01-29-2003, 08:00 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 72
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Offline Browsing is Enjoyable with iSilo and iSiloX v3.25
While looking for the perfect offline browser, I stumbled across this beauty, iSilo by DC & Co. Have you been searching for better ways to view your mobile favorites? Have you wanted to create your own books with text formatting, embedded images and tables? With a plethora of options, conversion tool iSiloX and reader iSilo, deliver fast rich easy to read documents and Web pages. The conversion tool and reader packs a one two punch that makes it my favorite reader! iSilo has been my core offline browser/reader for over six months. Let me explain why�
Converter iSiloX and reader iSilo are power twins packing exhaustive options and superior reading on the Pocket PC, as well as other OS platforms. You can find thousands of ready-made documents downloadable immediately for reading with iSilo or you can create your own documents from HTML content using iSiloX. Some of the major features that will win you over to iSilo include: high text compression, hyperlinks, images, tables, and formatted text.
The Converter
First off is the conversion tool, namely iSiloX. The completely free iSiloX converts HTML, css, text, and Palm Doc to a compressed document for your handheld or desktop! What this means for me is that any Web site I'd like to read later on my Pocket PC, I can copy the URL and paste it into iSiloX, convert the document, synch up and I'm ready to go. It gets better....
The number and types of settings are too exhaustive to cover here. You'll just have to download it and try it yourself. To whet your appetite, you can: process or ignore all table formatting, allowing you to view a converted website without scrolling left and right; include/exclude images (JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP) from the complete Web pages, which are usually hidden on mobile Web sites and; resize images to perfectly fit the resolution of your Pocket PC, or any resolution for that matter. The result is a beautiful, compressed document that is easy to read on your Pocket PC!
Figure 1: This is the conversion tool's document list.
Figure 2: You can have multiple sources in one document.
Figure 3: Many options are available for your embedded images.
Figure 4: Table formatting options are available as well.
The Reader
The features of the reader are just as exhaustive as the converter. What first impressed me was the full screen mode. With the press of a button, I was in full screen! Then, when I saw the autoscroll feature and the button mapping, I was sold. Another benefit you will notice immediately is the speed. Documents with images load much faster than with other readers and viewers I've used. iSilo will also open text files for your enhanced reading pleasure. Other features include bookmarks, font selection, text size, scrolling options, search, copy and more!
Also, for those interested in viewing documents on their Windows machine, a PC version of the reader is available.
Figure 5: Full screen is one of my favorites.
Figure 6: The navigation menu.
Figure 7: Scrolling options show the depth of configuration settings.
Figure 8: Any installed font can be selected.
Gotchas
Functionally, I found nothing mysterious, flawed, or buggy about either piece of software. It can take a little time to play with some of the settings to tweak it exactly the way you want it. But, to me, that's part of the fun!
As with anyone, I do have a wish list. Something I would add to every application, this one included, is a separate file (preferably, in the My Documents folder) that I can save my option settings to. Document-specific settings, such as font size, bookmarks, last position and others, are automatically saved to an iSilo subfolder in My Documents. However, none of the hardware button-specific settings are stored. Then, I could quickly load all of my personal settings after upgrading my Pocket PC. Earlier, I mentioned that I use iSilo rather than Mobile Favorites. To make it almost as simple as Mobile Favorites, I use iSiloX in conjunction with a macro scheduled to run at the same time every day. It took some time to set the macro to "refresh" the document. But now that this is set up, I can enjoy effortless synchronization and offline browsing experience. In view of that, a scheduled update would be nice. Nevertheless, I suppose I'm one of the few using it for this purpose and would be outside the scope of a document converter.
Where To Buy
iSilo can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for $17.50 (affiliate link). iSiloX converter is available as freeware, downloadable directly from iSilo.
Conclusions
I would recommend this converter and reader to anyone who likes to make their own documents and for those who spend many hours reading on their Pocket PC. I would say my reading enjoyment increased at least ten-fold using iSilo. As a matter of fact, iSilo is one of the first applications I put on my Pocket PC if I'm upgrading to a new ROM or Pocket PC. For me, this is a must have app. 'Nuff said.
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01-29-2003, 08:25 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 125
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WOW 8O
we have a winner!!!
half of my pda time I spend reading, and from this reading the major part is html.
I�m tired of trying to use the mobile favorites and when I see it on my pocketIE the page has horizontal scroll bar because of the images and such... this isilo seems to be coming from heaven
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01-29-2003, 08:51 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 156
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About time someone posted a review of this here.
I've been using iSilo since my Palm days. One of the reasons I agreed to switch over to Pocket PC was because this program was available for the platform.
Excellent, excellent app. I've got a ton of books in iSilo format, the best among them being Windows 2000 Scripting..downloaded from Microsoft's website.
MLO
__________________
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention
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01-29-2003, 09:10 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 35
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Yes....
I guess I didn't do my reaseach. I "thought" that I was giving up iSilo when I switched to PPC.
markpmc
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01-29-2003, 09:49 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 217
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Allen,
I would also like to suggest that you give the HandStory Suite a try. I actually use this as my main viewer since setting up custom clips is so much easier than it is in iSilo. I am not affiliated with them in any way, but love using the product.
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01-29-2003, 10:14 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 72
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by palmsolo
I would also like to suggest that you give the HandStory Suite a try. I actually use this as my main viewer since setting up custom clips is so much easier than it is in iSilo. I am not affiliated with them in any way, but love using the product.
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Sure! I'll download it this evening and give it a whirl. It updates clips wirelessly! Too bad I'm not wireless yet 
HandStory Suite doesn't look like it has full screen reading capabilities. I really love full screen...
We'll see
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01-29-2003, 10:35 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 278
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Can you only read a web page or other document that you have converted using isiloX with the prop. isilo Reader or can you read it with other programs?
When I had my palm one of my fav. pograms was a site called pilotscrewdriver. You would paste in the URL of a particular web page and it would convert the page into .doc format which could then be read with any doc reader. Is this the same idea?
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01-29-2003, 11:10 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 284
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Bridman you need the iSilo reader to view files made with iSiloX.
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01-30-2003, 12:20 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 232
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Personally, I like uBook http://www.gowerpoint.com which is a great text file/document reader that supports Palm format, text, RTF, and other formats.
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01-30-2003, 12:26 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 81
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Agreement
I find iSilo is the best reader for my purposes. I used it for 2 years on a Palm, and was very happy when it became available on PPC. There are a few features that make it stand out for me:
- Preserves formatting - you can keep font styles, images, borders, even tables intact. Or, turn off any of these features when you encode a document.
- Flexible scrolling - When reading I like to scroll 1/2 screen at a time. This allows me to easily keep the flow of the text, without having to read up to the last word and then flip pages. Why stick yourself with the old concept of pages (do you hear me, MS?)?
- Compressed storage - files are stored in a compressed format, allowing me to double my storage capacity.
- Conversion integrated into Sync - You can have iSiloX, the desktop converter, automatically feed docs into ActiveSync, and specify whether the destination should be RAM or storage card.
- Fast - even for very large files, page flipping is pretty much instantaneous (listen again, MS!)
- Library organization - I can organize my library over several directories, splitting documents into categories as serves my needs (News, Fiction, Reference, etc.)
- No wasted real estate - Full screen the display, unlike MS that wastes like half the area on margins.
My only complaint is that it doesn't support ClearType.
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Linear Mode
