Feature requests

[paxton]

Okay, I have to admit that I had 1.00 installed for about 5 minutes. Then I've deleted it right away because it was so damn fugly. I gave 1.01 another try cause of the ability to set the icons per row to three. But it remains not very aesthetic to be more polite :o

My suggestions:

icons in icon mode (3 per row) are not centered. they are flittering around. just compare probel with the native (treo 680) launcher and you'll see what I mean
with my treo 680 I can tap on the bluetooth icon in the top bar and can actually enable or disable it with probel it just get the same info screen for every indicator
at least one smaller font for the icon / list view would be nice
a want to be able to sort the category tabs and please include "move to category" in the popup menu
Umlauts don't work in the search field (pressing alt after a letter)
after selecting a contact the letter B is assigned to "back to main list" and "dial business number"
in the same view the contact name is allways shortend because of the small length of the search field. at least display the full name one row below (above the "back to..." label)
a little bit more gui cosmetics would be nice...


Thanks for listening. I'll give 1.02 another shot :rolleyes:

[Confused Vorlon]

Thanks for the suggestions - they are definitely helpful.

couple of specific responses:
-you'll definitely see more fonts in the next version (coding for that is more or less done)
-The double use of B probably comes from you having a German setup. On English devices, B isn't used (they use W for work). I hadn't realised that would work that way!
-re gui cosmetics; What would you like to see?

[paxton]

Thanks for the suggestions - they are definitely helpful.

couple of specific responses:
-you'll definitely see more fonts in the next version (coding for that is more or less done)
-The double use of B probably comes from you having a German setup. On English devices, B isn't used (they use W for work). I hadn't realised that would work that way!
-re gui cosmetics; What would you like to see?

Hello and thanks for your response...

regarding the cosmetics: Beside the allready mentioned problem with the icons and font I really don't like the music player bar. I wish there was a way to permanently disable it. The scrollbar does not look good either. The bar is somehow decentered and too big in comparision to the arrows. I've disabled almost everything to have propel looking nice... I don't know but you look at the interface of a freshly installed propel and think "oh, that's fugly". Sorry ;-) (yeah, after changing settings and with 1.01 it's not that bad anymore but I think a new launcher should be a little bit more eye candy - don't get me wrong I really love the simplicity of the palm os but it should be aesthetic.)

BTW: I configured propel to launch voice commands via side button of my treo 680. Then I disabled it and inside propel it was disabled. But in all the other programms (esp. palm launcher) the key was still assigned?!

And I know that the concept of propel is not to use categories but how they are implenented they are not usable at all. Try to navigate (with keypad) to a category not shown. It's horrible. The list does not even scroll and sometimes I got gui corruptions. The way to access them in the default launcher (just a popup) is much better. (If I could jump from top to bottom it would be perfect).

Greetings

Marco

[Confused Vorlon]

-agree that the scroll bar isn't pretty. It's the palm OS scrollbar and does have some nice functionality from a development point of view...

-re the voice activation, you probably have the side key assigned to voice launch in the 'launching Propel' preference. That's seperate from the 'navigation in Propel' preference

-Can you give me the steps to get gui corruptions? I'll try to fix 'em.
-I'll probably add a way to disable the audio console
-I see your point about the categories not showing (I'll sort that), though I don't think the navigation is so bad:
up,up,select, then left/right to select a category

[magdyreda]

Hi Vorlon, I agree with many of the suggestions made by Paxton. Me too have disabled almost everything to have propel looking nice... first look at the interface of a freshly installed propel is somewhat confusing.
Now I've noticed I was writing to the programmer so I am sorry I've been a little bit unpolite with you...not being a programmer myself I cannot really say how hard it is to make Propel.
So after 2 full day of use I decided to buy it because some Propel tools are interesting and useful...voice command, power user in particular.

Only some questions and suggestion:
- Skins are welcome
- Is it possible to have Power search results shown as LIST even if the Power User View is set to ICON? Having the result as ICONS is not useful expecially if the result has many icons!!!
- Re-work categories: up,up,select, then left/right to select a category is not that good in a Palm environment...maybe in WindowsMobile!!!
- Re-work icons at the bottom: many of them are not useful.
- Make the bluetooth icon selectable and directed to the bluetooth tool view.

Have a great day and thanks for your effort.

[paxton]

Hi Confused Vorlon, thanks again for taking time to reply to my comments and considering my suggestions!

-agree that the scroll bar isn't pretty. It's the palm OS scrollbar and does have some nice functionality from a development point of view...


Using the default OS scrollbar is fine but compared to my treo default launcher it looks not quite right (as described, too big bar and decentered). That's only a very minor point but looks somehow strange...

-re the voice activation, you probably have the side key assigned to voice launch in the 'launching Propel' preference. That's seperate from the 'navigation in Propel' preference


Thanks! I knew I was missing something ;-)


-Can you give me the steps to get gui corruptions? I'll try to fix 'em.
-I'll probably add a way to disable the audio console
-I see your point about the categories not showing (I'll sort that), though I don't think the navigation is so bad:
up,up,select, then left/right to select a category

I'll try to find a way to reproduce the category gui corruptions. And hmmm, for me the way to navigate the categories is bad. I.e. try to move a icon from the first category to the last via drag'n'drop. You have to scroll for "minutes" to get there. Yeah, but that's probably a personal thing...

Another suggestion: right now the item pop menu allways lists the choice to add and remove an item to favourites. What about making this state depending? And for example I've scrolled down to an item mark it as a favourite and then propel jumps back to the first item. Would be nice to let it stay at the same...

Greetings!

[Confused Vorlon]

- Re-work categories: up,up,select, then left/right to select a category is not that good in a Palm environment...maybe in WindowsMobile!!!


how should it work?
e.g. what keypresses with the rocker should get you to the categories and still give you sensible navigation for the rest of the page?

[Confused Vorlon]

- Skins are welcome

http://www.iambic.com/propel/palmos/?cnt=skins
(just added)

[magdyreda]

Vorlon, that was a surprise. Thank you. Just added Crystal High Resolution Skin II and some other and the general appearence is much better. Sometimes the skin itself doesn't appear (Frey High Resolution Skin II does always perfectly while the one at the beginning of this post and Low Profile High Resolution Skin get the background color and icons but not the skin)...but that's something you'll find out way. The reduced number of tool icons in some of them make Propel more appealing...more skins coming will make everyone happy.

About the category navigation...for me it is already nice I can hide it. When I need categories I just disable favourite so to have all the applications or I call the application in Power User View. Sorry no solutions for you for a better categories navigation but I'll continue thinking.

About views: I've already mentioned about my idea of power search results: having them shown as icons is not useful. At the same time I prefer to have the Power View selected as Icon View...do you agree it would be nice to have the result of the search as list instead of icons?

Have a great day and tks.:up:

[Confused Vorlon]

I too hope there will be more skins!

where parts are not appearing, that's probably because you have selected a custom background. The skin designer decides how much of their skin should appear as buttons, and how much as a default background.

e.g. watch the animated gif on lowrider to see how this works when a jpeg background is selected. All that remains is the line of the buttons.

re list/icons for power search. I have to admit I'm not convinced!
it seems like too little additional power for the additional complexity.

[magdyreda]

Vorlon, tks for the reply. Even if I disable background at all the skin doesn't appear at all...small tool icons yes but not the skin itself...Frey High Resolution Skin II does appear always while Low Profile High Resolution Skin and Crystal High Resolution Skin II don't!
Now I am exploring views...at first I didn't notice I can renames views...so I made one "Documents" just to view all the documents and e-books I read (unfortunately .chm files viewers are available only on WinMobile...sigh)...could you please add .doc and .rtf?

Tks

[Confused Vorlon]

you have to set the background to 'default' to get the background that is designed with the skin.

[paxton]

Two additional questions:


Is is possible to disable the playback of the recorded voicecommand before it's started?
Why is it possible to change the theme for every view but not font color and bg etc? That does not make sense IMHO because certain themes require special font colors and backgrounds


So, if somebody could make a theme that makes propel look like the iPhone GUI I would love it SCNR :D

[magdyreda]

I vote Paxton suggestions:
- iPhone interface:rolleyes: or anything that looks at least of this millennium...
- disable the playback of the recorded voicecommand

About the background...yes, when I disable it those themes work fine...but I'd like the user to decide the background...please:p

[Confused Vorlon]

you can't disable the recognised playback at the moment. Seems to me that there should be some confirmation that the system correctly recognised.
if you say 'call mistress' and it hears 'call wife' then you probbly want to know!

reason for the single background is that propel stores a cache of the jpg as it is too slow to decode that in time for switching views. The cache takes about 200k. If you had one of those for each view, that would be a lot!

reason for font colour etc having one choice is just simplicity of use.

[Confused Vorlon]

About the background...yes, when I disable it those themes work fine...but I'd like the user to decide the background...please:p

That's exactly the point. You can use your own background, and then the skin just shows the bits that the designer thought would make sense on any background.

[paxton]

you can't disable the recognised playback at the moment. Seems to me that there should be some confirmation that the system correctly recognised.
if you say 'call mistress' and it hears 'call wife' then you probbly want to know!

reason for the single background is that propel stores a cache of the jpg as it is too slow to decode that in time for switching views. The cache takes about 200k. If you had one of those for each view, that would be a lot!

reason for font colour etc having one choice is just simplicity of use.
Thanks for the explanation! Not using a headset but voicedial you're able to see who you're calling on screen. But people won't look strange cause of the playback ;-)

[paxton]

[...]So, if somebody could make a theme that makes propel look like the iPhone GUI I would love it SCNR :D

BTW somebody did it - but not for propel :)

[bbush49]

Having used several Launchers over the years, I suppose you can get everything you want in one product. Having riden along with the growth of Agendus since the Action Names days, I suppose Propel will have to be in the higher version numbers before it matures.

The lack of adequate documentation doesn't help, but I imagine that is very difficult given the different devices. Even Palm's own applications do not recognize Palm's hard drive. From being on the forums for years, I have seen various problems which seem to be unique to the Treo's.

I do not really have any serious problems with Propel, but like several posts on this thread, I'd like to see more GUI options. High on my list would be the ability to have total individualized control over each category. Tabs should be able to be made different colors. Each category should be able have different numbers of columns. The sequence of tabs should be user defined.

Don't try to make the launcher do everything possible on a PDA/Smartphone. IAMBIC has some great applications. Merging them into bloated programs will not be helpful.

If I do have any problems, I'll report back. But I am not intending to try to "break" the application.

[Confused Vorlon]

Hi,

thanks for the comments. As you say, there are lots of launchers out there and Propel doesn't try to be like them!

It's actually (sort of) in a high version number already as it is based on launcher code that has evolved with the treo since the 600 first came out.

One suggestion is actually to try to move away from the categories - Propel is about not using them! Type-to-search means you don't have to break content down into lots of small groups. A few letters will find what you want in power user view.

enjoy!

PS - what do you mean about recognising the 'Palm hard drive'?

[TreoDoc]

if available, haven't figured out how to delete the "All" tab once I've put all icons in seperate tabs? Otherwise, agree with a lot of the suggestions already posted.

[casapel]

PS - what do you mean about recognising the 'Palm hard drive'? The Palm LifeDrive is unique in that it also has a hard drive. I think this is what he's refering to.

[Confused Vorlon]

The Palm LifeDrive is unique in that it also has a hard drive. I think this is what he's refering to.

If that is the case, then the slur is unfounded :eek:

Propel lets you launch from any of your installed vfs drives (on the lifedrive, there are two vfs drives, the sd card and the hard drive).

When you move an app to the sd card, it asks you which one you want to move to.

[casapel]

I don't think he was refering to Propel: Even Palm's own applications do not recognize Palm's hard drive.Propel lets you launch from any of your installed vfs drives (on the lifedrive, there are two vfs drives, the sd card and the hard drive). Good to know, thanks.

[Confused Vorlon]

I don't think he was refering to Propel: Good to know, thanks.

good point - thanks.
Foolish me for assuming that his complaint in the propel forum must refer to Propel :o

[adriano]

quickie here on the feature requests we have seen above -- they got captured in our enhancement list.

Moving forward, to suggests additional feature requests, please create a new thread specific to the feature you'd like to see in Propel.

Thanks!

- Adriano