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 Scrolling appointment plug in
sullivanpt
post Nov 4 2004, 09:42
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I've just completed my first Smartphone Plug In. A replacement for the All Day and Calendar Plug Ins. This one occasionally scrolls the entire days' events by on the home screen.

I was getting annoyed that the default all day plug in only showed one event, and particularly frustrated with the priority scheme of the calendar plug in that refused to show "non-busy" appointments when they were near a busy appointment. In my opinion, this is a much better compromise for the small screen.

I say completed because this version is stable and shouldn't crash your phone or slowly eat up your memory. Aside: I am amazed any Plug-Ins ever get written with the amount of bad sample code out there!.

Functionally I know there's much room for improvement and enhancement. And I'm hoping my new friends here at modaco will help provide suggestions and advice.

The link below takes you to the Handango product page, then pick "try" for the free version. (No reason to pay me $ unless you really want to biggrin.gif )

http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDet...roductId=143377
(11/22/02: Updated the URL to point to v1.9).
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crafty
post Nov 4 2004, 09:57
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Great work fella - everyone loves a new plugin - especially if it's free biggrin.gif. I'll check it out later, and keep up the good work!
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lutzh
post Nov 4 2004, 12:04
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hi buddy

great plugin, very useful! only one question: can you add an option for costumized font size of the appointment text? i don't want to use 30 or 40 pixel of my screen for the appointments since its getting crowdy on my homescreen with all that great plugins. i usually use a font size of 11 or 12 in my calendar plugin - any chance to implement costume font size option? if so i will quickly remove the fancy stripes the plugin brings when in trial mode ;-)

cheers, lutz


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sullivanpt
post Nov 4 2004, 16:20
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Thanks for the positive comments! smile.gif

In theory, you can specify customized font size and colors by embedding a format tag within the plug in. I tried to implement all the format tags described in the MSDN home screen article (link below).

The sample XML parsing code was the least polished of everything I worked from. I fixed all the memory leaks I was given and have started cleaning it up so it actually works in all cases :!: If you find a case that doesn't work, post here or e-mail me. I hope to get all the formatting perfect by next week.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....2homescreen.asp
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lutzh
post Nov 4 2004, 16:27
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thank you for your reply. i wonder why so less people jump on it at the moment since an often asked question is how to get more than one appointment on the homescreen and this is a perfect solution.

i was not able to reduce font size in the classic way but i'll do some reformatting later on and try my luck.

another question: why does it only include today and tomorrow? i would like to see a whole week in it! any option to make it more days in advance?

cheers, lutz


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encece
post Nov 4 2004, 17:58
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o/ GREAT! Gonna load this as soon as I get home tonight.
Request....
Instead of going to the Calandar app when pressing the action key...could you make it customizable so that I can make it go to PowerCalendar?
Look forward to trying this tonight!
biggrin.gif


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lutzh
post Nov 4 2004, 18:12
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good taste encence - i use power calendar too. lets see if this is possible. you will hate the pink stripes in the trial :-)

let me know how much you can costumize it with your own font size, style and colour!

cheers, lutz


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sullivanpt
post Nov 4 2004, 18:49
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I don't have power calendar, but I expect making the link customizable will be easy. Also, making it scroll ahead through a customizable number of day should be easy as well. As soon as I master the XML parsing I'll add these features.

(And maybe a brief delay while I make up with the wife, who has been less than pleased that I've been glued to my computer every night for the last week. :wink: )

Thanks for the great suggestions!
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chucky.egg
post Nov 4 2004, 19:40
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Hey this sounds cool!
Two questions:

1) When you say it scrolls, does it do that by itself, or do you have to scroll manually? (I'm guessing manually)

2) I've got only a *very* basic idea of how to get this into a homescreen, can anyone post a code snippet so that we can see the formatting options and syntax and so on?
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lutzh
post Nov 4 2004, 20:13
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...its of course scrolling by itself and the xml code sample is included in the zipfile that you can download via handango in the authors first post. there is also a sample homescreen included that gets installed automatically when you install the application and you only need to copy it from the homescreen folder to your pc to check out the plugin code.

cheers, lutz


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chucky.egg
post Nov 4 2004, 21:04
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Ah, cheers for that!
I couldn't see a readme anywhere, but it's actually IN the cab!
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lutzh
post Nov 4 2004, 21:08
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yes you are right i was kind of confused to see it in the homescreen folder too. but hey - tell your wife that you will be a hero for us if you make the plugin even better, sullivanpt! take your time...

cheers, lutz


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sullivanpt
post Nov 4 2004, 21:15
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Yes, I apologize for not putting together a Windows desktop installer yet. It is on my list, I'm hoping I can use EZSetup for that, which would show the README before you install -- as I imagine everyone would expect :oops:

As you discovered, the README is currently in the CAB, and is also installed to you application datahome folder, along with the sample XML home screen.

And yes, the plug in supports both manual and automatic scrolling.

Thanks for all the great feedback and questions!
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chucky.egg
post Nov 4 2004, 21:30
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The readme being in the CAB is no problem, I just didn't realise it was there!

Can someone help me with this though... I'm no good at homescreen tweaking! :oops:

I'm using Kleinweder's "Beach" homescreen, and I've changed the calendar bit to use your plugin. But when I scroll down to highlight the plugin the text turns white (which makes it hard to read). I want it to stay black, but just go bold.

If I can get the colours sorted it's a winner!

This is my code (with <> replaced with {} so that it will show here):
QUOTE
 {plugin clsid="{1BC4FD2C-5B25-4f34-A4A8-58915667BF3D}" name="appointments" height="15"}
   {background b-border-width="0"}
     {format state="selected" font-weight="normal" bgcolor="transparent" fgcolor="#000000"/}
   {/background}
   {label font-size="12" x="0" y="0" w="176" fgcolor="#000000"}
     {format state="selected" bgcolor="transparent" font-size="12" font-weight="bold" fgcolor="#000000"/}
     {text}{subject/}{/text}
   {/label}
 {/plugin}
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chucky.egg
post Nov 4 2004, 22:00
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Just trying to apply some logic to this (it's getting late for that!)

In the example homescreen the text is black when NOT highlighted, and white when highlighted. The highlight colour is blue. But on this plugin, when selected the text goes blue (so you can't see it against a blue highlight).

It looks like the text in the plugin is taking on the COLOR_HOMEHIGHLIGHT value, rather than the COLOR_HOMEHIGHLIGHTTEXT value

I've changed the scheme in the homescreen so that COLOR_HOMEHIGHLIGHT is #000000 (black) rather than #D7D7D7 (light grey, not white as I said earlier). Now the highlight on the MRU bar is black, and the text in the plugin stays black even when highlighted.

Does that make any sense?
I've attached the origianl Beach.home.xml, and my modified one Beach.Cal.home.xml so that you can see what I mean

I can live with it like this, but it will probably cause a problem on some homescreens I think... assuming this makes any sense and I'm right in my uneducated guess work!
Attached File(s)
Attached File  kl1wdr.Beach.Cal.home.txt ( 4.51K ) Number of downloads: 287
Attached File  kl1wdr.Beach.home.txt ( 4.48K ) Number of downloads: 223
 
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sullivanpt
post Nov 4 2004, 22:39
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No chucky, you're not going crazy. The XML parsing in the plug in needs more work. I also just discovered a problem with recurring appointments. I'll try to fix all these issues this weekend.

Thanks for all your help locating my mistakes. I will send you a free full version upgrade as soon as I fix your issues. Lutz, I'll send you one too. PM me your e-mail info.

I am really pleased with the positive feedback I've gotten so far. Thanks!
smile.gif
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lutzh
post Nov 4 2004, 23:57
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it makes its way around the world and zou really should keep up the good work on it! i just saw it on the german smartphone board...

if i can help anything just let me know! and thanks for your offer, i'll drop you a note!

cheers, lutz


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sn1p3t
post Nov 5 2004, 01:19
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Yeah, I've having a hard time getting this to work. I using a slighly modified k1wdr Tree home screen with my SMT5600. I replaced the calendar plugin with the appointments plugin. When I refreshed my home screen, I have a box with pink diagonal lines going across. I can't see the appointment text either. If I select the appointments plugin and hit left or right and then unselect it, I can see the appointment for a few minutes. This is probally just a text formatting problem.

Also, as you already know, it doesnt like reoccuring appointments.

Hope to see you update it! Thanks for you hard work!
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lutzh
post Nov 5 2004, 02:25
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...the pink lines are part of the trial limitations and will of course disappear when you give 5 bugs for the software...

regarding formatting and stuff i am sure sullivanpt will come over with a solution as soon as his wife lets him out of her arms :-)

cheers, lutz


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chucky.egg
post Nov 5 2004, 07:22
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Hi sullivanpt

Thanks for the confirmation of the problem (and the offer of a freebie!) - i couldn't tell if i was being thick. i really don't know much about homescreens!

One other possible bug:
If you scroll the plugin to a future appointment and then click to open it you get the spinning hour glass thing for a second, but it doesn't move the calendar to the top of the zorder if it's already open. I don't know if its supposed to... just guessing at what the hourglass is for.


very cool plugin. keep up the good work!


Posted from my SmartPhone!
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