SoftRatty: Launcher Review Series Part II Appshelf

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Launcher Review Series Part II Appshelf

2008-01-09 03:14:10 by Ryan Rix in TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

Last time on our Launcher Review Series, we reviewed Propel, the awesome launcher by Iambic (whose other products have scored rave reviews on TamsPalm in the past). In part II we will be taking a look at AppShelf, by Hiroaki Imazeki.

AppShelf is a launcher with a balance that many others may fail to achieve. While the application has tons of features and possible customisations, it still manages to keep the ease of use that simple launchers, such as the OS’s default, have. When you first install AppShelf you may not be impressed by the graphical ‘wow!’ factor.

However, in about five minutes you can transform the launcher into a whole new creature by adding a custom background, frame (which controls all visual aspects of the launcher besides background images) and even custom sounds.

One of the biggest wow factors, once you’ve completed your customizations, is that AppShelf supports alpha channel in categories icon and semi-transparency in your frames. This is a feature sorely missed from PalmOS; seeing an application like AppShelf implement this is a wondeful feeling…

While the categories found in Propel (like the listing of memoes, contacts, etc) aren’t in AppShelf by default, it has support for adding a huge amount of custom categories, anything from autolaunching PocketTunes, to viewing files using PalmFileBrowserLib (if present, of course) and so much more. Though quite a few of them are clie only applications, there are still plenty of options for the newer Palm devices.

For example, the DA auto-category will scan your device for any DAs installed and list them. While this is not incredibly useful in many cases (DAs are mostly meant to be launched on top of other applications, rather than just being on the launcher) I enjoy having noOffDA (allows the auto-off timer to be disabled) and sound DA (providing advanced sound management) at my fingertips, should I need to enable them without launching MetaDA.

AppShelf has an extendable interface that can easily be customised through the addition of modules, small widget like sub-applications that run on the launcher, in a pseudomultitasking environment. The modules that ship with AppShelf are mostly PIM related, but some are pretty cool. I had trouble finding third party AppShelf Modules on the internet but was able to find a few. For example, HotTimeAS is a nice clock that is unique in that it allows a user to create their own fonts for the time right on the device by drawing each number on the screen.