[Touch HD General] eaglesteve:
How I customize my "desktop" and launch programs

To help forumers here gain more knowledge of what iPhone is like, I just like to share my experience in this area.

I found that the standard iPhone allows nine screens max therefore could show maximum of 148 icons. (16 x 9 plus the four docked icons at the bottom). Whereas, I needed unlimited number of icons (I probably have in excess of 200 programs in my device by now)

Second, I found that if I let the icons go to any place, I had difficulty finding them.

Third, I did not like having to swipe swipe swipe to find the application. I wanted a quick and easy of locating the program.

This is how I customized my iPhone which solves all the above problems:

I installed a third party application called SpringJumps, which gives me the ability to a)Name each of the nine pages b) Jump to any of the pages directly. I name my pages as follows:

- Home (which I would use to hold some of my most commonly used programs)

- Social networking (phone, email, tweets, text, etc)

- Travel (which holds my GPS and location service related applications)

- Finance

- Information (for news, dictionaries, etc)

- Tools and Utilities

- Productivity (Spreadsheet, notes, etc)

- Multimedia (camera, videos, pictures, etc)

- Games and Fun

The name of the page is shown on top of each of the pages (see below pictures for sample)

I also installed a third party software called Categories, which lets me create folders/directories to be placed on the "desktop" (we actually call it springboard in iPhone). You can also have nested folder. In other word, have folder inside another folder. The purpose of such folder is for me to hold more than 16 application in each of the pages described above. So, I place the MORE commonly used programs on the sprinboard, but the less frequently used ones into the folder, and place the folder on the springboard.

As shown below.

To jump to a specific page, say multimedia page, I simple touch the bottom part of the screen (where the nine 'dots' are), which brings up the page jumper control shown here. Then I touch the page I want to go to, and I'm there instantly.

Picture showing folder. If you swipe the page, you will see more applications icons to the right. A folder can also contain another folder.

Picture showing one of the named pages. It is "Home" in this case

Picturing showing pop up icon invoked by touching the bottom (where the nine dots just above the docked row of icons are) of any screen (in this case, from the Tools Utility Page), to allow direct jumping into any page

Some of you may wonder how easy it is to move icons from one pages to another. The answer is: very easy if you know how. I simply "vacate" the bottom docked row first, and first move related icons there, then turn the page, and "unload" four at a time to the right page.

FURTHER CUSTOMIZATION:

This is not necessary, but I also install another third party application called QuickGold. When I press the Home button, you will see the more recently used programs for you to activate. You can also type in the name of the application you wish to launch.

Picture showing QuickGold, to provide another means of launching application programs.

For even more frequently used functions (such as turning on and off wifi), I simply swipe the top bar of any screen, which causes the following pop up to appear and invoke the function right away: This customization is done using SBSettings from Cydia. It lets you hide/unhide icons, toggles things such as 3G, flight mode, wifi, inhibit/enable auto rotation etc, and to contain further docked applications that you frequently used)

I have also previously customized my pages to hold 5 columns of icons instead of four, but I find it unnecessary now, so I removed that customization.

Those of you who are more observant may also have noticed that my keyboard has been customized. There are five rows rather than four rows of keys.

I should also add that you can virtually customize the desktop to look anyway you want, even like a mac or window pc, although I personally find what I have above to be the most ideal way for myself.

Coming next: How do we multitask and switch between active programs in iPhone .