SnoopSoft Releases DashToday

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.snoopsoft.com/dashtoday/index.html' target='_blank'>http://www.snoopsoft.com/dashtoday/index.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The award winning SnoopSoft Dashboard was introduced in 2000 with one goal: To simplify your handheld experience. That goal was accomplished by making your most important information quickly and easily accessible directly from the Today Page. Today we take that goal to its next logical stage of evolution and break out the modules contained within SnoopSoft Dashboard to become regular standalone Today modules that can be run with or without SnoopSoft Dashboard!"</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20040828-SnoopSoftDashToday.gif" /><br /><br />If you've used Dashboard before, you might want to check this out. The "Advanced" package, which is currently the only one on the linked page, costs $10 and can be purchased from <a href="http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=14974&associateid=204">PocketGear</a>. [Affiliate]

[ctmagnus]

I've been wary of SnoopSoft's Today stuff for a while. In my experience, I would get all my Today plugins in the exact, perfect order, I'd read that there's a new, greatly improved (over the last version I tried) version of Dashboard and I would download and install it. Bang! Today plugins all over everything! I uninstall Dashboard and they're even worse.

Granted, Dashboard doesn't interact with the Today screen like a true plugin does, but you get the idea.

But after having used PIToday for a while and Pocket Breeze for the last three months or so, I don't really feel the need to try another PIM Today plugin just yet, especially with everything the other two have to offer.

[lmtuxinc]

i like to use dashboard mainly because i can have 5 screens of today plugins. 8)
i tried some of those other multiple today screen programs but they crashed all the time. :evil:
so i went back to dashboard where i can use pocket breeze 4.1, journal bar 3, ip dashboard 1.2 , weather panel 2, cash organizer 2004, annd the email and launcher plugins from dashboard. try fitting all that information on to one screen.
i also use spb pocket plus 2 but that dosent behave well with dashboard. then if you need to disable all of your plugins because you need the memory for something, theres only one item to turn off. :wink:

[SHC]

I used to use dasboard too in the early days. Since then the number of today plugins has expanded greatly. I now use Pocket Informant with PIToday and SpbPocket Plus. I don't need several pages to wade through to find the info I need, it's right there on the today screen. With V2 of PIToday things should get even better if the reviews are anything to go by.
Dashboard was suberb in its day but its been overtaken.

[Rob Alexander]

I like Dashboard. I've tried to give it up a few times over the years, but always seem to come back to it. Back when PPC 2000 (with themes and Today plug-ins) came out, I would have traded out Dashboard for the calendar and task plug-ins they're releasing now, but that's because I never had much use for the default extra screens Dashboard provided.

Ever since Snoopsoft gave us complete control over which Today plug-ins show in each one of the Dashboard pages, though, it's been more valuable than ever. I show my appointments, tasks and a mini-launcher set of icons in one screen, a full screen view of tasks in another, a larger set of commonly used apps for launching in a third, and Journal Bar, Quicken Today and City Time Today in a fourth. I don't use the fifth one, but may have use for it sometime. I have the feeling that even PIToday isn't going to let me see all of that in a single Today screen display.

You know, I hadn't really thought of it this way before, because it just evolved over time, but it occurs to me now that the main value I get from Dashboard is as a skinable multi-page shell for Today plug-ins. Perhaps they should stop marketing it as a mini-PIM and focus on that aspect of it.

[SnoopSoft]

Hi,

SnoopSoft Dashboard has always been a "skinable multipage shell for things you want to see on the Today page". Unfortunately in the beginning there wasn't much else on the Today page so we wrote the simple things like agenda and tasks to show off the skinnable technology.

I've tried many, many times to outsource the PIM functionality to others who do it better but nobody was ever interested beyond a few brief discussions.

Then there are people who like the simple PIM things Dashboard does and asked that it be made available separately - so I did with the recent launch of DashToday. Also, since version 2.0 Dashboard has the ability to use Today plugins as well so the circle is complete and people can pick and choose how they want to use the functionality of Dashboard or DashToday as they see fit.

People continue to compare it to the more full featured PIM products but I've always said to anyone who would listen that we do not compete with them and never will with Dashboard - that's simply not its focus. Dashboard is not a competitor to Pocket Breeze, PI Today or Agenda Fusion. Dashboard is all about the eye candy of your Pocket PC and getting a consistent "look and feel" on the Today page.

Thanks for the feedback, as I continue to scrub through the SnoopSoft site I'll start de-emphasizing the PIM aspects of Dashboard. Maybe that will help get the message out. :)

[Rob Alexander]

SnoopSoft Dashboard has always been a "skinable multipage shell for things you want to see on the Today page". Unfortunately in the beginning there wasn't much else on the Today page so we wrote the simple things like agenda and tasks to show off the skinnable technology.


:oops: Well there ya go! Once again, I'm only a few years behind the learning curve. :mrgreen: Seriously, it seems obvious now that you say it, but I bought it for your plug-ins way back in CE 2.1 days. Then I tried to dump it when PPC 2000 came out to get some of the other plug-ins I wanted, but I just couldn't live without the instant glance at my appointments and tasks when I turned it on. I've tried some of the others, but there were just too many brightly colored icons all over the place and this always displayed my appts/tasks simply and elegantly and (more recently) with a really nice skin designed by Juni.

When you made it so that I could show any 3rd party plug-in on any page, I was really happy, but it still took me awhile to get it out of my head that the first four pages were 'yours' and only the MyDash page was mine. Now that I've shaken that off, it's more useful than ever.

Anyway, yeah, I think maybe lots of people think of it as a PIM competitor and dismiss it on that basis. Perhaps a bit of a push about the multipage thing with any plug-ins would kick up some new interest. You could even show images of it on your web page with PIToday or PBreeze inside a Dashboard page to make the point. It hadn't occured to me to try those inside DB until this discussion. I might give PI a try now that I know I don't have to give up DB to make full use of it. PI users may feel the same about DB.

A few other thoughts. Since DB is no longer necessarily tied to your own today plug-ins, you might revisit the entire idea from a more general perspective. For example, you might not predefine the names of pages, or you might let the user rename them in setup. I'd also make the different DB pages completely identical in their options. That is, I can't currently put email in the Agenda page and I can't put the agenda in the Email page. If it's really a shell independent of the plug-ins, then I shouldn't be tied to their old functions. You would emphasize the Today shell idea by letting us put anything anywhere. And you might put in some preset Quick Launch settings for common products like PI.

Anyway, you've got an excellent product in Dashboard so don't let all of our misconceptions allow it to fall out of favor. Think of a way to get the word out and make sure we understand just where DB can be useful to us all now. Best of luck with the new plug-ins and continuing good fortune with DB.

[thendless]

As others have said, I think the main value for me is the fact that I pretty much have a pretty skinned up today page with 5 screens of today plugins of my choosing. On my first screen I have a quotes and words page with my info and dinarsofts better today, my second is exlusively for pocketbreeze, my third has a calander, agile messenger and pocketweather, my fourth has the program shortcuts and my last is the contacts plugins. ANd lastly on all my screens I have my Power pack battery and shortcut bar on the top and bottoms respectively. Dashboard is so great, thanks for making such a good product! One program I think is overrated is spb pocketplus... I dont know why people always compare it to dahshboard, IMO dashboard is significantly better.

[mrkablooey]

Dashboard is nice, and definitely fun, and Juni's skins are top-notch. I can't get myself past the "Mail" page when I'm not using mail though. It's just an OCD hang-up I have... if I could rename the tabs that'd be sweet, then again there would need to be a selection of new icons to choose for those tabs. Rename it from "mail" doesn't do me any good if there's still an envelope... which reminds me, time to take my meds. :wink:

[ironguy]

Hey mrkablooey,
Try creating your own Dashboard pages. It's fairly easy to modify an existing skin so it doesn't say 'mail'. The icons are also realtively easy to change. In fact, now that you mention it, since I don't use the 'mail' part either, I may just change some of the skins I use. Of course with the new Dash Today Adv, you could drop the mail page. I currently use mine for weather stuff.

[mrkablooey]

i'll give it a shot, ironguy. thanks for the tip. :)

[sracer]

Excellent news... DashToday plug-ins work wonderfully with PPX. I now have the ease-of-creation of PPX skins/UIs and the flexibility and modularity of DashToday plug-ins. They can be put on different PPX pages with pixel-level control of where the plug-ins appear.
http://img71.exs.cx/img71/3898/smooth-dt1.jpg