Review: SBSH Facade - Another winner for the pros of useability?

Posted by: Brandon Steili on Dec 04 2006 - 3,940 views

 Not long ago I was approached by PatrickJ to see if I was interested in taking a look at SBSH’s new release of Facade 1.2 and naturally I jumped at the chance. SBSH is one of my favorite software developers - and not to plug there abilities too much, but I would be willing to bet that almost everyone reading this has atleast one SBSH program installed on their device, or has in the past on a prior device. Now admittedly I’m VERY new to the Smartphone OS, mainly because to begin with I wasn’t a believer. Not so much that I didn’t believe in the idea of converged devices, but because I didn’t believe in the OS itself. I found it hard to get into, and I still think it’s very broken… so, you wonder why do I own one? Well, the Cingular BlackJack won me over. The OS still hasn’t but the device has. SBSH Facade is one of the reasons I’ve grown to love this device more and more every day… Read on for more.

Ok, so far I’ve admitted a couple things to everybody - I’m a newb to smartphones, I love the BlackJack and that I’m a bit of an SBSH fanboy. Let’s run down what qualifies me "fanboy" … I own and have pushed on my friends: iLauncher, PocketBreeze, PocketWeather and yes, now Facade … which SBSH was kind enough to license to me for this review. Now, again remember they approached us, not the other way around so I definitely intend to be honest in my love of the program and give a few things I wasn’t overly impressed with and somethings I really wish they would do. Moving on.

 

What does it do?

Again, I admitted to being a bit green when it came to smartphones and when I was approached about this review I had had a smartphone for about a week. Obviously I had found in that first week some glaringly obvious things I was missing, but I had yet to really dig into reseaching applications. Facade hadn’t made it onto my list yet … and when I was approached about this I had to SBSH’s website to figure out what it did. Yea, yea I know … pretty sad, but I originally had it and Papyrus confused simply because I had never had a use for them owning PocketPC devices. So … what does it do?

Here’s what it does… it takes this relatively tame Cingular provided homescreen (which by the way lasted an amazing 10 minutes on my phone) and allows you to change it to something much more functional like say this:

Or maybe this:

Or just for fun maybe this:

Now obviously all of this functionality doesn’t come free… but at $14.95 it is pretty reasonable for a program that truely does extend to overall functionality of the smartphone homescreen. So you may be wondering how all of this happens. So was I.

How it all works

How does it work? I have no idea. Remember I’m a smartphone nub. But I did take some time to figure a few things out and admittedly I have a long way to go compared to some of the wizards that have posted new homescreens over the the SBSH Forums. Here’s what I do know:

1. This homescreen is basically built off of XML and utilizes the abilities of custom "plugins" which are identified by the clsid of the plugin. If my understanding is correct a plugin is something of a .dll that is built to provide information/interface with specific aspects of the device. There’s one for the carrier/date/time, one for the calender, one for a built in application launcher and a couple others.

2. If you want "grow your own" homescreen, you better learn some XML.

I can hear the groans now … I have to learn XML?! Well, now you don’t. Atleast you don’t have to, and that’s a lot of what SBSH Facade is all about. Facade can build your (nearly) perfect homescreen for you and save you the trouble of picking up an XML for dummies book (which by the way is out of print). But just in case you think you can do all this on your own … here’s what you have to look forward to:

So that’s what life looks like when you start playing with the XML. If that doesn’t seem all that appealing, there’s this option. 

Now I don’t know about you… but this seems a lot easier on the eyes, and a lot easier for a non-programmer to look at an understand in a hurry. Facade comes with a side of customization in the form of Facade Settings which allows you to customize the look and feel of your homescreen. Everything from the background image to the colors you see on the little divider bars can be customized to suit your personal preferences.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the options you can expect to find:

• Maximum days it should display in the schedule (no you’re not limited to a single calendar item anymore … heck you’re not even limited to a single screen of items)
• Date heading format (I’m personally a fan of this option. I work with a lot of folks overseas and I’ve come to prefer the way the date is written over there)
• Snap back to the top left (I love this … basically you can set the time at which the selection line will head back to the top of the list, which is handy if you move around between programs a lot)
• Separate layouts / font selections / clear type / gap control
• Color control for "almost" everything. (I would have loved to see an option for the soft keys to be customized color wise as well.) Many of us know this as BaseHue.
• And of course … the best feature of them all - the ability to customize the launcher with up to 25 different programs/control options.

The low-down

So, my take on Facade? This is a great application that can give you a lot more homescreen functionality than Windows Mobile 5 gives you right out of the box. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and it doesn’t mean it’s going to solve every isssue that the Smartphone OS has … but it does a great job and SBSH has definitely provided a much needed improvement to the WM5 homescreen. Honestly everything they did should have been included in the OS from the get go - but if Microsoft included everything out of the box - SBSH wouldn’t have much to do.

The 4 core things SBSH has provided are as follows:

1. Easy manipulation of the homescreen design and layout. Unless you feel like editing XML this should be a huge selling point for those looking to customize thier homescreens.  I think this could have been improved by a desktop based editor that would allow the user to design the homescreen by using an editor (sort of like ThemeMaker McDeb). Visualizing the changes you make in the colors/layout is sort of hard to do … but a lot easier to do than just looking at the code.

2. Calendar viewing / manipulation. Obviously only being able to see your next appointment is nice …  but being able to see the next few days worth of appointments is better. I hate having to look at calendar apps. I want tmy information right there in front of me right on the front page … and Facade does that. Can’t ask for anything more and couldn’t be happier.

3. Tasks view. This was something glaringly obvious that was missing from the homescreen… the ability to view what you have to do. DUH! SBSH has added a tab specifically for this… and it’s one of the best additions I’ve found for the homescreen.

4. The launcher tab.  SBSH has taken the already existing launcher and added the option to add shortcuts to your favorite applications, view your battery and memory status (NICE!) and some other custom built ones like an easy reset, power off and homescreen reload.

Getting Technical

Alrighty … so we’ve looked at the base application. But what if you want a bit more? Well, SBSH has you covered there too. Within minutes thanks to their leg work before hand I was coding new layouts and homescreens. How? Well, the guide of course. Now, I can’t explain everything there is about Facade … and I’m definitely not going to profess to be able to tell you everything there is to skinning Facade - but I can tell you this  - looking through the guide is more than enough to get you started and to help you realize the power of customizing the homescreen.

Each section of Facade - the launcher, schedule, tabs and tasks can be almost infinitely configured to look and react how you want them to. You’ll notice my DJBaby theme above doesn’t have any tabs, the launcher is gone and the schedule is the only thing displayed. This was very easy to do thanks to the guide and the excellent documentation that SBSH has done within the homescreen XML file. Each section is clearly documented within the code and tells you what you need to do to activate or deactivate certain aspects of the configuration. If you want a homescreen that just has a launcher with not schedule or tasks … you can do it with Facade. If you want to have a screen that just has your schedule, you guessed it Facade can do it and it only takes a matter of minutes.

I’ll be getting into a skinning editorial / tutorial in the near future so keep an eye out for that.

Conclusion

I’ve said it throughout the review: This is a must have for any smartphone user. You don’t have to be a power user, you don’t have to be a programmer, you just have to be a smartphone user who wants something more from your homescreen. SBSH has definitely hit the mark! I had little to no problems with application since day one and found very few parts where I would have liked to see something more.

[tags]SBSH, Facade 1.2, Smartphone Homescreen[/tags]

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