[General Topics] the0ne:
Meet the Developer - Ep 2 : Alfonso Presa - Part 2

You have made customization and skinning of your apps a high priority, how has the user response been ?

To be honest I expected more interest on my app from theme designers as ThrottleLauncher currently is capable of almost anything… though the lack of themes may also be my fault as there’s not too much documentation for ThrottleLauncher’s theme development. I’m working hard this days to write some tutorials that are available from my web. My target is to make ThrottleLauncher the first choice for theme designers when they have an idea… Then users will hopefully understand how powerfull ThrottleLauncher is ;-). At this point I have to say that there are many great designers (like Rumball, Paul de Groot, Zoltair Wright, m.schmidler, blazingwolf and much more) that have helped me to turn ThrottleLauncher in what it is and are working to make it the best UI ever :-).

ThrottleStorage is a unique application , how was the user response to that ?

I think ThrottleStorage is a great tool that provides a functionality that Windows Mobile definitely lacks, specially with the small internal memory that devices currently have. As an app it’s not so appealing as ThrottleLauncher or ThrottleLock and users will use it when they need it. I think it’s a great tool for ROM cookers to include on their ROM’s.

What are some of your favorite apps ?

If I’ve to choose one, it will be TaskMgr without any doubt. None of my apps would have been possible without this little handy tool. Definitely a must have for every developer. Other apps I really like are MostScripts, S2U2 (but I use ThrottleLock… sorry a_C ), S2P and TouchCal.

What are your favorite development tools and Language?

For WM I use C# and C++ over VS2005 and I really like how flexible and simple things can become by using that app and that languages, though…. I think the most powerful and flexible language is Java (I use to develop using Eclipse platform). Also CVS/SVN is a must have in order to develop applications.

New WM devices come with better hardware like accelerometer , proximity sensor, etc are you cooking up some ideas to exploit these ?

ThrottleLauncher currently has support for accelerometer ;). I plan to release some updates of the themes that will allow users to choose this as an option so they can scroll rows just by changing the orientation of their devices. Note that this support is still experimental…

Have you worked on any commercial apps ?

No I’ve not :).

The new version of ThrottleLauncher has a skin to mimic the iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and WM7 did you develop these yourself ?

I’m not a good designer so most of the graphics used on the themes are provided by other people. WM7 theme was almost 100% developed by Paul de Groot and I only made some tweaks over it. For the Palm Pre I’ve only made the layout as the icons where provided by Cpeacha. Android was enterily designed by me… but it doesn’t have too much built in graphics ;). iPhone icons where taken for several places arround XDA, the base of that theme was initially dones by Gullum and continued by Blazingwolf.

Throttle Launcher has grown to a fantastic UI for Windows Mobile users and is close to version 1.0 , what can we expect in the future?

I’m starting to work on a PC .NET application that will allow users to visually create themes for ThrottleLauncher. This way designers will find a lot more easy to implement their creation in ThrottleLauncher. Also I have to make some experiments on 3d effects by using the gsensor. Probably ThrottleLock will be the first to use this feature.

Fantastic, the PC application is sure to be a hit and with the documentation on skinning on the way I am sure more people will be creating new and exciting skins for your apps. ThrottleLauncher has definitely come a long way from when it was first released, congrats on that and good luck with the apps in the future. Once again thanks for chatting to us @ 1800PocketPC.com