Written by PatrickJ on Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Today Screen – Lean & Clean, Or All Styled Up?


Today screen screencap 

Is there such thing as ‘Too Much’ on your Today screen?  Does style win out over function and performance? 

On a Windows Mobile device, the Today screen is the focal point of many users’ daily activities.  Some people hardly ever leave this screen, managing schedule, tasks, messaging and contacts, always within the Today screen.

It’s also the place where most of our ‘personalizing’ of our devices takes place. Applying themes, wallpapers, and numerous Today screen plugins.

Fine-tuning your Today screen – finding your favorite plugins, and turning off those you don’t care for, adding more powerful apps like Pocket Plus or Wisbar Advanced, and getting your tabs / icons / shortcuts laid out pefectly for ease of use – is one of the best ways you can generally get maximum value out of your usage of a Pocket PC. And it’s certainly one of the ways that most of us start ‘bonding’ with our device.

So, my question for today is: How much do you like to add to your Today screen? Do you keep your add-ins to a minimum and  spend more time working within individual apps?  Run your whole day off the Today screen?  Apply slickly designed themes and customize your color schemes?

I believe there are trade-offs to keep in mind when working out your ideal treatment of the Today screen – quick access to a wide range of apps, status meters, and documents vs. clean, clear space to work in. High-powered add-ins bring some great features, but many of them can also be a pretty major strain on resources and slow your system down considerably. 

I’ve found over time that I like to try to keep the Today screen as simple as possible – much more so on a converged device (with smaller screen). On my 8125, I have very few Today screen items selected (usually Device Lock, NewsBreak, PhatNotes, and iLauncher – screenshot above is different because I was testing out GPRS Monitor). On an Axim X51V, I run Wisbar Advanced, because the bigger screen and faster processor can handle it.

What’s your Today screen strategy? 

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Conrad
Jul 19, 2006

Wisbar advanced… I used to screw around with changing out themes, but got tired of the effort, so now I have a “default” one that I haven’t messed with in months

PocketBreeze (and contacts and weather and iLancher)

on Axim x50v


Steve
Jul 19, 2006

I like to keep things as minimal as possible so…

TodayTime
PocketMax’s phoneAlarm
SPB Diary
MarsWare Weatherpanel
Treo 700w Speed Dial

Nothing has much graphics or “eye candy” in my list. I’ve toned it all down or used the base default skins so they load much faster.


netsyd
Jul 19, 2006

Good question really… I find it hard (and still am finding it hard) to reach a happy medium on the 8125. With my Axim it’s really quite simple to figure out what to put on the today screen since there’s so much real estate that I could park an aircraft carrier on there and still have space, but the 8125 is almost like having a Yugo.

Currently on the 8125 I’ve got:

PocketBreeze
GPRS Monitor
Device Lock

Now, don’t take that to mean I have everything else running standalone, because I don’t. Inside PocketBreeze (and the biggest feature of it as far as I’m concerned) I’ve got tabs setup for:

SBSH Weather
Newsbreak
Spb Backup

As for customizing the today screen with themes … well that’s where I’m a bit more like I am with my desktop. I switch between themes pretty often, mainly because I get bored with one over the other, or I find that my daily data gets blocked out due to a poor choice of text color vs the background. In most cases I end up making my own theme (ThemeGenCE) because it’s so simple and because my tastes a lot of the time don’t match what’s available online.

Great example of this was the other day when I came across a wallpaper (1024×768) of Sayuri from Memoirs of a Geisha. Good luck finding a theme from that movie that just has Sayuri on it. Thanks the ThemeGenCE I saved the wallpaper and had it converted into a WM5 compatible theme in about 3 minutes…

Anyway, there’s my 2 cents =)


Solsie
Jul 19, 2006

I want to have everything I need as I turn my device on. Since I need more than the screen real estate allows, so PocketBreeze comes to the rescue with mutile layers display w/tabs.
Basically in descending order:

-Wisbar Advance
-WeatherPanel
-PocketBreeze -> Tabs: iLauncher/Notes/Messaging/Newspanel/Task

See here with all funtionalities:
http://solsie.com/Themes/Vista%20Portable.png
http://solsie.com/Themes/Vaio%20Leather%20Preview.png
http://solsie.com/Themes/Nista%20Preview.png

When I am not in “business hours”..I can use NoTodayPlugin to turn off the business part, as seen here:
http://solsie.com/Themes/Wild_Blue%20Preview.png
http://solsie.com/Themes/Whista%20Preview.png


Van
Jul 19, 2006

Axim X51v

Basic Black theme with white text only. ilauncher at the top with six unstyled tabs displaying between 8 and 12 icons on single rows (forced blank row below for a bit of breathing room), Spb Diary below iLauncher and Spb Backup reminder above the tray. Tray has WR-Tools battery and storage indicators as well as the usual WiFi and Bluetooth icons. The soft keys are PhatNotes (left) and Total Commander (right). I reset the Home button to toggle between horizontal and vertical display. The Start menu contains only Internet apps and utilities.

I’ve played with a few other configurations but settled on this one because it’s clean and my principle apps are all easily accessed. If I want to look at pretty pictures or lots of colours I can choose between slides shows or videos or MP3 player visualizations.

My two bits.


PatrickJ
Jul 19, 2006

Hey Van – wow, great detail, and sounds like a very effective setup – like PhatNotes assigned to a Softkey – I’ve found I like the PhatNotes Today plugin so I can get back to a recently modified note quickly. Real nice ideas there – thanks for that …


Van
Jul 20, 2006

Thanks Patrick. Neglected to mention HandySwitcher on the Start Bar, and that the Today Lines are also black. :-) I understand where you’re going with your PhatNotes configuration. I tend to use PhatNotes for more complicated text work, especially notes I want to keep working on. I use it as well to store passwords and keys in protected notes, and occasionally I’ll e-mail from it. For brief and short term notes I use WM5 Notes. They’re accessible via Spb Diary, either as pop-ups or opened in the app itself.


PatrickJ
Jul 20, 2006

HandySwitcher = love that app, have for a long while now. PhatNotes really has a lot of cool features, like the protected notes etc. One other that I’m hoping is going to be very cool for notes is OneNote Mobile – UI for it right now is very bare-bones, but am hoping that they can do a lot more with it, and love the OneNote 2007 desktop version …

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