WM5 ver of Sci-FiPlugin - Blue Clock Released

[Guest willy1973]

WM5 ver of Sci-FiPlugin - Blue Clock Released

More Info: Sci-FiPlugin Blue clock WM5

Comments are welcome.

More designs coming soon...

Willy

[Guest Sp00k]

Hi Willy! I bought this recently for my C600, so it's nice to 'meet' the author! :D

The following comments are observations, not complaints, it's good value for money IMO.

The Good:

1. Battery, Network, Memory & Memory-Card gauges... They're neat and clearly visible at a glance.

2. The continually moving second-hand and the digital seconds counter, good to see neccessary animation only, nothing too 'over the top'.

3. I particularly like the Most Recently Used bar having the names of the programs appearing underneath as I step through them. That's a very welcome feature, as I can't always remember what some of the more obscure icons represent!

The 'Not Quite So Good': :D

1. Whilst the 'second-count' is constant while-ever my backlight is bright, as soon as the backlight dims, the seconds count increments in 4-second steps.

2. Placing the MRU bar towards the bottom of the screen is admittedly aesthetically pleasing... but it means that whenever I return to the Home screen, to access it and select another application, I have to step down three times before the bar is 'active', which I find a bit of a nuisance.

3. I've saved the 'worst' until last... The analogue clock-face... I realise that you don't have a large amount of space to play with but the fact that the clock is slightly elliptical, I find very irritating. It's sufficiently far from a true circle to make the entire screen seem as though the aspect-ratio is out of alignment and spoils an otherwise neat layout.

Suggestions:

1. Make the elliptical 'sms' & 'mail&mms' windows narrower and more elongated, as per the design of the lower window pads and perhaps include a third window, rather than bunching mms & mail in one indicator.

2. Place the 'Battery' & 'Network' labels below the gauges.

3. As the date window has considerable space at either end, perhaps incorporate the digital clock into it and free-up the space it currently occupies... for example " 13th ... 01:32:47 ... Sept" The year is superfluous information, as I doubt many users won't know what year it is! :D

4. Stretch the elliptical clock-face into a true circle... Hopefully, after shuffling the aforementioned items, there'll be room to do this.

5. I like the slightly rounded corners of the Header bar and feel that this should be mirrored in the other bars beneath the clock, which if implemented in addition to stretching them widthwise, may even enable an extra icon-space in the MRU bar?

6. One final point, for those of us who over-clock, a CPU-speed gauge would be a welcome addition.

Well, You asked for comments, I only hope you don't mind some of them! :D

Regards... Sp00k.

[Guest willy1973]

Hi Willy! I bought this recently for my C600, so it's nice to 'meet' the author! :D

The following comments are observations, not complaints, it's good value for money IMO.

The Good:

1. Battery, Network, Memory & Memory-Card gauges... They're neat and clearly visible at a glance.

2. The continually moving second-hand and the digital seconds counter, good to see neccessary animation only, nothing too 'over the top'.

3. I particularly like the Most Recently Used bar having the names of the programs appearing underneath as I step through them. That's a very welcome feature, as I can't always remember what some of the more obscure icons represent!

The 'Not Quite So Good': :D

1. Whilst the 'second-count' is constant while-ever my backlight is bright, as soon as the backlight dims, the seconds count increments in 4-second steps.

2. Placing the MRU bar towards the bottom of the screen is admittedly aesthetically pleasing... but it means that whenever I return to the Home screen, to access it and select another application, I have to step down three times before the bar is 'active', which I find a bit of a nuisance.

3. I've saved the 'worst' until last... The analogue clock-face... I realise that you don't have a large amount of space to play with but the fact that the clock is slightly elliptical, I find very irritating. It's sufficiently far from a true circle to make the entire screen seem as though the aspect-ratio is out of alignment and spoils an otherwise neat layout.

Suggestions:

1. Make the elliptical 'sms' & 'mail&mms' windows narrower and more elongated, as per the design of the lower window pads and perhaps include a third window, rather than bunching mms & mail in one indicator.

2. Place the 'Battery' & 'Network' labels below the gauges.

3. As the date window has considerable space at either end, perhaps incorporate the digital clock into it and free-up the space it currently occupies... for example " 13th ... 01:32:47 ... Sept" The year is superfluous information, as I doubt many users won't know what year it is! :D

4. Stretch the elliptical clock-face into a true circle... Hopefully, after shuffling the aforementioned items, there'll be room to do this.

5. I like the slightly rounded corners of the Header bar and feel that this should be mirrored in the other bars beneath the clock, which if implemented in addition to stretching them widthwise, may even enable an extra icon-space in the MRU bar?

6. One final point, for those of us who over-clock, a CPU-speed gauge would be a welcome addition.

Well, You asked for comments, I only hope you don't mind some of them! :D

Regards... Sp00k.

Thanks for the detailed comments!

To answer some of your comments:

1. Whilst the 'second-count' is constant while-ever my backlight is bright, as soon as the backlight dims, the seconds count increments in 4-second steps.

-This is done to save battery, when I find a better way to save more battery it will be fixed.

2. Place the 'Battery' & 'Network' labels below the gauges.

Good idea, should look better!

3. I've saved the 'worst' until last... The analogue clock-face... I realise that you don't have a large amount of space to play with but the fact that the clock is slightly elliptical, I find very irritating. It's sufficiently far from a true circle to make the entire screen seem as though the aspect-ratio is out of alignment and spoils an otherwise neat layout.

I'll have this in mind when designing new ones, it's actually done with intention to make it look better :D

1. Make the elliptical 'sms' & 'mail&mms' windows narrower and more elongated, as per the design of the lower window pads and perhaps include a third window, rather than bunching mms & mail in one indicator.

I can't find a way of displaying mms and mail separate in WM5, if anyone knows how to do this with the standard plugins, please let me know.

3. As the date window has considerable space at either end, perhaps incorporate the digital clock into it and free-up the space it currently occupies... for example " 13th ... 01:32:47 ... Sept" The year is superfluous information, as I doubt many users won't know what year it is! :D

Yes this is an idea, but the dates used are the settings in regional settings, and depending on the date, and language they could be quite long, English US includes the year in "long date" most other languages don't I think.. If you change the settings in regional settings, it will change on the homescreen aswell..

5. I like the slightly rounded corners of the Header bar and feel that this should be mirrored in the other bars beneath the clock, which if implemented in addition to stretching them widthwise, may even enable an extra icon-space in the MRU bar?

I guess what you are asking for is a more consistent design, and I'll have that in mind..

6. One final point, for those of us who over-clock, a CPU-speed gauge would be a welcome addition.

Well, You asked for comments, I only hope you don't mind some of them! :D

Good idea, I'll try to make this in my next homescreen.

After making some other designs with this plugin, I'll probably make a ver 2 of the blue clock, keeping your suggestions in mind.. :D

Thanks again!

[Guest roma0803]

Nice one. Just bought it. Very nice homescreen. Pitty though the softbuttons do not match coolorwise. Looking forward to more screens.

Thanks!!

[Guest paholman]

Nice one. Just bought it. Very nice homescreen. Pitty though the softbuttons do not match coolorwise. Looking forward to more screens.

Thanks!!

The Soft Buttons for WM 5 are the BaseHUe value in the Registry, but there is a free Application here that you can use to change it to more or less any colour you like

:rolleyes:

Edited September 25, 2006 by paholman

[Guest roma0803]

Ok, but how come I've got homescreens that do change the softbuttons? Kleinweder has several of them, do they alter a setting in the registry to change the softbutton coloring?

Edited September 25, 2006 by roma0803

[Guest my577w]

One problem with this home screen. Most of the time it does not respond to the numeric key which will bring up the dialpad when pressed. I have to press and hold a number in order to bring up the dialpad to make a phone call. :rolleyes:

[Guest willy1973]

One problem with this home screen. Most of the time it does not respond to the numeric key which will bring up the dialpad when pressed. I have to press and hold a number in order to bring up the dialpad to make a phone call. :rolleyes:

You don't have to hold the key down, it's just that sometimes the phone takes one tenth of a second longer to register the press.. most of the time it work without this wait, It will be fixed soon..

Willy

[Guest willy1973]

Ok, but how come I've got homescreens that do change the softbuttons? Kleinweder has several of them, do they alter a setting in the registry to change the softbutton coloring?

The softbutton colors ar defined in the sfplug.home.xml file located in /application data/home/

you can change them yourself if you want..

Willy

[Guest my577w]

You don't have to hold the key down, it's just that sometimes the phone takes one tenth of a second longer to register the press.. most of the time it work without this wait, It will be fixed soon..

Willy

one tenth of a second longer? not true for my case, i've tried wait for a minute it just don't show up.

[Guest paholman]

Ok, but how come I've got homescreens that do change the softbuttons? Kleinweder has several of them, do they alter a setting in the registry to change the softbutton coloring?

My previous post was not just related to this homescreen but any homescreen.

You can edit Homescreen's XML files if you want to but it's difficult to get the exact colour you need, and with WM5 it always puts the gradient on, so there's no way of getting a solid colour. That free utility I mentioned is a method available to easily change the colours without having to edit the XML or reload the homescreen after mkaing any XML changes. :rolleyes:

Edited September 26, 2006 by paholman

[Guest dallasdave]

Hey Willy,

Just got the screen and it's great. I like the elliptical clock--it's kind of 40s-50s retro looking.

Not sure if someone's flagged this, but the time display doesn't switch to 24 hour mode with the device settings, and for those of us without a memory card (yet) the "no memory card" text is much longer than the memory card guage and actually goes over the clock face (hopefully this won't be a problem for me within a couple of days :rolleyes:.

This is really the best use of space I've seen on the device--hope you keep designing.

Cheers,

Dave

[Guest willy1973]

Ver 2.0 of Sci-Fi Plugin for smartphone released.

Version 2.0:

- Now more battery friendly- not using extra battery at all.

- Faster and lighter, keypresses work instantly.

- Does not run in the background when using other programs. (faster phone)

More info here: Sci-FiSoft.com

If you have bought version 1 you will recive an update to version 2 by mail Sunday or Monday next week.

(as I am leaving for Paris,France today, back sunday)

Handango customers can update by finding the plugin on handango.com and press update.

(updating requires uninstall of old ver. and restart of phone)

Also a new plugin is released:

(this is not ver. 2 of blue clock, it's another plugin called: Simple)

Sci-Fi plugin: Simple

http://www.modaco.com/Sci-Fi-Plugin-v2-Simple-t247996.html

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