There are several launchers available (freeware, shareware and trialware) for your PalmOS device. In-fact, this concept has spawned a whole genre of its own, To me, one outstanding launcher stands out in the crowd.

It goes by the rather unimaginative name of "ScreenButton", shortened to "ScrBtn". And it is freeware to boot!

Read on for some views on why ScrBtn is oustanding …

ScrBtn allows you to divide the screen into a matrix of any size (upto 9×9) and assign any application (or special action) to the matrix locations. You can launch the selected application by touching the appropriate location on the screen (that’s where "ScreenButton" comes from). Further, ScrBtn allows you to have several "pages" of such screens and customize how you want to navigate between these pages, maybe via the 5-way or even by configuring the screen buttons themselves.

Unlike the Palm default launcher, this scheme does not shuffle around icons when you install or delete software from your Palm as the applications stay put at the location you have assigned them. This is a big advantage; you can simply let your fingers touch the appropriate location without searching for an application. After some time, this launching action becomes a reflex as you don’t need to read or interpret the icons.

There is just one problem: Setting-up all this is time-consuming (but simple enough) and you do need to read the user manual at-least once! But once set-up, operation is smooth and becomes second-nature.

Each button location is further customizable; you can assign any name (or none at all) to the application location. Optionally, you can have "labels" that display status information from the device (battery status, date, time, memory etc.).

There is more to ScrBtn than just this, and being fully customizatable, you’ll discover the best way it can work for you.

What you get:

• It’s fast
• No nasty artefacts, simply does what it says on the box.
• Not resource hungry
• Does not mess around with other software
• Allows launching of applications from ANY directory in the SD memory.

What we’d like to see in ScrBtn:

• Launching of DA’s.
• More label types to display additional information (DB Cache etc.)
• Better support for launching applications from the SD memory (like PowerRun).
• Support for shortcuts – type letters to select and launch the application.

Downlad ScreenButton from:

http://www.palmgear.com/?xyz=54146

The latest version is 2.39 released on 29-Jul-2006.

Tags:

Palm Launcher applications, ScreenButton, ScrBtn, Just Another Mobile Monday