Tuesday, May 11, 2004
One for the Plus Column - Pocket Plus 2.0 by Spb Software House
Posted by Doug Raeburn in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM
Explore Your World
How quickly things change in the world of technology. When the first Pocket PCs were introduced, Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) was designed with the idea that it would be used in a very limited fashion, since options for connecting a Pocket PC to the Internet weren’t very portable at the time. So to say that the features in Pocket Internet Explorer were limited back then is an understatement.
Fast forward to a few years later, and you'll find that many new Pocket PCs are coming with built-in wireless connectivity. At the same time, you can walk into many Starbucks and McDonalds locations and go online wirelessly there. Connectivity is much more portable and easily accessed than it was just a short time ago, and as a result, people are looking to do more extensive web browsing from their Pocket PC. And as they attempt to do so, the shortcomings of PIE become all the more evident. Finally, the features added to PIE when the various OS upgrades were released were limited, so the current version of the browser is still very similar to its first version.
Figure 13: Pocket Internet Explorer now does windows!
Once again, Pocket Plus comes to the rescue! The first PIE shortcoming addressed is the fact that it can only have one window open at a time. So if you need to go from one page to another and back, PIE has to reload the first page when you return. Pocket Plus adds the ability to open multiple windows in PIE. Its functions are accessed through the little Pocket Plus icon added to the menu bar. Figure 13 shows the added menu. The current window is the item on the menu with the bullet in front of it. By choosing New Window from this menu, as you might guess, a new window with the current contents is open. Enter the address for the new page or site in the Address Bar.
Figure 14: A new window opened.
OK, now we have two identical windows open, with the currently displayed window highlighted by the bullet. At this point, enter the web address for the new page or site.
Figure 15: If you haven’t ordered those flowers for Mom by now, it’s too late!
The new page is displayed in the new window.
Figure 16: Back and forth, back and forth. Make up your mind, will you?
The Pocket Plus menu allows you to move back and forth between these windows without the need to reload each page.
Figure 17: You need a full screen view to fit all of the breaking news!
If you’ve used PIE on a Pocket PC, you know that the relatively small screen limits the amount of a page that can be displayed. To help with this, Pocket Plus also adds a full screen mode, which removes the menu and address bars from the screen. To return to the standard screen, tap the little icon in the lower left corner.
Figure 18: "Source for the goose, Mr. Saavik."
A new feature for version 2.0 is the ability to display the HTML source code for a displayed web page. As shown in Figure 18, the code is displayed in Pocket Word.
Figure 19: Somebody save me...
Yet another new feature is the ability to save images through PIE. This feature is accessed through the "Save Picture As..." command now available through the tap and hold menu for pictures.
A number of well chosen and well designed additions to PIE by Pocket Plus make it a much more functional browser.
