software

Back your favorite people up!

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Last Sunday, I told myself that I would spent 10 minutes to do something productive. I did, and ended doing more.

“Back FavPeople Up!” is the latest software I have created for Windows Mobile devices that sport HTC’s touchflo 3d user interface. Basically it is a backup utility tool to manage the  favorite contacts found in the touchflo’s “People” tab. The challenge here is not so much about building the application itself (as I have found out building using managed code speed up the development cycle tremendously). It is really the effort to find out how and where HTC embeds its favorite contact information. After scanning through the entire windows registry and hundreds of manila files (HTC’s custom xml files), I figured out that it must be in the PIM database, where all the contacts, appointments, etc are stored.

The hack requires some understanding of the POOM (Pocket Outlook Object Model), and contact is one of the objects in the model. After some trial and error, I finally found out that the information are saved under the property set in the contact object

For download of the utility, you can go to xda-develoeprs to download

Rotate Screen Utility Updated

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It is a lazy Sunday today, and I feel that I should at least spend 10 minutes doing something productive.

Few days ago, a fellow forumer in Xda-developers had requested for a feature in my Rotate Screen utility, which was created some 8 months ago while I was developing the navigation panel for Xperia. So I decided that I should just add that in today.

RotateScreen

Rotate Screen essentially is a small footprint utility that enables you to rotate your Windows Mobile screen. It supports rotation via user interface or command line. Using command line method, you can rotate your screen via toggle mode (toggle between two orientation modes), set mode (set your screen to a specific orientation mode) or cycle mode (rotate your screen to the next available orientation mode, from 0 to 270 degree)

More information can be found in this XDA-developers thread

Week 22 snippets

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I usually don’t track week by their number. But as I was building and releasing the new version of Calendar applet for PointUI, I was made aware that it was week 22 last week, as I blog about events over the weekend.

 

Firstly, of course it’s the new calendar applet I have released over the weekend. Not exactly an “official” release, but more of a release candidate, so that I can validate the applet’s device compatibility especially with non wide vga devices.

screenshot-v20-2  screenshot-v20-3  screenshot-v20-1

There’s a breakthrough in this major version release, as I have built an external program to query the PIM database in Windows Mobile, so that I can display the busy status for each day in the calendar’s month view. While this is possible in PointUI scripting engine, but it’ll result in a big performance hit. Since this is the first time I have ventured into POOM (pocket outlook object model) , I thought it was a personal breakthrough for me as well 😉

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Another .UI applet on drawing board

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It looks like I’m getting a hang of developing applets for PointUI. After making my first .UI calendar applet, my mind was toying with the idea of creating my own “Home” applet for .UI Home2. Since I’m creating a Home2 Home, I have decided to name it as Home Cube. 

 

sshot000_1

One of the things I had wanted to include is a better flip clock animation. Coding was rather straight forward, although graphic wise it was abit of challenge and in the end, I decided to reuse the graphics rendered by the original Flipclock applet developer. 

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Calendar applet for PointUI Home2

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Weekend has always been short, but I still managed to find some time to update my Calendar applet for PointUI Home2 

Calendar main view (landscape)

Version 1.6 is finally released. Here’s a quick summary of the fixes, enhancements and added features.

April-21: version 1.6 beta-1 download link for VGA/WVGA and QVGA/WQVGA

  • Fix: Today indicator and text does not automatically get updated (when a new Today occurs)
  • Fix: Bug in the appointment area which always default to year 2009
  • Enhance: Optimize performance esply when you switch from month to month
  • Enhance: Improved UI for All Appointment/Day view
  • Added: Variable size applet support (applet now make use of the available applet space, based on your setting such as full screen, search button, etc)
  • Added: Landscape support (for wvga screen, the appointments will show on the right hand side of the calendar)
  • Added: Year view to select and jump to the month calendar view
  • Installation Prerequisite: Home2 0.30b must be installed
  • Installation Note: Install the CAB and add the calendar applet from the applet screen. The loading time of the applet could take a few seconds but this is only when you first add the applet, or when PointUI is starting up. Copy theTheme.XML file to your active theme folder for optimal display

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Calendar Applet (version 1.5) for PointUI Home 2

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April-11: version 1.5 beta-1

  • Fix: Today indicator and “Today”/”Tomorrow” text not updated after a day
  • Feature Added: Animation while loading calendar and displaying appointment summary on main screen
  • Feature Added: Tapping on the appointment date (under the calendar) brings up screen that shows all the appointments for the selected date. The appointments are paginated (4 per screen) and you can swipe left/right to navigate from screen to screen.
  • limited support for VGA/QVGA device
  • Installation Note: Backup/Remove the calendar folder, Run Calendar-1.5-b1.CAB in your device’s file explorer. Copy Theme.xml to your active theme folder

 

Download Links

QVGA and WQVGA devices: Download

VGA and WVGA devices: Download

Buried to distract

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It started all so positively in April, but for the last 1 week, it’s a hope that crushed big time.

The best treatment to the disappointment, I think is to continue to be buried by work, and perhaps my other past-ime work.

Speaking of which, I did quite abit of enhancement to my pointui calendar applet, and hopefully I can release it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, take alook at the preview of the next release.

New work on PointUI Home2

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About a month back, PointUI finally announced their release of Home2 software, a Windows Mobile shell application that replaces the boring but functional Today screen. It was impressive to say the least, in terms of its performance and potential. However, the lack of applets means it’s all show and nothing beyond  in terms of making the phone device more productive.

That said, within weeks, there are  more and more third party developers began to create and release new applets to complete the usability of the shell program. Clock,  Messaging, Weather, Stock Ticker, Task, Appointment, etc are just some of the applets released by the developer community. Yours truly, shamelessly join in the bandwagon, and created a calendar and appointment applet, which can be found here

Multi Language Editor – make it easy

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Found out that my Multi Language editor was not orientation aware, so decided to make the necessary changes. It ended up with an additional feature that allows one to configure the keyboard settings through a user interface, instead of having to fiddle on the registry as in the previous version. In the setting user interface, you will be able to choose the preferred primary and secondary input methods (which usually correspond to a distinct keyboard locale/layout) The primary choice will also be set as your system default keyboard locale accordingly. The latter will be useful when you install third party IME software, as the installation usually overrides your factory default setting, in terms of the keyboard setting.

 

You can download from this link

Stay Unlock goes 2.0 after two years

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Since I developed Stay Unlock two years ago, it had received numerous feedback. I had also started the habit or was it a hobby, of developing small software utilities to do stuff that default Windows Mobile does not provide, e.g. Bluetooth Notification hack, and most recently LED notification. From applying my knowledge of Windows Programming acquired 10 years ago in Windows Mobile development, I have also finally decided to take the opportunity to explore C# and .NET programming. For sure, these development toolkits make development life of a Windows Programmer much easier, as compared to say 10 years ago. You always learn something new but it is also important that you know the fundamentals!Anyway, inspired by the comments from Stay Unlock users, I have decided to pull forward the upgrade effort which I had originally planned for during my year  end vacation (now it looks like I can take a good break in December!). It took me a day, and I’m hoping that it will be useful for existing users of Stay Unlock, although I know during the last one year, many variant of Stay Unlock had surfaced. Continue reading →