yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] mawst95:
Same here. I have the softkey's hidden with dcinobar on the today screen. No wonder I wasn't seeing the SIP LOL. I love the way the today screen looks without the bar at the bottom. I understand you can't make your software configured for every single user out there. Since I think I'll use your program as more of a "favorites" photo dialer, it won't be that big of a deal.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] crazy cat:
You like the Software? Than BUY it! When you dont pay, the devs wont have money to make a 1.1 version.

SAY "NO" TO WAREZ!!!!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] PhilD41:
More feedback for a Great App!

Assuming you are looking for user feedback here is some more. If not, just ignore. :)

How I would use it:

Basically I would use to to access my most called 20 to 25 contacts from the today screen. Also used to look up contact information of those same individuals. I use PocketCM as my main contact manager and have no plans on changing, over 200 contacts with work and what not.

Since it is used as a today pluggin, I like things small and quick. and unobtrusive. Basically, do a purpose and do it well.

Things I like:

It is great to have a today pluggin that can handle many contacts in a very efficient manner.

Interface is wonderful! Needless to say, the "COOL" factor is quite high while also being very good at it's job!

Scalability, I can use this for 5 contacts or 50 and it does not loose functionality!!

Settings to change the default options, i.e. press and press+hold!!

Future Options:

Removal of text for contact. I am not a huge fan for mixing graphic and text in this fashion. It would be nice to have the option of setting the default number for direct dial and not have the name show. At least an option for this. It may be needed to display the name on the generic contact icon for those without pictures. I am not sure what the perfect solution here would be.

I am not even sure if this is possible, but it would be great if the pluggin didn't shade to the active color (solid) when being used. Actually, I noticed that it did sometimes and didn't sometimes. I understand that is how WM shows a pluggin is active or selected, but the why this pluggin is used it is just annoying. Well, at least to me.

My Deal Breakers:

I think most of these have been mentioned in other posts, but I thought I would list those items that keep me from diving right in.

Size, it would be nice to be able to customize the size. It has issues working inside of Ultimate Launcher due to the horizontal gesture and for me to move it outside (what I would prefer anyway) it really needs to be about 2/3 the current height. This could be as simple as removing the text and reflection and reclaiming that space. Although a scale option would be better. I would be nice to remove the text and be able to keep the images a little larger though.

Interacting with the bottom bar (SIP). I realize the need for this, but an option would be great. I too use dcinobar.exe to give a little more room on my today screen and the fact that it get redrawn is a bad thing. I am sure there is a way to enable this or not depending on how the SIP is used. Again, an option here would be wonderful

Right now, the two items above are the only reason I haven't bought it and made it part of my phone. These may not be easy things to implement and I understand you can't please everyone. I just thought I would throw my voice in with others in case I wasn't the only one. :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] J Shed:
Me too, I really hate looking at a huge grey bar on my home page. If there was a way to unselect it that'd be nice. Not shading it at all would be tops.

Maybe I'm OCD, but I had to uninstall it because the highlighting was pissing me off so much.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] PhilD41:
As long as you are not using it, you can unselect it by pushing up or down on your dpad. However, the next time you use it, it shades in again. In other words, it looks GREAT as long as you don't use it. ;)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
If you have it inside of its own UL tab container, then (a) it doesnt' highlight the background (it looks like that at least for me) and (b) you can diable the UL gesture for just that portion and you can slide left right without issue.

I.e. I have my UL tab set up as such. it takes up the whole screen and I have 3 main tabs (so like a 3 sided cube). Then I have my "Main" tab, which includes 2 sub-tabs. The first sub tab just points to the HTC Home plug in. So it's at the top. Then the second sub tab only points to the Face Contacts plugin. So it sits right below the HTC Home. I cut it off so the names don't appear. And I disable the gestures in the Face Contacts sub-tab. So I can gesture left/rigth in the HTC Home are and it goes to the other cube sides. I gest left/right in the Face contacts tab and it scrolls thru my contacts.

This is really cool!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] iggy:
I agree with PhillD41 except for the no text part. Personally I like the text part since with some of my contacts I use the default picture.

My main problem, the text is on the bottom (hidden by my thumb when I am scrolling), would be great is it was on top or has a PopUp like PCM Keyboard.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] PhilD41:
jomo25, This actaully almost works for me. My only problem is that I like having my contacts visible in all my tabs. Right now I have the SpbPhone pluggin set for my favorite contacts and it is above my UL. If there was a way for UL to include the same tab in more than one combined tab that would work almost perfectly. There is still no way to limit the display size of the top tab in a combined UL tab. Atleast not that I saw.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I am sure I can use that idea elsewhere.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
Cool...You may have tried this already, but what if you set FC to be OUTSIDE of UL altogether, and it be the top most plugin? Then only the space below the FC plugin would rotate for UL. But it would always be there at the top.

I suppose then it would do the highlight thing. And it would keep adjusting size due to the "smart" resizing when its active or not due to showing the contact text. (Anothe benefit to it being inside UL is it's never active, so it doesn't show the text, which is unnecessary for me).

I guess if you always put it below the UL cube, and resize UL to only take up say the top 2/3rd of your screen. and FC would be the bottom 1/3, then adjustments to size won't matter..Anyways...just ideas for consideration.

The plug in is nice. It's "pretty" but also quite functional. I do wish it would open the default contact mgr instead going to the old WM contacts app. My default is set to PocketCM. Anyone know a regedit to adjust that?
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Not at this stage (it is hard coded).

But once again, we will definitely consider this for the future.

:)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] J Shed:
If the clear background thing shows up in a future version I'll probably purchase this. Untill then, I'm going to see if using the dpad helps my OCD.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] mawst95:
I also have FC running within UL so I don't have any highlighting issues and there's no caption displayed. Seems from the comments that's a good thing;) Because I'm running dcinobar (and vjtogglealpha) I don't get a SIP popup, so it seems as of now I can't jump to a particular contact by pressing the letter. Not a huge deal as I only have about 10 contacts I'm using right now (as a today plugin photodialer) within UL. It starts with the first contact centered, but the rest skew off to the right side, making the initial display asymetrical. Minor quibble but I'd mention it.

Otherwise, its fast, responsive and will stay in my UL. I'll try to tweak my today screen UI so I can see the SIP when I want to and have it disappear when I want. You know there is a program that does exactly that. Its called "SearchToday". When you click on it, the SIP appears without showing the softkey bars and then you click on dead space in the screen and it disappears. That would be PERFECT for some of us Ultimatelaunch/Dcinobar users with touchscreen only.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
This is exactly how I have it set up. And as you say, I only use this for my absolute favorite/VIP type people. The ones I'll call frequently. Plus, those are thoe ones I most likely have photos for. I don't have photos for 90% of my contacts, Nor would I want to bloat my phone with them anyways. So those would never make it to my FC "faves". (This is a cooler implementation of TMo's My Faves). And I use PocketCM for all my contacts.

So, this effectively replaces my PocketCM Favorites page. A few less clicks to get there. Since I have my UL tabs to use a gesture up to open PocketCM, I now have quick access to my Faves, and quick gesture up to everyone else! So if this thing shows itself stable for a day or 2, I will certainly ante up the money for it!

A couple of minor enhancements/suggestions:

1. I mentioned previously opening " my chosen default contact app" instead of just the WM default app. This shoudn't be too hard as mentioned before.

2. The same would kind of go for SMS's. I use PocketCM for SMSs, so not sure if that can also be instantiated instead of the default WM SMS app. I doubt this would be easy since its a very specific case. Not an issue, I can always revert to PocketCM with the flick up to do that. And use FC exclusively for calling.

3. Be careful about making changes that might impact UL users. I know this may also sound specific. But it sounds like there are a few "undocumented plusses" for embedding it in UL instead of directly on the Today screen. E.g. retains transparent background and keeps the text hidden. I'd ask that the dev team throw the UL use cases into their tests to make sure changes they make don't break UL. Or at least give options to keep things the way they are. Again, I know yo uaren't affiliated with them, but if I do purchase, I guess I'd like to get future release goodness without negatively impacting the use case I bought it for. Otherwise, I'll just have to stick with the current version...

Anyways, thanks for making a very nice simple, cool, and effective product! I'm glad more WM dev's are opening their eyes to good UI design. I do thank Apple for that at least, even if you weren't directly inspired by them :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] PhilD41:
Someone mind explaining how you are croping off the text in UL? Is it the bottom most pluggin on the UL screen and you are just hard limiting the UL size? I had it set as the top most tab on a combined tab and couldn't find a way to fix the height of that embeded tab to remove the text. Just curious.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Hey Jomo,

indeed, given the kind feedback we gathered here, we will probably do much more compatibility/usability testing with UL from now on.

Ehm... guess what, for a short time someone here was suggesting we named this product "Contact Flow"... does it sound familiar?

:D
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
I'm not doing anything special to accomplish that. As I understand it, FC auto resizes itself and only shows the text when it is active. But when it is inside of a UL tab, I don't thinkit ever is truly "active" (even tho you can use it fine). Thus it never shows the text. I do have it at the bottom, but its not just getting cropped off the screen. I just tested putting it above the HTC Home, and it still doesn't show the text. So, not sure. It just doesn't show for me.

Oh, so maybe the only setting is the one in FC's "Display Options". I have the "Hide caption when inactive" box checked...Hope that helps!

@ gabibbo: haha, ya had you called it ContactFlow, I guarantee you would get a call from some fruity lawyers. They seem to think they own any word that starts with "i". ANd now I'm sure they will try to claim anything starting with "C" and ending in "Flow".
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] dawkness:
Hey Gab,

Thanks again for the cab, this is definitely a hot prgm. Just wondering, in the next release of this will we be able to adjust the plugin height? I have it as a tab in SPB Mobile shell and it looks great. But, I would like to have it a little bigger (so that it takes up more space within that tab. Also, will already registered users be able to upgrade for free or a reduced price. That would be awsome.

Dawk
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] evilc:
+1 to this point, however do you realise you can scroll by dragging on the left so you can see the name in the middle. This becomes less intuitive though when you go to tap to select the person highighted and instead it goes to the picture you just tapped.

I think the best solution would be twofold:

1) As other people have asked, allow a minimum height to be set for the plugin. You could add a bunch of empty space below and use that area to scroll the list.

2) Allow the option of putting the name above the pics not below.

A third thing I would like to see is names overlaid onto the pictures. That way, if you have no picture for a contact (And TBH, I have no pictures at all for any of my contacts) then at least you see names of the previous and next couple of contacts in the list.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] evilc:
Another observation:

The auto-sort feature does not handle contacts very well that do not have a firstname, lastname, or both - it lumps things with a parameter all together at one end, and when you scroll through the list, numbers appear instead of letters for the prediction on where it is going to stop.

Yes, you can have a contact without a name. For example for a company - you just need to put the company name - Normally things are sorted on the "File As" field. If you allowed the option to sort on that, then you wouldn't have to handle all of these possibilities.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] mugglesquop:
excellent software :) thanks very much!

running Demo atm, but will buy it if i get on with it ok.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Thanks dawkness. Glad to hear you managed to get the CAB and get everything working.

At this stage the only control on the height is via the "display settings" dialog box: clear the "Hide caption when inactive" checkbox so that the height remains always the same.

Given all the feedback we received here, from people using Face Contact together with various today or shell extension, we will definitely make sure we provide more options/controls on the overall layout in the future.

As for upgrades, we have a consistent policy (through many years) of providing free upgrades for all minor releases of our programs (which means fixes and minor improvements).

We *may* ask for a small upgrade fee only in the event of a major release introducing significant functional improvments.

Thanks again for your positive comments.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
@ evilc

It appears that the whole "height" issue applies and affects people using Face Contact within a different host/container than the standard Today screen. As I mentioned before, this is probably something that we underestimated, and indeed we will take more care of in the future, providing more "layout" options.

Having said this, after a few tests we did ourselves with various hosts/containers of today plugin, I have the impression that in some circumstances it is not just a matter of Face Contact exposing more control on its height, but also responsability of the "container" to fill in properly whatever space exceeds the height of a plugin.

More specifically, concerning the issue of space at the bottom, if you tap on FC and then move away (dragging the stylus of finger away) you will see that Face Contact keeps tracking your movements, even if you are no long on the plugin. This is something we did to improve usability and preventing other plugins to be inadvertently activated while interacting with Face Contact. This is the standard behavior that Face Contact exposes within the standard today screen. But if the plugin container doesn't emulate properly the behavior of the standard today host it's clear that all hosted plugins will have problems (not just Face Contact).

We gave a lot of thought to the whole SORT issue, as it was clear to us that it was a key to make to software usable with any number of contacts.

First of all, if scrolling you see "numbers" instead than letters, then you are not using any alphabetical sort at all (you are using the "User Defined Order").

As we mention in the help file, when contacts are sorted alphabetically, any contact that has no definition for the primary sort key is placed at the end of the list. We thought that this may be disorienting in some circumstances, and at the given point we had also changed the whole sorting approach, exactly as you suggest, so that if a contact didn't have a definition for the primary sort key, we used whatever other definition was available for sorting.

But this ended up being even more disorienting.

If you sort by companies, you expect to see COMPANY NAMES, and you don't really want Ann, and Bob, and Dave, appearing between Apple, Cisco, Microsoft. huh?

That's why at the end we decided to simply keep all contacts that didn't have a definition for the primary sort key at the end of the list.

So, if your sort by company, all contacts that have no company definition are simply listed at the end of the list.

As you suggest, one possible approach/improvement is to add an additional sort criteria to the ones already available, so people can sort using the "File As" field. This sounds indeed reasonable and should provide exactly the kind of order you describe, using and mixing whatever name or company definition is available for a contact.

Wow... lots of new ideas growing rapidly here.

Thanks guys.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
That's one of the reasons why we tried to make a few things different, and we also decided to "cut a few corners" here and try to make everything "smoother".

For example, don't you think that "cutting the corners" of the pictures significantly improves the aerodynamics of the "contact flow"?

LOL :)

​
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] syrguy1969:
I love the look of just 'cutting corners' like that, that is the layout I use, it is so mych better on the eyes that the harsh lines of the square, and the circles just don't look right to me using pictures (maybe icons would be better).

P.S. The reflection mode is like icing on the cake, makes the app look really classy, great 'tweak'!!!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] evilc:
Hmm, regarding the issue of space at the bottom, I hadn't thought of it like that - however, if you can have an option in your app to force the pad, then that's extra kudos for your app, right? :P

You know something - I am not sure I wholly agree with the twisting of the images apart from the centre focused one. It may just be my Kaiser with no video drivers, but the animation does not really appear that smooth - knowing when it is going to "lock on" to a contact can be a little problematic even if you set the sensitivty right down. I tried the various draw modes and even turned reflections off, but it was still a bit too choppy for my liking. Not so bad when you tap a contact to the edge of the list, the scroll is quite smooth then, so I suspect it is the Qualcomm driver issue at play.

How about an option for just flat frames rather than twisted? More finger and CPU friendly, no?
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] J Shed:
Is there any chance of the "issue" with the background changing when the plug is selected being addressed? I'll happily take a check box to enable or disable it (or hell, a registry tweak).

I really like the look and feel of the program, but you have no idea how much seeing a grey background irritates me. I had to uninstall the program since it was driving me mad, lol.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jomo25:
haha...ya that really is much nicer. its the one i happen to use also...again, truly nice product. so far no issues with it. another 24 hrs of use and i will fork over the cash for it!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] syrguy1969:
I am really loving this app, just two things I would bring up.

1- I agree about the greying out, it does not bother me enough to stop using the app, but I would like it to 'go away'!!

2- I enabled the call directly part (tap and hold), but the message to confirm (to avoid mis-dials when scrolling) is very scall, and hard to hit if your paying attention to anything, or just have large fingers. Maybe a large splash screen with bigger buttons? I don't use my keyboard because it is easier to use the screen, my fingers are too big for most keys, and if I turn the keylight off, it saves a good bit of battery power, so this would be very helpful, and I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to do.....and look good doing it!!!!!

Thanks, I know that one is not unique and the other not popular, but just my 2 cents!!!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] Sean D.:
Do this, and I'll buy it TWICE!

1). Give an option to password protect it. Turn it on or off within options. Some of us like to (or NEED to) keep our contacts private. :rolleyes:

2). This maybe already be implemented; I don't need/want anything else on my today screen. Either make it so that it opens up with the contacts softkey, or a very small icon on the today screen will access the "contact flow" ribbon without actually opening a program (the way the OEM contacts open up.)

Like I said, if that is done I'll buy it TWICE! :eek:
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Can someone please post some kind of screenshot of this infamous "greying out" effect?

What we do is to draw the trasparently over the theme background when the plugin is inactive, and then use the SYSTEM DEFINED solid color for the selection as the background when the plugin is active.

For example:

The image on the left shows the inactive plugin, and image on the right shows the active plugin. In the latter case the background color is the SOLID color defined by the theme for "selected items". In the pictures above it doesn't appear to be so nasty to me. So I'd just like to make sure I understand the nature of the problem.

Is this infamous "grey" you are talking about the same color used by your theme to show the active selection in other plugins, or in the menu or other elements of the user interface?

Again I'm asking just to make sure we understand the nature of the issue.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] gabibbo:
Well actually the call confirmation prompt is part of the standard Windows Mobile UI. We will consider replacing this with our own message box or dialog box.

There's one thing I don't understand though... why use the tap&hold to make a call (which requires some time and being still with finger or stylus at a specific position on the screen), when you can use the green CALL key of your phone instead?