Zlauncher 4.00 from ZZTechs
ZLauncher arrived on the scene as a long-shot
dark horse. ZZTechs literally came from nowhere, going from
zero to domination in just months. Their reputation comes
not just from their quality programming, but from now-legendary
support and responsiveness to user requests. In a sense,
not one or two things but many of ZLauncher's capabilities
and interface developments came through direct user input.
It wooed me from my previous launcher after just an hour
of evaluation, and that's a very rare occurrence.
On initial install, ZLauncher reads the
system setup to minimize setup time. The system setup also
can be read later, and ZLauncher can write its own category
information to the system as well. You'll want to ensure
that Update App Info in the General Preference Tab is set
to Memory. That will prevent ZLauncher from reading the card
every time it loads, speeding its loading considerably. Just
Refresh Apps whenever you install a new program to the card.
I'll make this short by observing that
virtually everything about ZLauncher can be configured to
the user's preference. Your interface can be tabbed with
text, icons, or no tabs at all. Tabs can be placed on any
side, top, or bottom. The top and bottom tool bars are completely
user configurable as well and they can both be hidden. Icon
placement can be specified to the point of both location
on the screen and space that each icon occupies. Or, one
can simple say how many you want and generally where, similar
to YiShow. Or, you can just leave the default alone and it
will look great. All colors are configurable, including individual
text displays, borders, and backgrounds. If you don't like
tabs, try tab panels or the simple pull-down list.
Additionally, tabs can group and display
different types of files. In addition to applications, built-in
capability exists to group hacks on OS 4 and earlier, DAs,
docs, web clips, panels, Photo Stand, PG Pocket, Zire 71
Camera Photos, Splash Photo, iSilo docs, WordSmith docs,
and HandBase databases. Users can also create custom tabs
for whatever files they wish to group based on type or creator
ID.
Virtually everything that makes sense drags
and drops. Apps can be dragged to tabs, tabs can be rearranged
by dragging either as illustrated or using the tab panel.
Populate tool bars by dragging the appropriate icon to the
desired position in that dialog. Drag apps or files to tools
for action. Drag favorite apps to the QuickLaunch tool to
add them to that list. ZLauncher takes the graphical interface
to new heights in the Palm OS.
Tools available for the top and bottom
tool bars include time/date, free RAM, free card space, category
pull-down list (top only), ZLauncher setup screens, information,
file manager, calculator, app refresh, category/tab manipulations,
QuickLaunch, various HotSyncs, etc.—37 tools in all.
If you can't remember what a tool icon does, just tap and
hold it and a brief description will pop up like balloon
help.
Tapping and holding on an app icon brings
a popup list of actions available. These choices include
launching, adding to QuickLaunch, category change, copying,
moving, new tab based on the apps creator ID and/or type,
beaming, sending, info, and trash bin. Moving apps brings
up another dialog that supports the PowerRun-like capability,
but more on that later. Tapping and holding serves up a contextual
list, so for example, tapping on an image file on the card
brings up a choice to make it a background.
The file manager rivals the best third-party
file managers like FileZ or McFile. It looks and works just
like you'd expect of a file manager on your desktop. It will
sort ascending or descending by name or anything you select
to display in the right column, like size, creation date,
modification date, creator ID, attributes, version, type,
etc. Bring up the info screen for a file or app to change
ANY of its attributes (reminiscent of FileZ), its name, category,
or even its associated dates.
If you sort by creator ID and then select
any file in a particular group of identical IDs, ZLauncher
will let you select the entire group of creator IDs with
a menu selection. This holds for other similar data as well.
Select/Deselect All, Select/Deselect Group, and Invert Selection
offer a variety of handy manipulations of file groups. Tools
at the bottom allow quick copy/move/info/beam/delete functions.
Or, tapping and holding on a file brings up a context popup
for all this and the group selection options. Files not on
the card can be limited to those in RAM or ROM, or include
them all. Directory size and size of the selected files display
on the lower left.
The screen shot shows the various configuration
screens available. Once you select one, the others appear
as icon tabs along the top of the resulting dialog, making
moving amongst them trivial. If there's something useful
that can't be user-configured in ZLauncher, I haven't found
it yet. But even with all these choices, the dialogs make
the changes logical and relatively simple.
The theme manager controls all aspects
of the selectable icon sets, themes, and background images
using a dedicated directory under /Palm/Programs/. When selecting
a different theme/icon set/background than the current, ZLauncher
automatically deletes the old ones from RAM when copying
the new ones into RAM. These generally come combined in theme
packages, which change icons throughout the program (including
the file manager), as well as colors and other items uniformly.
ZLauncher provides a PowerRun-like capability
where it moves apps to their own directory with their data
files upon user request. Upon app execution, ZL copies all
the files in that dedicated directory to RAM. When exiting,
ZL copies the changed files back to the directory and deletes
them all from RAM. Once set up, this process works even outside
of ZLauncher! Although it initially moves the files based
on creator ID like LauncherX, once there it doesn't care
about the creator ID. So, the user can copy additional files
to that same directory and ZL will treat them as part of
the package—a very powerful capability. ZLauncher implements
this through shortcuts that also allow apps on the card to
Hotsync through their conduits, no matter where they reside
on the card.
Jpg, bmp, and PGP images can be viewed
with the preview feature in ZLauncher's theme manager. Zooming
isn't supported. ZL provides functional linking with AcidImage/Pro,
Splash Photo, and Resco Photo Viewer through the popup dialog
on tap-and-hold. ZZTechs provides ZReader Lite for quick
doc reading, but you can select your own doc reader if it
supports the passing of arguments.
ZLauncher's QuickLaunch furnishes access
to the user's favorite, recently used, and most used app
lists from inside ANY application. The user specifies the
number of each permitted on the popup list and the popup
method, and this works with DAs as well. Apps on the card
work just like those in RAM. This provides McPhling-like
capability.
Version 4.00 expands configurability to
a higher plane. Each tab now has its own complete configuration
including icon settings, colors, background images, and some
advanced settings. Each tab can almost look like a different
launcher if you're so inclined. Individual tab properties
can be exported to all tabs, or just the background can be
made common. Like MegaLauncher, if you set ten tabs up with
different backgrounds on a 65K color 320x480 device, you
just ate 3 MB of RAM. Everything comes at a price. For upgrading
users, you'll have to reconfigure your categories under 4.00
due to the database changes. The easiest migration method
involves writing ZLauncher's category information to the
system launcher in your present version, then have ZLauncher
load that information from the system after upgrading.
An argument often heard about ZLauncher
says that its interface tends to be too crowded. Nothing
could be further from the truth. One can set ZL to have nothing
but apps on the screen with a pure white background to look
even cleaner than the built-in launcher. Now that ZZTechs
has put the preference settings in a tabbed interface, getting
the look you want became even easier. You can go in the water
as deep or shallow as you like.
ZLauncher requires 389K of RAM, plus 1036K
for its databases and custom themes, icons, and background
images. That tips the RAM scales at 1,425K for my tested
setup. That isn't bad when you consider that it combines
a full-featured file manager, recent/favorite popup app (like
McPhling), PowerRun-like shortcut app, rudimentary image
viewer, and doc viewer.
At $19.95, ZLauncher is reasonably priced.
With unmatched power, it's at the top
of the overall launcher value scale. Only Yishow comes close
to ZLauncher in capability, but ZL sports more polish and
configurability as well as features. No other launcher's
developer support for users comes remotely close to ZLauncher's.
Pros:
Full-featured file manager
Recent/favorite/common popup list from any application
Full shortcut/data file bundling capability
Image viewer
Doc viewer
Almost infinitely configurable, including individual tab settings
Skinnable
Supports different background image for each category
Outstanding support by developer
Cons:
Overall complexity carries a learning curve for new users |
|
