Database Develop

Transparent or Floating Scrollbar?

I've looked around and I didn't see anything except references to WM 7 might have something like this, but it occurred to me today as I glared at the big ugly scrollbar on my Today screen that it'd be nice if there was a semi-transparent and/or floating toolbar which would let the text flow under it, be readable, yet still usable to scroll down.
Is there anything that can do this? I've seen some different looking scrollbars around, such as one that looked like this <---->, but it was pretty low-profile and such, but it wasn't floating, but I'd still like to know about anything that makes the scrollbar less ugly.
Thanks!

Maybe less items on the today screen?

SouthernLuke said:
Maybe less items on the today screen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that'd help for that, but there are other places where it'd be nice to have less obtrusive scrollbars.
I've tried several things for the today screen.. I didn't much like either SBP option (Shell or Pocket Plus) but at least they let you put different things on tabs. I like HTC Home + HHC but it takes up lots of room.
I'm still experimenting a bit, but this is more of an overall query, not specific to the today screen, although that's one place that'd definately benefit from it.

It's much more of a better idea if you don't put your scroll bar in your today screen...what I mean is not to put too much information in your today screen.

This program from VJ helps a little, removes the soft keys from the bottom of the Today screen:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=320349

Winterface & FunContacts & Zoomboard

You have to try those to believe how good the Winterface application is. I saw the review on Tiltsite.com today, downloaded it and immediately loved it. It is extremely finger friendly, the interface is very intuitive and beautifully designed. It also uses minimum amount of system resource thus is very efficient.
http://iwindowsmobile.com/vito-mobile-shell.html
Their FunContacts is also a gem to have. Extremly finger friendly, smooth scrolling of the contact list like the iPhone. It absolutely replaces the old school "stylus-required" contact application included in WM6.1.
http://iwindowsmobile.com/contact-manager.html
I've also tried their Zoomboard application, I think it's a good concept, however there is room for improvement. It is still quite slow to type on the Zoomboard application. However the accuracy of the text is improved dramatically because of the zoomed in text let you see what you've pressed on the screen. But it still can't beat Kaiser/Tilt's excellent keyboard for typing.
http://iwindowsmobile.com/onscreen-keyboard.html
Enough said, I strongly encourage people to try it out. It will be a investment well spend. They also have a whole lot of other nicely designed applications on their webpage, check them out too.
http://iwindowsmobile.com/

seems like alot to spend on a couple of good apps that already exist freely...iContact, HTC album (for the photo thing) and even the (Samsung Glyde copy) button interface all exist free of charge. I'd have to see better to be convinced to put down $40 for 2 apps.

how do you install over an existing GUI... today screen , start menu, taskbar, etc???..
does it wipe them all out?
can you go back easily?
tahnx

nufsaid said:
seems like alot to spend on a couple of good apps that already exist freely...iContact, HTC album (for the photo thing) and even the (Samsung Glyde copy) button interface all exist free of charge. I'd have to see better to be convinced to put down $40 for 2 apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just some extra options for people to try, you don't lose money for trying it..

amkaos said:
how do you install over an existing GUI... today screen , start menu, taskbar, etc???..
does it wipe them all out?
can you go back easily?
tahnx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know what to say other than, yes, no, yes!

Conflicts
Do you know of any conflicts with this app? I have HHC installed right now.

amkaos said:
how do you install over an existing GUI... today screen , start menu, taskbar, etc???..
does it wipe them all out?
can you go back easily?
tahnx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You slide your finger in an arc to enable the interface from your home screen or anywhere else. You can click okay button and easily go back to normal interface if you choose to do so.
When phone is unlocked in Winterface, you can "slide to unlock" the phone with a touch of a finger.

I installed this over Garmin's DK1 WM6.1 cooked rom, so far everything works smooth as silk. Garmin's DK1 includes HTC Home v2.0.1812282.1 that I enabled in my home screen. This app run dependent of HTC Home plugin so there is no problems that I found.
In my opinion this app totally replaces HTC Home just because it is much more intuitive (it displays # of new message you got or # of missed calls you have and stuff like that). Couple finger movement after you can reach almost any application on the phone.
I don't work for this company or anything... Just think it's a really cool app to try.
And after couple hours of useage, here is a little short list of pros and rooms for improvement:
Pro -
Extremly finger friendly, smooth flow, elegant design layout.
Low memory useage, fast start up anywhere in the OS.
Very intuitive interface, texts under icons are extremely useful, compare to some other apps who only incorporated icons.
Love to be able to mix and match the apps I need and put them in order I want.
Room for improvement -
Slide to unlock button will disappear if a phone call caused the phone to lock itself, the phone would also lock itself unwanted after a phone call is in progress. It is annoying because when you want to press the keys on the screen, you find the phone locked with slide to unlock.
Contrast of the default icons are rather low (The whites are a bit above mid gray color)
Would be nice to flip from first page to last and then from last to first in one direction.
Would be nice to have option to display non-clear type fonts, my eye don't see well under clear type fonts.
Too bad SMS-Chat and FunContact have problem displaying typed text in landscape orientation in windows mobile 6.1 device (no problem in 6.0 though), or they would work great alone side Winterface.
bennyj71 said:
Do you know of any conflicts with this app? I have HHC installed right now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

so, how do i get that display of clock and slide to unlock?
edit :: wait, i get it.. this doesnt come w/anything else..
i like it -- really fast and nice to look at..
thanx..

Hmm,
I found quirks about the FunContact... Clear Type fonts used in that application will make all the typed in text display go blank when viewed in landscape mode... not recommended......

lifanus said:
Hmm,
I found quirks about the FunContact... Clear Type fonts used in that application will make all the typed in text display go blank when viewed in landscape mode... not recommended......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
doesnt that always happen in landscape + clear type ?

amkaos said:
doesnt that always happen in landscape + clear type ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it does, the system wouldn't even let me enable clear type on landscape mode... Maybe that's why all those apps that use cleartype in landscape mode would not display typed text properly

nufsaid said:
seems like alot to spend on a couple of good apps that already exist freely...iContact, HTC album (for the photo thing) and even the (Samsung Glyde copy) button interface all exist free of charge. I'd have to see better to be convinced to put down $40 for 2 apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I personally LOVE the Zoomboard because of it's accuracy when typing one-handed (usually while driving). Obviously, I also prefer the regular hard keyboard, but we all know that's not always an option.
What free software that is similar to Zoomboard are you talking about?

Customize HTC Home?

Is there a way to customize HTC Home? Like, can I change the look of it at all? Also, is there a way to make it finger scrollable, and also D-Pad scrollable? I know in some of the ROMs it's somewhat D-pad scrollable, but it seems to never work right.
I'd like to lower HTC Home to near the bottom of the screen (like Manilla) and make it more scrollable (like Manilla). I'd also like to customize the graphics, and possible add/remove icons.
Is there any way to do any of this? I know people are putting a ton of time into customizeng Manilla, but I would rather use HTC Home because of the whole landscape support thing.

Try Advance Config
Go here,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=470370
Scroll down to post #2 then download System Tools Cabs
It's a Zip file with all the system tools, and Advance Configuration is in there.
Once you install AC, run it, scroll to HTC home and unlock its position. This will enable it to scroll though, so if you have too many things on the home screen, the scroll bar will be on top of your htc home, make it looks ugly ~ but if you don't mind then try it out

finger scrollable?!!! You can use the Dpad, just press up or down untill one of the tap icon was selected, then press left or right to flip trough those taps... HTC Home is design to be light and fast ~ if you want all the complex M2D functions might as well just use M2D ~ sacrifice the buggy landscape mode.

-post removed- rant was here before(might come back) but im not sure what you mean. Do you mean by customizing HTC home changing the clock, tabs, etc.?

Well I was initially trying to make HTC Home look nicer- like M2D, and make it finger scrollable like M2D. I have since installed SPB Mobile Shell, and I no longer care about HTC Home.
I was just fed up with M2D and it's sluggish, buggy, no landscape, performance. M2D is nice to look at, and it is finger friendly as well. So I wanted to combine its looks, and its finger friendly operation, with the snappy performance and stability of HTC Home.
SPB Mobile Shell seems to do all of that, and plenty more...

well I found this http://www.touch-commander.com/

kaiserII101 said:
well I found this http://www.touch-commander.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks retty nice. Similar to SPB Mobile Shell:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/mobileshell/
Looks to be a little cheaper than Mobile Shell.

Left Handed People Rom

I'm one of the 10% of left handed people in the world and was wondering if anybody had managed to make a rom for kaiser for us lefties if not then whats the best solution as the scroll bar on the right hand right means my hand is over the screen so i cant see while i have to scroll hope someone can shed some light on this

Try looking around here, although I don't remember seeing any left-handed ROMs there. As for the scroll bar, there was a thread about that in the Off-Topic forum a while ago, and although many agreed that it would be nice to do, nobody had the slightest idea how one would do so.
You might want to try a WM6.5 ROM, as they have excellent finger scrolling (so long as you disable Touchflo scrolling in Kaisertweak).
Dave

we should make a seperate lefties forum lol
I agree, for me, WM6.5 overall works great. Contact, home screen, app launcher scrolling were all seamless. and the old control panel type stuff is gone so you get to use the honeycomb to browse through the settings options.
for me it's way better than trying to use a tiny scroll bar no matter what side it's on.

GDE 0.1 available in the market

Not going to spam the sapphire forum, but because i mainly live in the G1 area I would like you all to know that I have developed a whole new Home Replacement called GDE. It has transitions like a cube, configurable toolbar buttons etc etc.
A link to the G1 thread ( with all features and some movies ) so i dont have to copy all of it over and over:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=4698010#post4698010
I have tested this on a G1 and a G2, but it should also run great on a Sapphire. If anyone has tried it please let me know how it works on your devices!

Downloaded to my mytouch and so far i'm liking it.
Couple of suggestions
1. For the option on the launch bar to bring up the phone, can you make it bring up the dialer and not the recent call list? kinda like the Hero
2. Now, when you press the menu button, the app tray pops up. I'd prefer if the normal menu would pop up. The one that has the option to change wallpaper, notifications, etc.
3. if there is a way, when trashing an icon, to make the whole bottom bar the trash, not just the bottom left corner.
4. the possibility to skin the launcher. (edit: i see in the original post that you said your working on this)
bugs i've noticed:
-when # of visible screens is set to 3 and default desktop is set to 1, you can not scroll all the way through. if you swipe right or left one time thats all that you can do. it doesn't allow you to swipe again to get to the home screen. edit: i forgot to mention that its when its in stretch mode and it doesn't work on any configuration (ie default desktop 1,2,etc). it works fine on cube
-when changing an option that require the restart of the launcher, it pops up the last used application such as sms or gmail.
thanks

Thanks for your input,
Downloaded to my mytouch and so far i'm liking it.
Couple of suggestions
1. For the option on the launch bar to bring up the phone, can you make it bring up the dialer and not the recent call list? kinda like the Hero
That indeed could be something to look at... i will look into it
2. Now, when you press the menu button, the app tray pops up. I'd prefer if the normal menu would pop up. The one that has the option to change wallpaper, notifications, etc.
The hard-menu button will be configurable in the near future, so you can set it to open up any menu you like i.e. settings... The control panel is going to get a lot bigger so it should allow you to do "almost" all things you were able to do in the past... and some more of course
3. if there is a way, when trashing an icon, to make the whole bottom bar the trash, not just the bottom left corner.
Well when you drag the right button will change into the trash... The left button is also context sensitive and in the future this will bring up a settings menu in which you can uninstall the app etc etc. I will give the icon the original red corner because the hit area isnt as clear this way ( its much bigger then you will think )
4. the possibility to skin the launcher. (edit: i see in the original post that you said your working on this)
bugs i've noticed:
-when # of visible screens is set to 3 and default desktop is set to 1, you can not scroll all the way through. if you swipe right or left one time thats all that you can do. it doesn't allow you to swipe again to get to the home screen. edit: i forgot to mention that its when its in stretch mode and it doesn't work on any configuration (ie default desktop 1,2,etc). it works fine on cube
The other transitions dont have endless scroll "yet"... I am working on implementing this into stretch and fade. The original transition can never support this, because of some technical reasons.
-when changing an option that require the restart of the launcher, it pops up the last used application such as sms or gmail.
thanks
I will see if i can make it so that it comes back to life again... it now forcefully kills GDE to clear out everything
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once again thanks for your input... this is what hopefully will make it the better home replacement.. If you ever come up with ideas, notice bugs or whatever dont hesitate to contact me
One thing i forgot to ask... Can you tell me how the transition speed is on a sapphire? I havent had a chance to run it on one... for now only the G1 and the G2.
On the G2 the cube transition is really fluid... So i hope it will also be on the Sapphire as they are the same hardware/memory wise if im not mistaking.

There are two versions of the Sapphire, one with 32B and one with 32A board. All Google/Vodafone/TIM/Provider branded sapphires are the 32B versions... which has ~182MB RAM, all sapphires with a HTC logo at the front are 32A and have ~290 MB RAM...
So your statement was partly correct
Loving the looks of your launcher by the way, reminds me of LG phones though ^^.

Ok thanks for the clarification and for loving the looks of course
I must be honest... I have never had an LG phone nor seen the interface.. So if it does im a good copycat without knowing ..

it seems pretty smooth. there is a little lag intermittently but not horrible. To get a good comparison I would need to have another phone to compare it too. But so far I'm liking it.

A thing I would like to see is a dock of 4 customisable icons (like the iPhone has yes...) and a shortcut on a different place to pull up the menu The 4x4 crap stucks :/ the 3 buttons take up too much space... I want my own icons there
I downloaded ur app btw because it has so much potential

rogro82 said:
One thing i forgot to ask... Can you tell me how the transition speed is on a sapphire? I havent had a chance to run it on one... for now only the G1 and the G2.
On the G2 the cube transition is really fluid... So i hope it will also be on the Sapphire as they are the same hardware/memory wise if im not mistaking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By rights if it's fluid on the G1 it should be on the Sapphire as they're so similar. I've tested tried it out on my 32B and the 'stretch' and 'fade' effects are as smooth as silk, though 'cube' is alittle clunky even with the CPU at 528.
I'll throw in an iddy-biddy suggestion/request; could we get a configurable bottom-bar in a future build? I'd love to may it a bit darker or semi-transparent. Either way, no biggy.
Overall this is a killer Home replacement, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it mature. A big thank-you to you, Rogro.
Additional: Scrolling through the applications list is really choppy in both grid and list.

Thanks for the reply.
I will look into the grid/listview on my phone the listview is smooth although the grid suffers some lag. its related to the transparancy, but i will fix it asap.
About the configurable toolbar... I am working out the whole theming support, so hopefully soon you will be able to adjust it to anything you want it to be.

Thank you Rogro82 !
i made a video ( 0.1.1 ) to show all transitions and some options.
runing on a Sapphire ( 32B versions )
The new Home Android - GDE - Best News Apps
7178 men (and women maybe ) saw your app
I will make a new one with your new version with all features ( Theming option , Dock widget ,Google Search widget..)
YOU NEED COMMUNICATION WE NEED INNOVATION

Thanks man!
Already seen the video and its looking great!
Let me know when you have a new video online. Love to see reviews!

multilang.
hey rogro, are u able to add Multilang to this app, this would be rly nice.
i will help to translate to german if u want
(and a function to custom the function of the middle-button, so the hero theme will look like a real hero (and the palm theme also) )