Slide to Text?

onebluehaze · #1 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 12:16 AM

Is there a way to open a program when the phones keyboard is slid out? The only time I ever use the keyboard is when I'm going to text message someone, so I was wondering if there's a way to (when in the today screen only) have a program like TXTMAN just open...

Yea, call me lazy...

Thanks for any info!

onebluehaze · #2 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 12:19 AM

Oh, and minimizing that program when the keyboard is closed back would kick some major butt too...

By the way, my phone rocks thanks to some of your hard work. Thanks a million!

**gguruusa** · #3 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 02:04 AM

I don't know of a ready made program, but I bet Tiermann could enhance SlideSound with this functionality...

**tiermann** · #4 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 02:53 AM

Yup, I could

The only prob is that slidesound works by looking for changes in the screen orientation.. So say your video player switches to landscape to watch a movie, you would get a text msg window over it, hehe. I've been thinking about expanding it a bit to include that, but that's the biggest drawback.

I could always just add it anyway since it would be optional. Opening the app would be easy too, but minimizing it a little trickier.

**tiermann** · #5 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 05:20 AM

I've added that feature to SlideSound 1.05.

It seems to work ok. I didn't add any options to minimize the application one slideIn/Out yet, but maybe in later versions.

sublynx · #6 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 08:18 AM

great idea.

on the minimize portion, i used spb pocket plus' [minimize] command. had to copy as shortcut into my personal folder, but other then that it works perfectly.

onebluehaze · #7 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 03:08 PM

Very cool, downloading to try out now!

@ tiermann - How did you learn how to make programs for PPC? I would love to be able to code this stuff myself. That's kind of a rhetorical question, but if you really want to answer you should.

I've been playing around with flash for WM5 and trying out making a launcher of sorts, but it's not easy (for a nob)!

onebluehaze · #8 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 03:39 PM

Well, there's good, and bad.

The good is that when I slide out the keyboard TxtMan opens, the bad is that when I touch the softkey to start a new chat TxtMan closes and I'm back to the today screen.

Did a soft reset and tried it again. Nope. It works once, but after that it goes to the program, then right back to the today screen. It's so close.

**tiermann** · #9 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sublynx

great idea.

on the minimize portion, i used spb pocket plus' [minimize] command. had to copy as shortcut into my personal folder, but other then that it works perfectly.

Good idea, and great usage

Yes, If a program has a command line switch then it is possible to minimize it right now. Thanks for the info.

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebluehaze

Very cool, downloading to try out now!

@ tiermann - How did you learn how to make programs for PPC? I would love to be able to code this stuff myself. That's kind of a rhetorical question, but if you really want to answer you should.

I've been playing around with flash for WM5 and trying out making a launcher of sorts, but it's not easy (for a nob)!

I've been using Visual Basic .NET for my projects right now, including PPC and PC apps. There's a free "Express" version available from MS but I don't think it includes .NET Compact Framework projects for PPC, just PC apps.

C# is probably the better language, but VB is just what I'm more comofortable with. I started out with QBasic in highscool, hehe.

**tiermann** · #10 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebluehaze

Well, there's good, and bad.

The good is that when I slide out the keyboard TxtMan opens, the bad is that when I touch the softkey to start a new chat TxtMan closes and I'm back to the today screen.

Did a soft reset and tried it again. Nope. It works once, but after that it goes to the program, then right back to the today screen. It's so close.

It could be TxtMan itself. Some apps are set up to do different things if run a second time, or require a command line to get it to give you the desired dialog/mode. I'm going to download txtman and experiment. I'll get back to you.

Edit: I see the problem. If any program that you set to launch is already running and is minimized, it'll popup (get focus) but go back to it's minimized state. I might be able to fix this for next release. For now if the application is exited completely instead of running minimized in the background it opens and shows successfully.