yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Guess it's for two reasons:

1. Bad naming. Still too many believe it's a button mapper. In fact the idea for the first version was something like HButton, but with the possibility to see all items (back then, only 5-7 were possible). I thought about renaming, but there'd be too many troubles with compatibility (*.mbi names, internal handling for reactivation, ...) that aren't worth the trouble imho, and after all MortButtons has made it's name for many users anyway. And there still are buttons (on the screen) and the possibility of one app button handling. (Probably a feature used way too rarely...)

2. No need to wish for something if it's already there...

Well, most of the functionality is there, but there's a lot to customize. Skins, "Icons" (even with alpha channel), different backgrounds for each menu, ...

Of course, functionality can be extended with special external apps, like MortScripts or tools for BT/WLAN.

btw: For a future version, I plan to support an open "plugin DLL" interface for "special icons", something similar to the "special tab icons" in SPB PP or MS, like showing an battery icon and its current loading percentage. But it might take a few moths until it's really available. MortPlayer and -Script are waiting for some new releases, too... ;) And it'd like to release the current MB beta, asap, too. Looks quite promising, just have to update all that nasty documentation stuff (manual in German and English - mijn nederlands is vreselijk ;), skinning manual)

Did you try the test version I posted recently? The animations are way faster/smoother than before...

Seems so...

The biggest difference to all the "cubes" were the animations, and compared to SPB Menu esp. the contacts were missing. But both is available now...

But to be honest: If you boil it all down, all those "cubes", the iPhone interface and MortButtons aren't much more than facelifted versions of the icon launchers that were around since Xerox'/Apple's GUI. Or Palm's launcher, to name a PDA version. Though MortButtons started from the different approach of showing a big, easily readable menu that can be used with a single application button. But that's not much different from Alt-Tab tools, too.

Like so often: Nothing really revolutionary, but one of the first in evolution. (Though if Steve Jobs had sold it, it would have been the biggest thing since sliced bread... ;))
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
Just tried it, and it seems that this version broken the gestures support (upgraded from b13). Or is it just me?

After reverting to the original .exe gestures worked fine again.

Can't wait for the new version :) Did semi-transparent menu background or button press confirmation using vibra (requested in this tread) made it in?

Oh, and another thing: Everyone seems to be into the touch-ish cube and iphone-ish slide animations. How about a new crossfade effect for the menus? That's something i haven't really seen in a ppc interface (or at least isn't so cliché as the slide and cube) . Shouldn't be very hard to code - just grab a pixel value from one image substract "x" from it (value of x is from 0 to 255), take a pixel from the second image and substract 255-x from it, add both values and display the pixel. Decrease "x", rinse, repeat ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
So far, nobody else did complain about that, and there's no code change in that regard. Worst case should be that the animations wouldn't work correctly.

Which actions did you assign?

No. The semi-transparent menu background I just missed, but I also don't think it would be good for performance. Also, there'd be the problem of "semi-transparent to what?". Easiest would be the screen contents before invoking, but what about transparency to user images? And it might spoil the style when the user selected something other than "menu background".

Vibra confirmation isn't practicable to realize because there's no unified API for that in Windows Mobile (unless in the non-touchscreen version). For touchscreen devices, the vibrator is handled like an LED. Sadly, the LEDs are numbered, and there's no standard which LED number is assigned to the vibrator... (The usual rant - WM has way too many important functions implemented in a device dependant way...)

Maybe I'll add it one day... It's not too hard to program, true, but it's still much more work than a slide animation, which isn't much more than copying two pictures (old and new) with different offsets. It's probalby even a bit more code than for the cube, because I was able to use system functions for stretching there, while there's none for fade effects. And I'm not sure how long it takes to do that 230400 (240x320x3 color bytes) resp. 921600 (480x640x3) times for each animation image...

Update: tried it... it takes about 5 seconds on my device (QVGA) for a single image. The pixel routines (GetPixel/SetPixel) seem to be painfully slow...
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
Left/right for next/prev page and up/down for back/close. Maybe it was just something with my WM5 (no time to change it ;) ) or fTouchSL. I'll experiment a bit more with it.

I was thinking of the "semi-transparent" just being a variation of "transparent" background - since MB captures the screen just before showing up to display it in the "transparent" mode, i guess the screen could be as well tinted with the background color defined in the skin. Then the transparency level could be defined in menu settings, after choosing the "semi-transparent" menu background mode.

Yeah i know. But on the other hand flashing a LED would be nice too for a confirmation. And if you didn't want people complaining about this confirmation mode not working you could always label it as "power user" feature accessible only trough registry setting and used on user's own responsibility :P And there could be always some kind of confirmation that would work for everyone - like playing a sound or something. Or maybe drawing the button highlight before starting to load the next menu.

Well, the fade step doesn't have to be 1, it could as well be 8 or 16. And one more thing: you mean the GetPixel/SetPixel that get the pixel color from the screen and place a pixel on the screen? Doesn't the SetPixel function redraw the entire screen after setting a pixel? If that's the one then no wonder it's slow :P Sorry if it's a dumb question (i have next to no experience with the windows gdi, if that's what you're using) but wouldn't be easier to access the bitmap data directly in the memory and draw the entire frame only after changing every one of its pixels?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] ruebyi:
Mort Buttons must be in the exclosures List for Ftouchsl!
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
Yeah, i know that. I have an exception set for exe name, not the window name too, so ftouchSL shouldn't really kick in here. Downloading the newest executable to check it again...
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
At least paging should work, I use that, too. But for back/close there also weren't any changes.

Did you try a different name for the exe, so FTouchFloSL didn't recognize the program?

Oh, OK, I thought more about something like an "alpha-image layer". Interesting idea, maybe I'll add it in a later version.

If that works... Some devices simply ignore the API calls for LEDs.

Hm, yes, might come in an update.

In theory, it already does. But sometimes the program is faster than Windows' screen update...

That's calculated depending on the animation duration anyway. But I was talking about a single frame of the "animation" (which is rather a very slow slideshow...).

Almost. From a device context, but not the screen's DC but DCs assigned to bitmaps containing the previous and the new image contents. And SetPixel goes to either the screen or a buffer image. Speed isn't much different there, so I don't think SetPixel to the screen's DC redraws the entire screen.

It would be easier to access the bitmap data directly if Windows Mobile would allow that. There's no function to get or set the pixel of a bitmap directly. Windows only allows two ways to get a pixel: Select the bitmap to a DC and use GetPixel or read the data from the data array of a DIB (device independant bitmap). The latter requires about 1,5-3MB additional main storage (for the device independent image data), and because Windows Mobile doesn't implement GetDIBits to convert an image to a DIB, I've got to create a compatible new DIB and BitBlt the original image to it. It's a pretty awkward work, and I still have to check whether it's any help...

Update: With DIBs, it works quite OK. Will probably be included in the next update.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
Okay there's something wrong on my side - after disabling FtouchSL, rebooting and enabling them again MB gestures work fine.

Okay, didn't know that WM didn't support GetDIBits like the "big windows". I guess it's one of these moments that knowing only a little about GDI (and the x86 version) is much worse than not knowing anything at all ;)

But it's great to hear that you made it work anyway :)

[EDIT]

The animations do seem faster on the latest build - especially the zoom effect. The cube still isn't very smooth, but it don't see this as a problem - the cube effect is overrated and i don't use it anyway ;)

[/EDIT]
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
OK. Still strange, but who knows what happened there...

Knowing about Windows GDI is bad enough... ;)

Sometimes, it really hurts your brain. All those DCs, device dependant and independant bitmaps, (de)selecting objects to DCs, different ways to bring it to the screen (screen DC or WM_PAINT/Invalidate), limitations (e.g. only 5 screen DCs in WM), all image modification routines only for DCs (why no direct ones for DIBs?), ... Why simple if there's a complicated way to do it?

The duration is the one set in the display settings anyway, it's just smoother - at least on most devices (and if not used by MyMobiler, PocketController or something like that...).

And here's a first go with crossfade (and some major internal rework depending on it, and minor other features and "not so nice, but not really a bug"-fixes).
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
And that's why i rather stick to SDL - not only it's much simpler, but if i need to, i can easily run my app on linux ;) Should even work on WinMo (ScummVM uses SDL), but i never had time to play around with it myself.

The crossfade looks sweet :) Unfortunately, all other effects seem to be much less smooth :( I guess that's because of the need to get DIB section out of bitmaps?

A while ago i've seen a GDI function AlphaBlend(). If i remember correctly, it doesn't require doing per-pixel operations by hand, and works pretty much like bitblt() (or whatever it't called ;) ). Doesn't winMobile support something like this? Or is it just winXP (and above) feature?

[EDIT]

I've found it on MSDN. I don't know if it's of any use, but might be worth checking out:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms532274(VS.85).aspx

[/EDIT]
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
With this version, the old animations should be as smooth as in the first test exe again. The DIBs are only used for the fade effect now.

As it was to be expected, the AlphaBlend function only exists for XP and Vista.

Maybe I should start getting into SDL, seems to simplify some of the GDI stuff... And who knows what will happen to WM anyway, once Linux smartphones are more than toys for developers and nerds...
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
Ah just to late with some ideas for a new version ;)

While configuring the buttons i came across to things that might iprove configurability.

One is when you go to select an icon of a dll and need to tap next for next icon.

It takes 300 taps in shellres.96.dll (at least).

It would be handy if keeping the next button pressed would result in a speedier step (skip 10 icons and doný actually draw them to screen)

Another one was that i made a camera button replacement with the different camera type options.

And i wanted to add the command line parameters -i/-v/-p.

Doing it directly in the MBI wasn't the best idea in a text editor.

So i made extra shortcuts.

But it would be even beter if you could simply add a parameter in mortbuttons itself.

Just some ideas. I know i can get around these but it would extend configuring.

Cheerz
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
Works like a charm - i like the startup fade-in effect :) Speed (or rather framerate) of the crossfade effect for menu transitions is more than acceptable. And all other animations are extra-smooth again. Thanks a lot for the update :)

Yeah, SDL is quite simple, especially considering the fact that besides supporting screen drawing, it also has some i/o functions (mouse support, loading/saving images, etc) so in most cases you can simply forget about any OS-specific calls. And i'm sure it will support Android too (if it doesn't already) ;) If you consider getting into it, i recommend taking a look at this:

http://www.ferzkopp.net/joomla/content/view/19/14/

It additionally simplifies graphical operations.

And for a bit more PocketPC-specific coding, there's the PocketHAL - from what i've seen it's also VERY fast and efficient.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
Okay i have thanked you just a few posts before.

But here i do it again.

I can theoretically literally make a Commmanager using your Mortscript and MortButtons.

For me not having no Programming skills is an enlightenment.

So thanks for opening that creativity center of mine.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Yes, I know, that's not the best solution... I rather think about some list box with all icons or something like that, a "keep pressed" button is a bit difficult with Windows' standard controls.

Well, that's not that easy to implement in a user friendly way. For .lnk files (i.e. entries in the start menu), it's impossible without getting other drawbacks (e.g. getting some icons where WM uses internal workarounds for .lnk files). And for other executables, it'd be quite nasty if a popup dialog for the parameter would appear for every added entry...
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
Cool Beans,

Looks like you where ahead of thess Ideas to.

You Explanation makes me understand it (Sort of ;) )

Besides i found the Screen build up is faster in the menu, when not using icons way up in the number 300 spot in a DLL, and using png file instead
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
How about making the file path box editable, so we can add parameters there? Or making the target wile path box a bit narrower and adding a small button that would allow to add additional command line parameters to the right of it? This box usually doesn't display anything very useful anyway (unless you call "\Windows\Menu Start\Progr" or "\Storage Card\Program Files\" useful ;) ) so making it a bit shorter won't hurt.

It's not a big deal, if i need a command line parameter i simply make a proper shortcut in app's dir but still would be nice to have it available directly in MB.

And another question: How do i make a transparent skin work with latest builds? For example the buttons in stock "TransAqua1" skin should be transparent since the "DefBackCol", "SelBackCol" entries seem to be removed and "TransCol" is set to "image". But i still get black background beneath the buttons and only the spacers (the ones without a button displayed) are transparent. Can anyone check if the transparency works with this skin?

Not to mention that PNG icons usually look much better (full 8-bit transparency) ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Trouble there is to separate the program path from the paramters. Even if I'd include quotes, one might remove them, and MortButtons would try to execute "\Program" with the parameters "files\something\app.exe -param1 -param2". ;)

Well, at least it's a bit more useful since 2.5. You should be able to focus it and scroll the contents, too, iirc.

Yes, there's a small bug that causes this if you use "transparent" as background style. As a simple workaround, you could use "Today theme". I'll fix it tonight or tomorrow.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
Okay So this means i can still try the 20% Black Transparent Background to emulate fade effect then soon

I had the same black backdrop experience.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Wow, didn't expect so many to use "transparent". I think "Today theme" is more handy, because the brigthness and details don't differ that much...

Here's an interim test version. It should fix the transparency bug.

Additionally, I've changed the handling for own colors and fonts. Now there's no "user settings" vs. "Skin settings" anymore, but you can choose "Skin default" or "transparent" (for menu entry background) in a new color selection dialog for each element. Likewise, there's a "(default)" selection for the font.

The RGB color input fields don't work so far (the sliders do), I'll do that tomorrow. Also some translation support is still missing.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] eyecrispy:
MortButtons and UL

Is there any way to have the different button pages display on an UltimateLaunch page without having to press each individual button??

To clarify, I used to have my 5 MortButtons displaying under my HTC Home but now, I would like to have each page of MortButtons as a separate plugin in UltimateLaunch.

Is that possible?
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
You mean MortButtons itself as Today plugin? No, that's not possible.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] aydc:
Very very great program Mort. I'm using MortPlayer, MortScript and MortButtons and they are all great.

With regards to MortButtons, I think it's close to perfect, but it opens with a delay. I'd rather it would come up suddenly.

I've disabled all transitions, but Buttons1 still comes up with a transition. I've set the delay to 300ms which is the lowest possible value. I'd rather set it to 0ms.

Is there a way? I'd prefer speed to a smooth transition effect any day.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] eyecrispy:
Yea, what I was hoping for is to be able to select the individual buttons as a today plugin so that each UL virtual page can execute one of those buttons instead of having me press into each one.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
Taking this as a hint .

I'm taking a look at your Dutch Lang File ;)

Made some adjustments to it.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
There'll be a selection for the program start transition in the upcoming update.

Sorry, but programming Today plugins is a bit more complicated than "normal" apps, and (at least) 5 separate plugins might break Windows Mobile's 13 plugins limit (if there are more, they vanish from the item selection list or Windows acts strange otherwise). It still might come one day, but not anytime soon.

@Noonski: Sorry, that's been a bit too early. There'll be some more translations for the upcoming update... New color dialog, new icon selection, parameter field, start transition, ...

But thanks anyway... :)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
OK, next go.

Changes:

- better icon selection

- selection of start transition

- different (hopefully better) display of selected entry

- editable parameters for .exe files

- BackOverlay=... in skins to overlay background images with the background color. Values range from 0 (quite useless, invisible) to 255 (image becomes invisible). Used for all kinds of background images, i.e. BackImg, transparency, own images, ... For own backgrounds, the color defined there is used. You might need to change it to "Skin default", for new user backgrounds it's default.

Update: Fixed a small bug that might have caused wrong background for the selected menu entry.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] mr_deimos:
Thanks for the update :)

Passing parameters for executables works great, and so does the BackOverlay - exactly what MB needed to take advantage of transparent backgrounds without losing any readability:)

However i've found a small glitch in the latest builds. I think it started in b15, but i'm not entirely sure.

I have three main menus, with two of them linked into the first one, so part of my menu structure looks like this:

Main
|
|->Programs-\
| |->Text
| |->Multimedia
| |->Internet
| |->(some more submenus)
|
|
|->Settings-\
| |->(some other submenus)
|
|
|->(Some more stuff)

Where "Main", "Programs" and "tools" are main menus ("MortButton 1", "MortButton 2" and "MortButton 3").

I have the "up" finger gesture configured as "back", and launch MB by launching Button1.mbi (opens the "Main" menu).

So when i was in "Internet" submenu and i executed the "up" gesture i was taken to the "Programs" menu, and when i did the gesture again. i was taken back to "Main" menu, where i started. But recently, executing the "up" gesture in the "Programs" menu causes MB to exit instead of goint to the main menu.

If it's intentional behavior, it's not a big deal since i can just modify the "Programs" and "Settings" menus to be custom submenus - i never use the button selection list anyway. But i'm letting you know just in case it wasn't intended ;)
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
I try having a social life for once and just before i wanted to Reflash you bring out a new Beta.

What about your other Projects.

:D

I hope to Finish New Beta Rom With no Start Menu items forcing use of your Menu, this Weekend.

Althought it's not meant to Run straight from windows it's working great.

Except for Trying to get to Setup Menu Which i have taken out since i haven't paid attention on getting it to work completely from there.

Not mentioning yet where the Menu's are made with MortButtons yet. I'm really curious if people are resourceful enough to check my last Posts. and find this post right here.

I'm hoping for positive Feedback and if they like it i'll tell them What it's made from. Just posting it here as proof that i have no bad intentions in not mentioning you.. yet.

And i'm also a forgetful guy but i need to Post my Skin as soon as i have also added Landscape references in.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Must have been way before, I didn't change anything regarding the "Back" handling since a few betas.

No, the only thing that was intended was that the "Back" stack is cleared when you enter the main menu selection, to avoid it gets just too big if you use "Menu" - "Main menu" a few times... I think it shouldn't be too hard to fix...

Well, social life and being in this forum doesn't work together all too fine... ;-)

Oh, yes, they'd need some updates, too... I just wanted to be done with MortButtons, because it's "almost finished" (at least for the next update, the planned "free icon and label" plugin interface can wait for a while...).

OK, but consider it might make sense to build an update with the "stable" (or rather "more public") update within a week or two.

Well, it's just a common program, so it runs from everywhere. ;-)

Just run Setup.mbi. Or did I misunderstand something?

Do not underestimate the people here. It might well be you get a "Nice use of MortButtons" reply quite quickly... ;)

Sure, just go ahead... And post it in my forum at www.sto-helit.de, too, please.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Noonski:
I think Setup not working might have to do maybe with me not setting the correct attributes to it.

I have only changed Read Write Atributes to the Buttons at the moment.

(running a mortscript in Autorun that then cleans itself)

Something for tonight to change.

Yup, off course it works from Windows folder :o Changing readonly did the Job.
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Just some minor changes... (icon preview in menu settings, some small bugs fixed, including the "back to main menu" one).
[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] Mort:
Some more bugfixes and a little modification when you go back from submenus...