09-13-2004, 05:00 PM
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Thoughts Media Review Team
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 749
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Add some Flash to your (To)Day! -- a review of Flashdash
Product Category: Today Screen replacement
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Solutions
Where to Buy: Handango [Affiliate]
Price: $19.95 USD. A 14-day trial period will be available.
System Requirements: Requires Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX which uses 878K of memory. Flashdash needs 2.7M. It must be installed to main memory to work consistently.
Specifications: Available for all ARM/X-scale devices running Pocket PC 2002 or Pocket Mobile 2003.
Pros:- Clean, intuitive, professional interface;
- feature-packed;
- compatible with Snoopsoft Dashboard;
- available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Cons:- memory intensive, which can slow things down on smaller Pocket PC�s;
- updates every 3 minutes (non configurable), so you may have to wait to see changes;
- a bit pricy for a today-screen replacement.
Summary:
Flashdash is a soon to be announced new product from Gigabyte Solutions. Two years in the making, it provides a professionally designed Today screen interface which supports animated backdrops and brings a whole bunch of system features right to the forefront.
Read on for the full review!
Today, I�m flashin�...
Well, this is a first (at least for me). Imagine, being able to review a product before it gets on the market!  When I first saw the write-up on this product, I kind of hemmed and hawed �..another Today screen plug-in/update�. But I have to admit that I�ve been very impressed by the look and feel of Flashdash's interface, and the amount of functionality Gigabyte Solutions has been able to incorporate without making it feel clumsy.
Basically, the concept is to bring much more of the system information up to the front of the Pocket PC, rather than having it buried within layers upon layers of sub-folders. And... to do this on professionally-designed themes which include animations in the background. Gigabyte Solutions accomplishes this by completely replacing the standard Today screen with a whole new, multi-tabbed interface.
Figure 1: The TiD animated �Floating World� theme. (A little sampan floats up the river.)
Installation
Installing Flashdash went pretty smoothly for a beta-release program. A self-extracting .exe file was provided for the PC, which uses the ActiveSync installation routines. Take note that there are two parts to the installation, which the routine will handle for you, but might get a bit confusing. During the installation of Flashdash, the routine will check to see if the Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX is present and if not, will proceed to install that first, then return to installing Flashdash. As mentioned above, the memory requirements are fairly extensive (880K for Flash Player ActiveX, and 2.7M for Flashdash itself.), so be careful on smaller Pocket PC�s. Also, this application is definitely not recommended for installation on CF or SD cards.
On my first install, everything seemed to go fine, but when I reset the Pocket PC and it attempted to run Flashdash, I got the error message �Failed to initialize encryption key� and Flashdash wouldn�t run. I contacted Stephen Eddy at Gigabyte Solutions and he knew the answer right away. Apparently, at some time in the past, one of the modules in my O/S got corrupted, and the only solution was to do a hard reset and NOT restore from a backup. Oh well, it was time for a bit of a clean up anyway! :roll: After the reset everything loaded up just fine. I relate this story to you not because of anything wrong with Flashdash, but for information if it happens to you, and to highlight Gigabyte Solutions� technical knowledge and responsiveness. Well done, Stephen!
After installation, you'll get 14 days in which to play with Flashdash and (hopefully) purchase a registration code. After the 14 day period, if the application is not registered, Flashdash will refuse to display any themes and you will be requested to purchase a copy.
Look and Feel
The interface provided by Gigabyte Solutions includes Bluesteel(TM), designed by TRUTH in Design , and co-developed with Gigabyte Solutions. Included with the Flashdash installation are 15 McDeb themes and 5 by TRUTH in Design (TiD). 10 of these themes include animated backgrounds.
Figure 2: The McDeb �Sheep� theme. (The sheep follow each other around on the hill and wait till you see the nighttime version!.)
Just a note to be careful with some of the themes, as they may not work exactly as you would expect. For example, below is the TiD Longitude theme, as it appears on the Today screen of Flashdash.
Figure 3: The TiD Longitude theme (neat watch!)
Unfortunately, the selection of text colour for menus gets into some problems when you tap the Start button, as shown below.
Figure 4: The same theme, after you tap on Start. Note that we�re only getting the icons. Where did the text go?
It�s not a big thing, once you realize that the problem is white text being displayed on a white background. But it was a little unsettling for me initially when all I saw was the icons, and wondered what had happened to all my applications, etc.
Overall, the look and feel of Flashdash is polished and professional. It consists of the main �Today� screen which displays time and PIM stuff (depending upon the theme selected), plus a series of tabs along the bottom to launch programs, view running programs or change the display options on the theme.
Figure 5: Flashdash�s Today tab � expanded version.
There are a number of icons and buttons located within the main Today screen, which provide a number of different features. Rather than try to describe them all, I thought the following pictorial would help.
Figure 6: The icons on the Today screen tab.
As I mentioned before, most of these I guessed right away, since the graphics depicted the effect pretty obviously.
On the Launch tab, Flashdash presents the icons for applications located in the Programs folder of your device�s main memory.
Figure 7:The Launch tab.
I like the size of these selections and the fact that Flashdash has chosen to use the application�s icon, not just a textual description. There is room for 12 selections on each screen, with an arrow to the right to scroll to additional ones.
In the middle, Flash-powered plugins are displayed and can be launched. Here, I�ve just shown the �smalltimer� one included with the demo. There�s more discussion about the plugins a little later in this review. Along the bottom of the screen are icons for the most commonly accessed applications on the Pocket PC. I found the IR beaming one (the red semi-circle with a dot and a beam in the middle) didn�t work for me.
The Running tab provides a list of currently running applications on the Pocket PC, including plug-ins, and gives you the option to stop them.
Figure 8:The Running tab.
I thought this was pretty well done, and a lot easier to find than the Start/Settings/System/Memory/Running Programs version in the O/S.
Integration with Outlook
On the Today tab, Gigabyte Solution has included applets to mimic the behaviour of the appointment and task functions on the standard Today. It�s not exactly the same however, since they both use a look-ahead parameter defined on the configuration screen to determine how many appointments or tasks are 'active'. Also, the sort order of appointments and tasks is a bit different from that shown in Pocket Outlook and on the standard Today screen. Stephen and I have been talking about ways to handle that, since I make fairly extensive use of tasks and appointments to keep myself on track.
It�s easy to flip between the Standard and Flashdash Today screens though, using the icons in the System Tray at the bottom of the screen. Or, tapping the icons to the left of the entries brings you directly into the Pocket Outlook function.
Plug-Ins
Because of the way Flashdash is designed, Gigabyte Solutions has provided applets for the standard Pocket Outlook Today plug-ins, such as Owner, Date, Tasks, Upcoming appointments, etc. There is no support for third party plug ins such as Pocket Music 3 or pTravelAlarm. Gigabyte Solutions does provide an interface for developers to build plug-ins, and an example called SmallTimer was provided in the version I reviewed. SmallTimer simply displayed a single line digital stopwatch function on the Flashdash screen. Unfortunately, the only way to get rid of it was to go to the Running tab and shut it off from there.
Configuration
There are two ways to configure Flashdash. First, is in the configuration of the theme itself, which you access by tapping the Options tab at the bottom of the Today screen.
Figure 9: Flashdash�s Options tab.
Here, you can adjust the background or text colours, change the size of text used, change the size and position of status graphs, tabs, and the background clock.
The other configuration panel is accessed by tapping the FlashDash (FD) icon in the System Tray at the bottom of the screen.
Figure 10: Configuring themes and other options from the FD icon.
Figure 11: Other configuration options from the FD icon.
Here, you can select the overall Theme you want to use, change the look-ahead timeframe for Tasks and Appointments, select which information you want displayed and the interface style. On the review version, only the bluesteel style was available. I suspect that in the released version, the debug selection will be removed.
Documentation
Documentation on how to use the features of FlashDash is a bit sparse at this time. But hey, it�s a brand new product, what did you expect? For the most part, however, I�m not sure that having a printed manual or Help file could add much. I found the controls and labels straightforward and intuitive, and had no need to contact Gigabyte Solutions to figure out how things work (which is a credit to their design!).
Conclusions
Is Flashdash an essential, must-have application for me? Well, I'm kind of half-and-half about that. The animated background themes is basically eye-candy, but the whole application is extremely well done and very professional. The overall design is well-thought out, and I especially like having the Launcher and Running programs functionality brought right to the forefront, where it more properly belongs.
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09-13-2004, 06:16 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 734
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... Wow. That looks very nice. $20 might be expensive, but for once, it looks worth it. I'm definitely going to try this.
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09-13-2004, 07:54 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 40
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Thanks Don
I appreciate your comprehensive review.
I have a couple of comments to add regarding points raised below:-
1. I think $19.95 is great value for something that replaces the functionality of about 6 other apps and has taken two companies nearly two years to develop. What else on the market is a Today appointments and tasks module, Battery / memory module, Program Launcher, Task Manager, Theme Manager, Animated Theme View and provide professional themes? Those apps purchased separately would be nearer $50.
2. You can refresh the display at any time, rather than waiting 3 minutes. Just click the double headed arrow to the right of the date and time on the Today applet.
3. The problem that required a hard reset is a corrupt rsabase.dll encryption library that some older installs overwrite. You can see this described at http://www.gigabytesol.com/faq.htm
4. In the released version, there are 12 McDeb themes, 2 themes by another designer, 3 DavidThemes FlashDash themes and 7 Tid FlashDash themes (including Sheep Today).
5. There are 3 plug-ins in the final release rather than 1. The other two are Snow (add snow to any theme) and Worm (cute worm that moves around).
6. Thanks for the spot on Tid Longitudes color, I will update that one right away.
7. Following our discussion on the Tasks applet, the behavior is now what you would expect. It will lookahead 14 days for tasks where the start and due date fall within range and you can optionally hide tasks with a date set. Appointments have the same 14 day lookahead.
8. The little shortcut icons at the bottom are hard coded and the programs they reference are present on most, but not all devices.
9. You missed the feature to tint the color of the theme or animations dynamically. It's not surprising given I didn't provide you with any documentation.
Thanks once again for a great job.
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09-13-2004, 08:11 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 83
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by steddyman
<SNIP>
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Wow. You guys did a great job on the program.
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09-13-2004, 08:27 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 40
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Thanks
It took us long enough but the result was worth the effort.
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09-13-2004, 08:57 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 21
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Impressive
I just love the sheep
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09-13-2004, 09:01 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 5,616
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Re: Add some Flash to your (To)Day! -- a review of Flashdash
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Don Tolson
It consists of the main �Today� screen which displays time and PIM stuff (depending upon the theme selected)
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Slightly OT: Something I'd like to see (not necessarily in this product) is for a someone to come up with a theme switcher that ties Today plugins to a theme, so that you could (for example) pick theme 1 and have owner info, date and calendar automatically load; pick theme 2 and Tasks, Spb Pocket Plus and Egress load with that theme, etc.
__________________
iPhone 4! ☠☠☠ Mid-2010 15" MacBook Pro! ☠☠☠ Gateway LT2102h! ☠☠☠ Dell XPS M1210!
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09-13-2004, 09:31 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 49
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Are the task and appointments dissabled untill you purchase the full version?
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09-13-2004, 10:24 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 10
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This looks impressive and, being a Flash developer by trade, I'd like to give it a try. I do have a few questions/concerns:
All of these are given my perspective as a longtime (~3 years) user of Snoopsoft Dashboard.
1. DB provides me with a "tab" that displays all of my contacts. This is very convenient and I use it often - is there a similar flashdash feature?
2. I can run most today plugins in DB. For example, I use BatteryBar (I understand I wouldn't need that in flashdash) and JournalBar on my main dashboad page. From what I can tell I would have to give up JournalBar if I chose to use flashdash?
3. Dashboard allows me to create a set of "quicklinks" - small icons on any today page I choose with direct links to my most used programs. Again, this is a feature I value and use frequently, but I'm not sure this would be possible with flashdash - comments, corrections?
4. Finally, as I said, I'm a flash developer - so the natural question would be, can I customize this product? I'm assuming the answer is no, since I'm sure you would never release source files, but I had to ask...
Thanks!
Eddie
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09-13-2004, 11:13 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 40
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Hi Eddie
In answer to your questions:-
1. You can use DashToday Advanced which provides a contacts module for the normal Today screen. We are planning to collaborate with Snoopsoft to produce FlashDash Plus which would contain the Snoopsoft contacts and email module from DashToday for an extra $5.
2. There is a tab at the bottom of FlashDash which lets you instantly switch to the Today tab rather than the FlashDash tab. You can place any 3rd party plug-ins there, like the ones mentioned above. This is no different than using the different tabs in Dashboard.
3. FlashDash displays all the Programs present in your Programs folder and even lets you navigate into folders and back out again. It doesn't show items on the Start menu since they are immediately accessible anyway.
4. The FlashDash plug-ins are standard SWF files you place in the \Program Files\FlashDash\Plugins folder. FlashDash exposes an API to obtains pretty much any information present on the device and it is this that Bluesteel uses to provide all the functionality you see. There is no reason a plug-in couldn't also use it.
A couple of people have asked if the trial limits the display of appointments and tasks. The answer is no, it is fully functional. If you have a problem with this not working correctly then please email [email protected] and I will look into it for you.
Thanks
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