yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
:)

1) Password protection: though this will not probably be at the top of our priorities, how about if when the list is "locked" we show the same UI that's shown when the program is first installed, with the Monalisa face in the center, and a nice lock overlapped? Then you tap, enter the password and unlock. LOL

In other words, yes, it should be easy to integrate in terms of user interface, but it requires some logic to implement an encrypted password mechanism.

2) This is something that's already on our to-do-list for future releases. The idea is the following: as the whole visual interface only takes a strip of about 70 pixel, how about giving the option of keeping it away from the today screen, and displaying it just as a "popup" that you can display at the bottom of the screen, similiar to the "notification popups"?

Yes... but I'm afraid neither of these will be available exactly "next week"... huh?

So, for the time being, you'll only have to buy it ONCE, not twice!

(I'm joking) LOL :D
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] WunderXDA:
the "infamous" graying out issue can get pretty nasty sometimes, depending on your theme. I really like the idea of being able to use this app from a soft key, maybe even *gasp* replacing the default contact application. I also like it in my today lineup, maybe there could be a user-defined time-out where once it wasn't used for 15 seconds or so then it would no longer be active, and no longer 'grayed out' with that weird colour my theme decided to go with!!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Guess what: I'm already kind of addicted to Face Contact.

I started a couple of months ago with a couple of dozens of contacts, when the software was still lacking many features. Then, after a while, each time I had to run the Contacts application to retrieve a contact I simply couldn't stand it.

So, now each time a need a contact that's not already in my FC list, instead than running the Contacts application, I simply add it to the FC list (from within Face Contact). Even if it doesn't have a picture and shows the default icon, I can still find it easily because of the sort mode.

Then from time to time, I do some cleanup and spend some time on the web looking for photos of people or logos of companies to fill those "holes" in my Face Contact list.

Yes, that's exactly what I would like to understand. If it's just a matter of a nasty definition of the "selection color" in the theme (so it's the theme that should be fixed), or if there's actually something "nasty" and "buggy" in the way Face Contact "draws" that color.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] syrguy1969:
I have the transparency set to as transparent as possible, and I do find I get the grey less than before, but I do still get it occasionally, usually when I am using another app while Face is on the screen, or just coming out of settings. Here is a screenshop I grabbed:

Hope this helps explain our 'grey' issue!!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Thanks!

Yes, it looks like a bad choice of "selection color" in the theme you are using.

I assume you get the same color when other items are select in your today screen, don't you?

Anyway, after seeing your screenshots I thought that we should probably offer an option like this:

Background when selected

- solid color

- half transparent

- transparent

The half trasparent should probably allow to have some feedback that the plugin is selected (so you know you can browse it with the cursor keys), while significantly decreasing the dullness of the solid selection color defined by the theme.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] J Shed:
Sorry, when I was saying grey bar I was referring to the system defined "selection" color, on my theme it's grey and very unsightly. Of course picking a solid background and changing the selection color to match would help, but it would be nice to have an option so the background is always transparent, or have it unselect itself after a few ms of inactivity.

Besides, I'm having a hell of a time even finding the "selected" color in the theme editor. :(
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] J Shed:
Somone beat me to the punch. I like your idea. :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] syrguy1969:
+1 on this idea....I think that would solve the issue a lot of us seem to be dwelling on!!!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] mr.jcarter:
Just an idea...

I'm using this app inside of UL so I find that I cant use the gestures to swipe through the contact pics, which isn't too bad since I only have about contacts 5 on it. But I was thinking maybe have an arrow on the left and right side of the plug-in which if you press once in a certain direction, the pictures will flow once in that direction away, and if you hold the button, the pictures continually "flow". This, along with the ability to alphabetize your contacts would provide great functionality, I think at least.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] WildSioux:
I think this is a great app. But for those who don't use the today screen (such as myself). Is there any way of using this as a stand alone app? I use PointUI and have not used the today screen in about 3 months since finding the PointUI interface. One thing it is missing is a face contact screen. This seems to fit in quite well with the gestures.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
I'm afrad that starting adding arrows and buttons would kill the whole concept: those would only let you advance by a contact at a time, while with gesture you can animate the whole thing quickly.

I'd suggest you to check comments by jomo (I believe) and others in this same thread, as they discuss exactly how to use Face Contact within UL (you just need to exclude the UL gestures for FC: see posts #39 to #50).
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] JNasty:
Centering?

Anyway to keep the contacts centered. As of right now anytime I either change windows using UL or reboot, the face icons always return to the far left and are not filling up the screen from left to right
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
Yes, you CAN DEFINITELY use FC inside of a UL Tab and still use the gestures. You need to check the "Disable Gestures" checkbox for that tab. Then UL ignores your gestures, and lets FC process them as it should.

Now, if you have a full tab that ONLY uses FC, then of course, you can't switch sides of the "cube" unless you use the UL tabs. (I have my tabs set to "0" size so I don't even have tabs). But if you put it as a sub-tab inside of a multi-tab'd tab, then you can still use UL gestures anywhere else in the tab, just not inside the one strip of the FC tab, where FC still "owns" gestures. (Hope this makes sense)

So, I have my one UL tab with FC as such:

Tab MAIN: 246 pixels height

Subtab 1: HTC: HTC Home plugin (Disable Gestures UNCHECKED)

- has 5 pixel borders on top and bottom

Subtab 2: FC: FC plugin (Disable Gestures CHECKED)

- has 3 pixel borders on top and bottom

So, HTC Home takes up the top 2/3s of the screen. And FC the bottom 1/3. If I gesture left/right in the FC section, it moves the pics left/right. If i gesture left/right in the top 2/3 then it switches UL cube sides.

See my screenshot.

I even have the up/down gestures mapped on the MAIN tab to open PocketCM and invoke S2U2 respectively. As long as I start my up/down in the top 2/3 of screen, then it still invokes them. If i start it in the bottom 1/3 then of course, nothing happens, as FC is trying to "read" the gestures. But if you space it out buy using the top/bottom border, you can maximize the UL gesture-capable area and still get the FC scrolling goodness.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Face Contact saves its settings in the registry, so it can restore all options between soft-resets, or if disabled and then enabled again.

BUT it doesn't currently save the "current position", because, being a plugin, it assumes to be always "loaded".

On the other hand, it seems that UL completely "unloads" Face Contact when you switch window, and then it reloads it when you go back. For FC contact this is exactly as being reloaded after a soft-reset, so it shows the beginning of the list.

We will consider saving the position in the list between "sessions", though this may require some sort of "decoupling" to ensure we don't record such changes too often (which would affect performances).
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
That's strange on my UL, the position is "remembered" even when I switch sides. There is a setting to "Save memory and only activatre when visible" and I had it uncheched. But even if i check it, it still remembers. You might try unchecking it if you have it checked on the sub tab with FC in it.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] neodorian:
gabibbo, I hope you don't lose heart and give up on these projects because of crackers. Like this guy says, people who will crack software aren't customers anyway. There's no point wasting time and resources trying in vain to stop people who weren't going to pay for it anyway. Either way, great looking program. I'll try it out later tonight.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] WunderXDA:
Excellent idea! and if the app could timeout after a defined amount of time, I think that would solve a lot of issues!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] cgjones:
Saving Settings

As I flash a new ROM every couple of weeks I asked if there was a way to save the settings of Face Contact and this was the reply from the Support Team . . .

Hello,

sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but for some reason your message ended up in our junk folder.

You can find the Face Contact file in this folder:

\Program Files\CNetX\Face Contact\contacts.fcx

To backup we recommend you to temporarily disable the Face Contact plugin first (just to make sure it is not accessing the file).

To restore the file, again, disable the plugin first (so the file is not "locked"), overwrite with the file you backed up, and then enable the plugin again.

You can enable/disable the plugin from Control Panel, or use the "plugin position" command in the Face Command menu.

One final important note: while the above backup/restore procedure works fine between "soft-resets" (and we have tried it), we are not sure it will produce consistent results after a "hard-reset". We are not really sure about this, but we think that Pocket Outlook generates the ObjectID of each local contact on the device the first time it is synchronized; so it may happen that the same ObjectID may be assigned to a different contact after a hard-reset. This should never be a problems if before your ROM updates you also backup your local/device databases. If not, then we are not really sure if/how this will work,

Hope the above helps.

Best regards,

The CNetX Support Team
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] ahmedfikry:
Text inside UL

Hi jomo25

Thanks for the great advise

did you notice that the names (text) under the contacts don't show anymore when you use UL?

any fix?

Thanks
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
Yes I did notice. I dont know how to fix that. I actually prefer it without the names. I think the developers are now seeing their program could be used inside of apps like UL so the next version may have options to chage that behavior.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] Inclement_Death:
First of all, this app looks great, I just don't have room for it on my today screen.

I have a solution to this issue though; make it auto hide like the start menu in windows. Open it up by using a gesture depending on where the user decides they want it (top, bottom, left side, right side), close when it loses focus or a predetermined amount of inactive time has elapsed.

Can you also add an option to display all outlook contacts.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] WunderXDA:
^bump^ ^bump^ ^bump^ ^bump^ ^bump^ ^bump^ ^bump^

This is EXACTLY how I would like to use this program. That way you could make it a contact default so it could popup in ALL programs, and you could do away with that nasty highlighted background because when it was inactive it would disappear completely! Ooh ooh please allow for default contact management/popup capability/import all contacts at once with an option to display only favorites(perhaps fav's display first, then a quick input opens up all contacts). I was debating on buying this program but if it worked in the way described I would be first in line!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Thanks for your feedback.

This was already on our todo list even before version 1.00 of Face Contact was released last week. We started thinking of this as soon as it appeared clear that, given the little screen estate used by Face Contact, it could probably fit anywhere, independently of the Today screen.

It could probably show up as some kind of popup at the bottom of the screen, like notification popups do.

Of course, such a change has some implications in terms of architecture of the current implementation, so it may not come soon as some of the other improvements that have been suggested here and elsewhere, but it will definitely come.

:)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] kwickone:
Hey, GREAT Program.

Loved the trial and just purchased. I hope you keep on developing!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Thanks for your support! :)

Version 1.00 of Face Contact was released last week, so we will take just a little time to evaluate feedback and ideas we receive, and indeed we will keep on developing! ;)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] lepsyfou:
I am glad that the software I posted like a lot of people and there are a lot of positive returns

je suis content que le logiciel que j'ai posté plaise a beaucoup de monde et qu'il y a beaucoup de retours positifs
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] scottnic:
Fantastic Today plugin.

Maybe this isn't the place to ask this and I should start a new thread...

I've got a "Contacts" tab in UL, and what I'd really like is to have FaceContacts at the top for my frequently-dialed contacts and then a scrollable list of ALL my contacts underneath. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any Today plugins that are JUST contact lists -- or at least none that quite do what I want...

The only one that's even close is Birdsoft Contacting, which has both a picture and a text mode, but in text mode it can display a maximum of 7 lines, so it doesn't fill in all of the available space on my Contacts tab. I've tried reg-editing the pertinent value to something higher than 7 and it messes up the display entirely.

Something like SPB Diary's contact display would be great, but I don't want all the rest of the stuff that comes with that. I know that I can disable everything else, but I DO want the calendar and tasks tabs of SPB Diary on a different UL tab, and as far as I can tell you can't separate them into different Today plugins.

So... Option 1, does anyone know of a good (free would be nice) Today plugin contact list that can be configured to take an arbitrary amount of space vertically?

Or... Option 2, is there any chance of an option being added to FaceContacts to display such a list underneath the photo thumbnails? (again, with user-defined height)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
As far as Face Contact is concerned I'm really not sure if it makes sense switching to "text mode". For text to be readable it needs about 12 pixels per row. So, even displaying just a few contacts will need quite some vertical space.

Furthermore, though Face Contact displays your contacts by picture/icon:

contacts are sorted by name or company, exactly as in a list of contact names: you always know if you need to scroll forward or backward to reach the desired contact, exactly as in a text list;

when scrolling, the letter/position indicator tells you where you are in the list; so even if you overshoot, you have immediate feedback and you can scroll backward or forward as needed (exactly as in a text list);

you can use the thumbboard (or software input panel) to jump to any letter/position without having to scroll sequentially through the whole list.

In other words, you already have basically the same kind of control of a text list, but you have an horizontal/visual layout. And as pictures/icons are easier to spot than "text and names" (especially when scrolling and moving rapidly across the screen), I'm really not sure if switching to text-mode would provide any real advantage.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] kwickone:
Good news! I would like to add a +1 to the request for the background transparent options (full, partial, etc).

If there is a more "official" place to put in enhancement requests, please let me know.

Thanks again.

EDIT: As an add on to this post, can you explain how does FC get its background info? Is it from the current TSK theme? The reason I ask is that I am testing Wisbar Advance Desktop v2 (beta 2). If you look at the attached image, I am getting some image bleeding on FC. Odd that it is even bleeding the top bar as well. The developer over there at Lakeridge SW (Chris) mentioned in passing that there are some APIs that MS created to simulate the transparency. I was wondering if FC uses those, or using some other mechanism. Thanks again.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] cferd:
I went and bought this app after trying it out for only 15 minutes. I never thought, until now, there could be a way to manage all the programs and contacts from the Today screen while keeping the HTC Home big clock, which I love.

All it took was about a week and a half and over 20 hard-resets of my Sprint Touch while testing a bunch of apps, hacks and all sorts of combinations. The right combo finally appears to be SPB Pocket Plus and Face Contact (as a PP Plug-in). They're both awesome and best of all, they allow me to keep the HTC Home plug-in (with no scroll bars) on the Today screen.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
When a plugin needs to repaint, it first asks its parent (the Today screen or whatever app hosts the plugin) to draw the background, and then paints over it. It's the parent of the plugin that actually draws the background, using the theme bitmap (if the plugin is not selected), or the solid selection color (if the plugin is selected).

As far as Face Contact is concerned, we save a copy of what the plugin host paints as the "background", so we can use it during animation. Of course, if the plugin is moved or resized (for example when changing screen orientation), Face Contact invalidates the previously saved background, then asks its parent to redraw the background for the new position/size of the plugin, and once again "saves" this as the background to use during animation.

I don't know exactly what happens with Wisbar; from your screenshot it seems like Wisbar first instantiate the FC plugin at coordinates 0,0 (so the "background" is the navigation bar at the top of the screen). This is indeed quite strange, and I can't explain why Wisbar does this.

Probably, after being "created" at that position, the plugin is "moved" to its final position in the Today screen, but somehow FC doesn't detect this change in its position, so it continues to use the background that was valid when the plugin was first created.

You can try to temporarily change the screen orientation (from portrait to landscape) and see if this causes everything to be repainted properly.

If this is the case, then there's definitely something wrong in the way plugins are instantiated and moved when Wisbar is active.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Reading such comments makes me feel so glad of the time spent working on this project... Thanks!

:)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] xander803:
Great program

Great program that has become my primary contact manager. It was a purchase within 10 minutes of installing. Actually it was a purchase from the get go but it took me about 9 minutes to pry myself away from playing with it . :p Keep up the great work!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] black_shadow69:
Sounds great..

Downloading now..

Thanks...
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] joshrys:
would be great to be able to call OR TXT the person in the photo.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] cferd:
If the phone number is categorized as a "mobile Tel" in contacts, you will see the option to text that number in FC.

I still haven't gotten to the point where I instinctively go to FC for everything associated with a contact, but it'll come in time.

Oh, by the way, I found that ILauncher works even better for me than SPB Pocket Plus, so now FC is a Today plug-in rather than a PP plug-in and still fits perfect.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
Then it is great. Cuz it does that. :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] mawst95:
Anyone know how to use FC within UL running dcinobar so that you can search via the sip? I guess without the SIP popping up there's no way to jump to a specific letter
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
It seems that when you TAP on a plugin within UL, UL doesn't assign the focus to the plugin.

In other words, UL keeps the focus, and relays the "tap" event to the plugin so the latter can react accordingly.

But the plugin never receive the INPUT focus, so it has no way to capture keyboard or SIP events.

For example, if you first interact with FC with the stylus, and then press the left/right cursor keys or even the Action key, you will see that FC doesn't react to such key presses, because UL never passed the input focus to FC.

As this applies to any plugin (not just FC), we don't know if UL will address this in the future.

As it is now, it appears that UL assigns the keboard focus to a plugin only if this is activated using the up/down cursor keys. In this case the plugin receives the input focus, and it has a chance to react to keyboard and sip events.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] mawst95:
Look at how Misurdasoft Search Today implements SIP. When you click on it the SIP appears (without showing the bottom bar). There's a little icon you can then click that says "hide sip". This works perfectly within UL and using dcinobar. It might give you some ideas on how to implement this.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] TdiDave:
You find anything good to place about 5 certain contacts on the today screen. I have been looking with no luck.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] DaVince:
Hi gabibbo,

All apps gets cracked. It's inevitable. There is no such thing as a hack-proof software. Just think that not even Microsoft can do something about it.. and even the biggest government agencies gets hacked (most often by just a kid).

To tell you the truth, one of the things that keeps the crakers enjoy what they do is the challenge. The tougher it is, the more they'll be interested in cracking it. And the more recognition they get once they do.

No offense, but spending more time to do more encrypting and making the app more crack proof to give them the "challenge" is stupid. Not to mention that you're just making your app bloat and sluggish even for the paying customers.

Just my $0.02
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] benmyers2941:
I installed the trial and liked what I saw. Then it expired, I liked the option to save configuration in case you re-install later. I chose to save because I thought that I'd probably go back and buy the full version...

until after it finished the uninstall...

Now most today plugins do not work at all and the only way I can change plugins is by resetting the phone and that's if I'm lucky.

Update:

After about a dozen restarts and launching the plugins one at at time I finally have everything back. Very scary though.