[General Topics] Menneisyys:
1.1 Spb Pocket Plus 4

As has already been mentioned in my quick review of the IEM plug-in of Spb Pocket Plus, the, particularly with the new and indeed vastly improved version, highly recommended all-in-one system helper application, there’s built-in support for changing the system-level file dialog to something much better.

If you do get Spb Pocket Plus 4+, your problems are already solved: after installing it, the new file dialog will take effect at once, as can be seen in the following screenshot:

That is, it’ll work just great; you’ll be able to freely navigate the entire directory structure and won’t be flooded with hundreds or thousands of files at the same time, making it pretty hard to find the right one (or even wait for the list to load).

1.2 Y. “Mad Programmer” Nagamidori's FileDialogChanger

Before the (recent) release of Spb Pocket Plus 4, this was the suite I recommended the most for Windows Mobile users. Now that Spb Pocket Plus 4 also supports this functionality AND is a highly recommended all-in-one tool, I no longer do this - FileDialogChanger won't be needed any more if you go the Spb Pocket Plus 4 route. If you, however, don't (or REALLY need the exception defining capabilities, which I explain in the next subsection), make sure you get and install FileDialogChanger.

Get THIS ZIP file, extract gsgetfile.dll from the ARMRel directory and transfer it to \Windows on your Pocket PC. Then, get THIS file and, from the ARM directory, copy filedlgchg.cpl also to \Windows. Note that you MUST right-click these two links and select Save As to directly save it - if you just left-click it (as usual), you'll be taken to an error page because of the invalid referrer.

Now, go to Settings / System and tap the new File Dialog Changer icon and make sure you enable the Exchange Standard File Dialog checkbox as can be seen in the following screenshot:

That’s all; now, you can safely traverse the file system when adding attachments (or, again, looking for a file to load - or, a directory to save your current one to). Note that, unlike with Spb Pocket Plus, there’s no a quick drop-down tree list containing the current directory, all its parents the storage card(s). However, you can always use the left softkey (up) to go up to the parent (to the root, as it starts with \My Documents), where you can already click Storage Card (or any other directory):

1.2.1 Defining exceptions

Note that Mad Programmer’s FileDialogChanger also allows for defining exceptions (Spb’s program is incapable of this). That is, if, for some reason, you do not want to rely on the new file dialog in a given program, just add the given application to the exception list. For example, you prefer seeing all your, still sticking with emulators, ROM files on your PDA at once, and don’t want to manually navigate the directories to find them, then, you might want to add the emulator to the exception list so that FileDialogChanger knows it shouldn't be used with that specific app.

An example with PocketHobbit, the Commodore 64 emulator (discussed HERE), which uses the default file dialog box (screenshot HERE; with Mad Programmer’s tool, HERE). Then, all you need to do is clicking ADD, go to the directory with the executable file and double-click it. In this example, I’ve added all the three EXE files visible in the previous screenshot, resulting in the following exception list:

After this, PocketHobbit will start using the standard file dialog, while the rest of the system (all the other apps) will still use the redefined one - that is, that of FileDialogChanger.

(Note that I’ve chosen this emulator for this explanation not because of its (pretty much missing) merits but because it’s based on the system-level dialog box. If you are really into C64 emulation, forget this emulator at once and go for something better.)

1.3 Why will you want to consider changing the file dialog?

No, not only when you want to add attachments to a mail. The new dialog can be used much more widely. As a rule of thumb, whenever and wherever you’ve, in the past, encountered the standard, dumb and, in many cases, very annoying file dialog control, the new one will be used instead at both loading and saving. Yes, even at saving - for example, when you save Word Mobile files, you can tell the system in exactly which directory it should be stored to as can be seen in THIS screenshot.

As the standard file dialog only lists files under \My Documents in the main memory and files one level deep in the file system of the card (without showing the user where they really come from), in many cases, your only choice will be using third-party file dialogs like these two.

Again, just an example of the utility of these third-party applications: in order to keep the directory structure clean, you keep, for example, your emulator ROM image files two levels deep on your storage card under, say, \ROMs\SNES. Unless you use direct invocation (you click the given file from File Explorer to make the system invoke the associated emulator) and (when you do need them) you don’t copy around these files to a directory already visible to the standard file dialog, you won’t see these files at all. Unless, of course, install a better, third-party file dialog - one of the apps introduced in this tutorial.