[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] Sian:
What I think about this...

Think I'm one of the few privileged 'early bird' who get to test out this greatly improved version of FTouchFlo by efrost! Most of us here at xda-developers are no stranger to FTouchFlo, as well as EfrostMinimize, two great programs which made our experience in using our PPC a much pleasant one.

For those who don't quite know about FTouchFlo, in essence, FTouchFlo allows PPC users to perform scrolling without using the default tiny scroll bar that comes with WM OS. It also allows user to append different programme (for the 4 directions - up, down left & right) which will be launched by the swiping gesture of one's finger on the PPC screen.

FTouchSL has brought the above functions to yet another level. Check their official website - www.ftouchsl.com for the details. As I was greatly 'blessed' by this application, I thought I should share with all my take of & experience in using this software. Hopefully for those who are still wondering what this is or contemplating on getting it will find my 'sharing' helpful.:D

Quick Start Tutorial

I find the 'Quick Start Tutorial', put together by efrost and team to guide users (especially those who are totally new) through all the functions of FTouchSL, was very well done and useful. It will launch after the installation. Try not to skip it.

Scrolling

The scrolling under FTouchSL is much better than FTouchFlo, especially with the newly added kinetic function (like the one in PocketCM and iContact), which is a nice touch to the scrolling effect, and making scrolling through long pages (e.g. Contact listing) a breeze.

In addition, you can freely roam about a big page (e.g. web page) by keeping your finger on the screen and just move around in the direction you want, horizontally, diagonally etc.

Gestures

Instead of just launching application/files, now user can also launch plug-in (e.g. Minimize, Suspend, Soft reset, etc) and send keys (feature that simulate key press of D-Pad) for the four directions!

Active Corners

This is something new, not found in FTouchFlo. Basically, one can assign applications/functions to be launched at the 4 corners, just like gesture.

Setting Panel

Setting Penal has all the features clearly listed, with nicely drawn icons which makes it clear which feature it is, at one glance. A picture does speak a thousand words!

You can really tell efrost and team put in a lot of effort to make the Setting Panel user-friendly. You can actually see the 'zone' (colored) which you can customize for gesture and active corners, and not just trying to second guess how big 40 x 40 pixels is!!

Configuration

Personally, I find the ability to configure (in depth!) the various features display how much improvements was done to FTouchSL as compared to FTouchFlo.

You can customize the delay time for scrolling, gesture and active corners i.e. how long your finger need to be in contact with the screen for 'scrolling/ gesture/active corners' function to kick in. I prefer 300 milliseconds (ms) for gesture instead of the 500ms, and a shorter 600 or 800ms for active corner, rather than 1000ms. Then again, this is really individual preference. :p

As mentioned earlier, you can also customize how big the 'zone' for gesture and active corners. For users with bigger fingers like me, we may want to increase from 40 pixels to say 50. Oh yes, the zone need not be symmetrical.

Exclusion

Ok, here's the most exciting bit - Exclusion. While FTouchFlo allows you to exclude applications from using FTouchFlo, FTouchSL allows more than that. You can actually customize, for those applications which may not require FTouchSL (thus you want to include them in Exclusion list), which feature to be excluded. Meaning, do you want to exclude everything, or just the scrolling, with gesture and active corners enabled, etc. :D Interesting right!? Wait, there is more!

You can actually choose which gesture and corner to be enabled!! And you can also customize a different set (from the main one) of actions/applications to be activated by gesture/active corners for each and every application!! So, FTouchSL can be set to launch different applications for the Down-Up swipe gesture for Inbox, ereader etc. just an example!

efrost has shared a good one - customize left and right gesture to activate send key 'left' and 'right' in tmail. When you are in your Inbox, you can switch to from SMS to MMS to Outlook, etc by just swiping left and right!

Think the possibilities are only constrained by one's imagination. Do share with us if you find some combinations to be really good!

Some Possible Enhancements

I also notice some possible enhancements (mostly cosmetic and presentation, rather than functionality) which efrost and team can consider.

1) The Setting Panel is a bit too small for my rather big finger. Making it bigger would be nice. My preference goes to something like the Config Panel for S2U2.

2) Also, the inverted triangle for the drop down list panel for customizing actions for gesture and active corner is a bit too close to the right edge for comfort use.

3) More write-up/description for each item in the Setting Panel would be helpful I think, especially for new users.

E.g. Instead of just a word 'Delay', how about a short line saying 'The time you need to press on the screen'.

4) Personally, I would like to see a 'cooler' icon for this product. ;)

So far I have no problem using this application on my Trinity. Doesn't lock up my device nor causing it any problem after using it for days. If you're still hesitant or doubtful about how good this application is, just give it a try and I believe most of us will not regret paying a small sum for such a great improvement FTouchSL does to our experience in using our PPC!

Sian