Mobility Site - View Single Post - The Button Enhancer Bible & great button config tips for Opera Mobile / Mini users

Menneisyys · 10-21-07, 06:38 AM

UPDATE (10/21/2007): After publishing the Bible, Spb Pocket Plus 4.0 was released. It has received a brand new and pretty cool button enhancer module as well, along with tons of very nice, other enhancements; for example, a greatly enhanced Internet Explorer plug-in (see THIS for more info). It supports hold mode but no other modes and uses the system-level Button applet; however, it also allows for redefining the OK button (but no softkeys / phone buttons / volume buttons or slider). It offers no goodies like app-specific settings, additional input chars etc. It sports several additional system goodies and provides access to all system settings applets. All in all, while it's certainly not the most feature-packed button enhancer, taking the indeed high-quality and very useful (albeit a bit buggy, but these bugs will surely be ironed out shortly) other modules and features of the suite, I highly recommend it. Again, unless you want advanced button enhancement features only other apps offer.

Note that I’ve added a new column on the app in the chart.

Other news / additions

As opposed to what I've stated, it’s possible to override the Internet Explorer button on the keyboard of the HTC Universal; see THIS. However, it’s not known whether it’s possible to do the same with the also hard-wired Messaging button.
There are some very nice and useful uses of the more advanced button enhancers; for example, passing Page Up / Down. If you’ve ever used water’s SmartSkey (one of my favourite tools), you know it has redefined (in addition to the WM5 softkeys) the volume slider of the Wizard / Universal on the non-Today / non-Phone screen to send Page Up / Down events to the active program. This can be overly useful in programs like Web browsers. To find out whether the tested apps are able to do so, check out the “(Additional) keyboard / D-pad emulation?” and the “Volume buttons / slider redefinable?” rows. The latter show whether the slider / volume buttons can be redefined. Of course, if they can’t be, you can still send PgUp/PgDn events to your apps – just assign them to another (supported and existing) hardware button. Also see THIS for more user reports / opinions on this feature.
I’ve added a new row, “Does it override (ignore to take into account) the global lock setting?” on the behavior when locked. As the vast majority of the button enhancers use their own code to access the buttons, some of them (for example, PQZ) doesn’t adhere to the locked state and will, therefore, execute the assigned app even in locked state, which isn’t necessarily what you want. See for example THIS for more user posts / opinions on this matter.

10-21-07, 06:38 AM	#4 (permalink)
Menneisyys Contributing Reviewer Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 4,579 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post	UPDATE (10/21/2007): After publishing the Bible, Spb Pocket Plus 4.0 was released. It has received a brand new and pretty cool button enhancer module as well, along with tons of very nice, other enhancements; for example, a greatly enhanced Internet Explorer plug-in (see THIS for more info). It supports hold mode but no other modes and uses the system-level Button applet; however, it also allows for redefining the OK button (but no softkeys / phone buttons / volume buttons or slider). It offers no goodies like app-specific settings, additional input chars etc. It sports several additional system goodies and provides access to all system settings applets. All in all, while it's certainly not the most feature-packed button enhancer, taking the indeed high-quality and very useful (albeit a bit buggy, but these bugs will surely be ironed out shortly) other modules and features of the suite, I highly recommend it. Again, unless you want advanced button enhancement features only other apps offer. Note that I’ve added a new column on the app in the chart. Other news / additions As opposed to what I've stated, it’s possible to override the Internet Explorer button on the keyboard of the HTC Universal; see THIS. However, it’s not known whether it’s possible to do the same with the also hard-wired Messaging button. There are some very nice and useful uses of the more advanced button enhancers; for example, passing Page Up / Down. If you’ve ever used water’s SmartSkey (one of my favourite tools), you know it has redefined (in addition to the WM5 softkeys) the volume slider of the Wizard / Universal on the non-Today / non-Phone screen to send Page Up / Down events to the active program. This can be overly useful in programs like Web browsers. To find out whether the tested apps are able to do so, check out the “(Additional) keyboard / D-pad emulation?” and the “Volume buttons / slider redefinable?” rows. The latter show whether the slider / volume buttons can be redefined. Of course, if they can’t be, you can still send PgUp/PgDn events to your apps – just assign them to another (supported and existing) hardware button. Also see THIS for more user reports / opinions on this feature. I’ve added a new row, “Does it override (ignore to take into account) the global lock setting?” on the behavior when locked. As the vast majority of the button enhancers use their own code to access the buttons, some of them (for example, PQZ) doesn’t adhere to the locked state and will, therefore, execute the assigned app even in locked state, which isn’t necessarily what you want. See for example THIS for more user posts / opinions on this matter. __________________ MS MVP- Mobile Devices.