.
That is, you will want to wait until this problem is fixed, which I’ll surely report of. In the meantime, don’t even try to download extensions - it's just a waste of time because nothing will be downloaded.
Button support
The second most important new feature (which I probably missed the most from earlier versions) is the hardware button support.
As can be seen in this and this screenshots, the most important functionality (Back/ Forward; Previous/Next tab, Close everything but the current one / the current only; Full Screen toggle) is accessible.
It only allows for configuring six buttons on all PPC models (with wildly varying number of buttons). It seems all Pocket PC developers should read all my articles as I’ve elaborated on how all the available hardware buttons can be (very easily!) read out of the Registry more than one year ago ( Where does the PPC Registry store button mapping info - a tutorial (alternatives: PPC Magazine, BrightHand; make sure you also follow the link to More Programmers'/Hackers' Stuff, along with some cool Pocket Loox 7xx Hold Button Tips: More on Pocket PC Hardware Buttons for more info.)
Unfortunately, there is no way of for example using the tap-and-hold buttons of the WM5-upgraded hx4700 or the Pocket Loox 720. It’s not possible to define additional functionality for WM5 softkeys, unlike in PIEPlus 2.0+ and MultiIE 4.0+ either. However, it’s possible to enable WM5 softkeys for menus as can be seen in here: 1 2. This is certainly good news.
Also, it should be noted that the free version only supports two button redefinitions.
Cons
View: One Column mode still not supported
One of my biggest grieves with the past versions was the native support for the One Column mode of the underlying PIE. Unfortunately, this hasn’t changed.
This means if you must work on the full (unstripped) version of a page and, therefore, can’t use any Web compression / content stripper / online cruncher service like Skweezer, MobileLeap, Google Mobile or WebWarper (the four services Webby 2.6 supports out of box), you may end up having to switch to the normal view mode, which will result in a need for horizontal scrolling on a LOT of pages. This is a VERY bad bug in Webby!
Lack of context menus
Unfortunately, there are still no image / link / page context menus as can be seen for example here (which shows clicking an image link will bring up the traditional PIE context menu and nothing else).
This means you need to access all advanced functionalities like link target saving from the main menus. It’s only saving images (in WM5 IEM’s; it’s not available in pre-WM5 PIE’s) that is accessible via the context menu – as with IEM. Please also consult the Download Bible for more info on all these questions.
Verdict
The plug-in architecture is indeed promising. Too bad it doesn’t work yet. Hope it’s only a temporary problem, which will be fixed really soon. When it’s fixed, I’ll return to testing and let you know about how these plug-ins fare agains the competition (for example, the Address Bar plug-in against PIEPlus / MultiIE's comparable capabilities).
Plug-in problem aside, I still don’t really recommend this title over the latest version of stand-alone browsers like Minimo, Opera Mobile or, to a lesser extent, NetFront or Thunderhawk.
The same stands for PIEPlus, which I consider currently by far the best PIE plug-in. The latter is just far more capable (just compare their capabilities one by one!) and faster (don’t be mislead by the seemingly small download times: Webby uses the compression / content stripping service Skweezer by default; this is why it seems to be faster than any else PIE plug-in by default) than Webby.
Recommended links
The Web Browsers category in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog

REVIEW: Resco releases brand new, 6.0 version of best PPC imager Resco Photo Viewer!

After I’ve published the Roundup of All Pocket PC Image Viewers and Editors, Resco has been silent for over 1.5 years and haven’t come up with a new version of their excellent image viewer (and a bit barebone editor), Resco Photo Viewer. Up until now, that is – they have just released the latest version of their flagship image viewer.
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Availability, compatibility
The viewer is available here. It’s compatible with all Pocket PC’s starting with PPC 2002. (Note that the homepage only promises WM2003+ compatibility. This is not the case – it’s also compatible with earlier Pocket PC 2002 devices and runs just great on my 5-year-old Compaq iPAQ 3660).
It also has MS Smartphone / Symbian S60, UIQ and Palm OS versions. I’ve also checked out the latter on my Palm Tungsten T3. It also ran flawlessly and was able to zoom into 10 Mpixel images without getting pixelizated. Excellent results!
The price of the title is $24.95; you get the new version for free if you purchased the title in the last 12 months and with a 50% rebate if you’ve a customer of a previous version but purchased it before the last year. Also, if you purchase the title, you get a $5 rebate for Resco Explorer 2005, Resco Radio and Resco Audio Recorder – all top-level, highly recommended applications (see for example the Audio Recorder Bible on why I consider Resco Audio Recorder the best Pocket PC sound recorder application).
What’s new?
Regarding the Roundup (please see this article for Resco 5.31-specific info), they have fixed almost all the problems / shortcomings I’ve listed in there:
It has no longer problems in fully zooming into high-resolution photos. This means it can effectively make use of the RAM memory of devices that have plenty of them. For example, I had no problems with fully zooming into 10 Mpixel images (for example this one; this screenshot also shows this) on my 128M RAM-equipped WM2003SE VGA Pocket Loox 720. While zooming into this image, the RAM usage was around 40 Mbytes, which does also show it did zoom into the image. Also note the new zoom icons – now, it’s far easier to change the zoom percentage.
It supports the video output capabilities (see this article for more info) 2700G MPU in the Dell Axim x50v / x51v. This is also a very welcome addition and great news for all x50v / x51v users.
It supports both manual (hardware button-based) zoom in/out and scrolling around in an image. This has been missing from all the other image viewers.
It has wallpaper setting capabilities – with transparency setting. The latter is painfully missing from most (simple) Today wallpaper setter applications.
It allows for directly exporting a given image to the system-level Contacts database.
It supports WM5 softkeys.
The program has undergone a generic facelift; all icons have been changed and made much prettier.
Also see THIS for more info on the changes.
What hasn’t changed (much)?
The screen capture module (please see this full roundup of all Pocket PC-based solutions to see how Resco’s solution compares to the alternatives) hasn’t changed much as can be seen in here – there is a new Settings button, which makes it easier to set the image target and type paramers. (For comparison, the main dialog of version 5.32 can be seen in here). This means, unfortunately, there’re no radically new additions to this module.
The editing functionality of the application isn’t at all extended; the same stands for the (still) non-existing batch editing / conversions. This is not a big problem though.
Verdict
The best Pocket PC-based image viewer just got better. While it’s still lacking some (advanced, “geeky”) functionality, you won’t find better / faster generic-use photo / image viewers for the Pocket PC. Don’t forget to check it out, particularly if you’re already an owner of a previous version and are, therefore, eligible for free / rebated upgrade.

On my universal, I m having problems playing mpg files. It makes the whole unit hangs.
Somebody else having problem with Resco photo viewer on universal??

Workin great on my wizard! Love the speed, great app, definitly buying it...

I had problems viewing mpegs in Photo Viewer on my XDA Exec until I installed it to the main memory and also turned off image caching. Now works perfectly.

Web browsing news: new version of Opera Mobile and NetFront out with major upgrades

Anyone having read my well-known Windows Mobile Web Browser Bible know NetFront and Opera Mobile are leading Web browsers on Windows Mobile. Betas / Technical Previews of forthcoming versions (3.4 for NetFront and 8.65 for Opera Mobile) have been constantly released; the last ones, of both browsers, recently. In this article, I elaborate on these brand new versions.
NetFront 3.4 Technical Previews 007
NetFront, while not really having gained new features (except for support for Flash), has been enhanced: now, the current, free (!) Technical Preview isn’t less usable than the commercial version (except for some, for most of the users, not THAT important, really advanced plug-ins like the Java Virtual Machine). This means you can have a fully-fledged Web browser without having to shell out any money – as is exactly the case with the new Opera Mobile, to be discussed below – till 08/31/2007 (it only expires then).
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Getting and installing
Download the CAB file HERE (the main TP page is HERE).
Pros
No longer requires a lengthy initial setup (involving even a soft reset) phase at the first start or when you switch to proportional fonts
You’re no longer restricted to 10 bookmarks (favorites) in the TP version
It no longer restricts the number of the tabs to be opened to two either
The TP version too supports Flash as can be seen in for example HERE (showing Bomberman). It’s even capable of playing YouTube videos as can be seen in HERE. Unfortunately, its YouTube playback is WAY slower (that is, pretty useless) than that of Opera Mobile or, for that matter, the latest TCPMP Flash plug-in (of which I’ll soon publish an article), therefore, should be avoided. If you DO want to enable it, go to Menu / Tools / Browser Settings / External Tools / Plug-in and enable the given checkbox as can be seen in HERE.
Cons
Unfortunately, when you open a link in a new tab, the current settings (for example, rendering / one-column / image display mode) aren’t inherited, as opposed to ALL the other (decent) multitab-enabled browsers on both the desktop Windows and Windows Mobile. Sure, you can quickly apply pre-defined profiles at Menu / View Profile, but it’ll take a LOT of time to re-render the pages. Inheriting view settings would have been the best way to go.
The 5-tab restriction is still here (you can’t open more than five tabs at a time)
The Flash plug-in is as bad (CPU usage-wise) as was in version 3.3 (you will want to keep it deactivated in order to avoid your handheld to really slow down)
No MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard)-compliance: while the CAB installer can be installed on a WM5+ Smartphone, the main GUI isn’t displayed when you start the browser. (tested on the HTC Vox/s710 in both orientations)
Not compliant with WM operating systems prior to WM5
You must still manually switch to proportional fonts in Menu / Tools / Browser Settings / General / Font / Use proportional font (don’t forget to do this!)
Opera Mobile 8.65 beta 2
In my opinion, the best Windows Mobile Web browser, particularly on the Smartphone, is Opera Mobile. The new beta has recently been released and is available HERE for free (!), unrestricted (!) download. The major update is it no longer having driver memory problems (see my previous reviews of these problems) and is, therefore, a must install. To my knowledge, there aren’t other new features.
The trial expires on 10/01/2007 – that is, you can surf the Net for free until then. I, however, recommend going and buying a license – Opera certainly deserves the support, not only because Opera Mobile, but also their top-notch desktop Opera browser and Opera Mini.
The Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) version of Opera Mobile is a REAL must – way better than anything else. I’ll publish a big upgrade of the Windows Mobile Web Browser Bible, concerning Web browsing on the Smartphone, in the near future.

in netfront i can't find any progressbar or similar indicator for the current status of a loading page. is there something like that or doesn't netfront provide this feature?
edit: i will try netfront for some days. compared to opera mobile 8.65beta it seems that netfront offers an more acceptable browsing experience without changing a page's layout to one column on my qvga device(page overview and virtual canvas).
but opera mobile's one column view looks better than netfront's.

Multiplatform Web browser W3C compliance report

Now that I’m working on my 45-minute speech & demo for my (international) W3C speech next week, I’ve re-tested the latest version of all browsers with the just-published, new W3C test suite specifically targeted at mobile devices. The greener, the better; red denotes a failed test.
Let’s start with Windows Mobile.
Windows Mobile
As you can rightfully guess, the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile (even as of WM6.1) is pretty bad:
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… which is the same as on WM6 Standard 6.0 (MS Smartphone):
…and is only a bit better as in the 5-year-old WM2003:
Finally, here’s the Pocket PC 2002 screenshot so that you can see the difference between it and WM2003:

Opera Mobile:
Version 9.33 beta (the one presented at WMC this February):
… and the good old 8.65 available for download/purchase:
As can clearly be seen, the 9.33, which renders the suite almost (but not entirely) flawlessly is indeed based on the new, 9.x-series kernel – a very good news indeed! (We’ll later see that it’s also Opera’s browser that delivers the best compatibility on the desktop too)
Let’s take a look at the current (R006; dating back to February) 3.5 Technical Preview of NetFront:
The new and, now, pretty much usable 1.0.8 WebKit-based Iris browser follows:
Note that, being non-public, I couldn’t test Wake3’s WebKit port.

Minimo:
I didn’t bother with other, even less compatible or officially outdated browsers.
As can be seen, Opera 9.xx is the best of the bunch. Hope it’ll be released soon!
BlackBerry
On BB, if anyone would, for some strange reason, use the native browser in it, he or she can except the following:
That is, not really good – stick with Opera Mini 4.1 instead, which, as opposed to Opera Mini 4.0, no longer crashes the BB.
Symbian S60v3 FP1
Symbian S60v3 FP1’s Nokia Web, also based on WebKit, isn’t flawless either:
As can be seen, despite what some people state about WebKit-based browsers, it’s not 100% compatible either.
Opera Mini 4.1
Finally, Opera Mini 4.1 beta, which runs equally good on all the above mobile platforms:
Desktop Windows browsers
As far as the desktop Windows is concerned, let’s take a look at my test results:

Firefox 3 beta5 (the latest):
The Internet Explorer 8 beta (also the latest) results are pretty bad – actually, it’s the same as with IE7:
(IE8)
(IE7)
Interestingly, Acid2 is far better rendered by IE8 than IE7 (screenshots HERE and HERE, respectively) – while it still fails the Acid3 test (which also makes the browser crash), albeit it still fares a bit better than IE7. That is, based on the Acid results, I expected far more – not even the forthcoming IE8 is as standard-compliant as Firefox, let alone Opera.
Finally, as you may have already guessed, Opera renders the test suite without any problems:
More information on all these (for example, my old Acid2 test results): my Web browsing-related articles, Web browser Bibles etc.

UPDATE (some two hours later):
A screenshot of WM5 AKU3 MS Smartphone Internet Explorer Mobile browser:
As can be seen, it's exactly the same as on the (later) WM6(.1).
Surur has published an iPod Safari (same as with iPhone) screenshot. As with all the other WebKit-based browsers, it isn’t the best:

UPDATE (04/23/2008): I’ve upgraded my BlackBerry 8800 to OS version 4.5.0.9. The upgrade is REALLY worth doing, even at the current beta stage. See THIS for more info. Should you miss his post, you’ll need to send a mail, with any body / message, to [email protected] get the download links for all current BB models. Note that the upgrade takes a LOT of time – don’t be afraid of it being so slow, it won’t brick your phone. Also, you'll need to re-register / configure (but not set up) everything again. The new OS, even in its currently beta stage, is WAY better than 4.2 or even 4.3 coming on some new Pearls. For example (just to name a few),
it supports A2DP / AVRCP flawlessly (working just great with the Plantronics Pulsar 590A, Voyager 855 and Gear4-BluPhones; including even automatic reconnection)
it no longer has the ugly condensed characters – the default new ones (BBAlpha Sans; as can be seen in HERE, there’re a lot of different character types, unlike under 4.2.1) are FAR easier on the eyes and can be made smaller than in OS version 4.2. A series of example Opera Mini 4.1 screenshots showing this.
This is how the medium-sized characters under 4.2.1 look like:
and the same under 4.5.0.9:
(Both with the minimal system character size set – 4.2.1 screenshot of this HERE.)
Note that, as OM uses its own small character set, there’s no difference between their rendering under the two different operating systems – they’re equally the same:
Returning to the question of Web standards compliance, while it has an otherwise better browser, has almost exactly the same support for Web techniques. This is why its results are just (see the uppermost square on the left) a tad better than with the 4.2.1.109 screenshot above: