[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] Jadel:
I am currently unemployed so I have been playing around with making things more efficient in my life. PS If you know of any IT jobs going in the Sydney area, PM me!!!

Goal: Use HTC Home and Manilla 2D’s program launching capabilities to turn it into fast, finger-friendly live traffic update tool. Extend this use to incorporate live weather satellite images and live surf reports.

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Most people probably know how to do this, but I didn’t, so I thought I would write a quick “how-to”. It isn’t that it is incredibly difficult to do, it is just that I don’t know if many people have ever thought about doing it. In my day to day life this is an extremely handy mod.

I live in a busy city (Sydney) and sometimes the traffic gets ridiculous busy. I can’t wait for the FM radio to do a traffic update every 15/30 minutes, and downloading TomTom traffic information (or similar) is not always accurate, comprehensive or up to date.

What I do is use the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) traffic cameras to monitor traffic situations when I need to get somewhere without running into gridlock. Through doing this, what I see is what I get.

The RTA has traffic monitoring web cameras in at least 23 locations around my city. They are updated every minute. You may have a similar setup in your country or state so check it out. To get the information quickly I have repurposed the launcher program in both HTC Home and now Manilla 2D to launch the link. It takes one/two clicks once my phone is on.

If you want to try this on your phone, the first thing you need to know is…do they use a still image and a static link? If so, you’re in luck. Just go to their web site, find the camera image you want, right click on it and go to “view image”. What you should now have is a standalone image on a blank page. This is how it should work on a desktop browser, and it is how you want to see it on your mobile browser. You do not want your mobile downloading any information that is not directly necessary, costing you precious dollars. As a standalone image, it is only about 25kb to 35kb. On my 1c a kb plan, that means I pay about 25c to 35c, the same cost as an SMS.

Once you find the link/s you want, save them as favourites***.

(If you find Internet Explorer or your specific web browser wants to force download the link then go to the note below)

Now, in some cases the next steps are easy. In my case (I use Internet Explorer Mobile from Windows Mobile 6.1), it was not, but I will provide all the information I know.

If like me you use some version of IE Mobile, then go into your Mobile File Explorer (whatever you use IE Resco, Total Commander) and navigate to:

\Windows\Favorites

Copy your new traffic camera favourites out and paste them in a new folder (you have to create it) here:

\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Favourites

(The new folder is the one in bold italics. Note: Call it what you want, just remember what you called it)

You should be able to go into HTC Home or Manilla 2D, go to your launcher page, and your favourites will automatically be in the Add Program list.

***NOW, some of you may have run into a problem whereby your browser wants to force download the file and not open it inside the browser. You may not care if it does this, but if you would prefer to remove the hassle of having to press the Open or Save button and THEN have to press the Yes to Overwrite button every time you load the image, then follow what is written below).

Thanks to Vijay555 who unknowingly provided me clues on a solution to this problem back in a 2005 post (new users take note, THE SEARCH FUNCTION CAN ACTUALLY SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS OMGFTWBBQ!!11!!ELEVEN!!!)

What you will need to do is take those links you found and trap them in a html page. You can write this page using Word Mobile if you are game. Just save the file type as .txt when you are finished with it and rename the extension to .html when you are ready to add it to your program list.

The code I use is:

<html><head>

<img src=”http://www.YourWebsite.com/images/2009/09/WhateverCamera.jpg”>

</head></html>

This sort of code will force your image URL to download inside a blank HTML page. If you are better at coding HTML and can think of a better way of doing this, I am all ears. The quicker and smoother we can get it to work the better.

Now you can follow the same steps of placing the saved .txt files (they should now be changed to .html) in the \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Favourites folder like previously mentioned.

Making it look purtty!

So you’ve added the links and realize it looks ass ugly. Your program launcher has used the stock html icon for every single link and now you can’t tell them apart.

Never fear.

My solution was to create some individual (still ugly, but unique) icons for the links using freeware PixelToolbox. Use whatever you want, but you want your image to be roughly 32x32 and low quality to save space.

After you’re done, name it, and save it however you want to in the \Windows folder on your device.

Now long press on the file and go to Edit>Copy Path.

Now, go open RedEdit mobile (get yourself a freeware pocket registry editor if you don’t have one, like in the Power Toys cabs from Microsoft):

HTC Home

I THINK from memory you’ll find the key you need under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>HTC>HTC HOME>Launcher>CustomProgram>(THE BOX NUMBER OF YOUR LINK)

You’ll know the box number, because when you click on the number in the registry you’ll see the path to your link. Anyways, there should be a string called IconPath. It should be blank. Open it up and in the blank space paste the copied path of your image and hit OK. Exit.

You will need to disable HTC Home in your Today settings and hit OK, and then enable it again before the new icon graphic will appear.

Note: I haven't got HTC Home installed in this screenshot - just the registry files. So in the bottom half of the screen in RegEdit, you should see some entries if you have added a program in this box number on the launcher.

Manilla 2D

Pretty much as above except the registry setting is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>HTC>Manilla2D>Launcher>(THE BOX NUMBER OF YOUR LINK)

You won’t find an empty IconPath string however, so create it! Create a New String Value. In the Value Name section, enter IconPath. In Value Data, enter the path to your image file like above. Then follow the same steps as above including disabling and enabling.

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Eventually this will be used to launch other types of web cameras like surf cameras, Bureau of Meteorology storm graphics, whatever the mind can think of. As long as it has a static address and uses a still image.

If anyone has any other ideas or links, let us know and I will try make a list with a bit of detail. If anybody feels the urge to make graphics also let me know.

Hope this helps someone.