iDesk 1.42 released

Thanks, I've front-paged this! 8-)

And your downloads page looks OK now too...

Steve

I installed it too, as powerdesk crashes too often.. Seems to be much more reliable, but at one condition: the default "startup" sub-folder must not be renamed but purely and simply deleted or left empty (unless you want to have some applications launched when iDesk starts). If not, all entries in the folder (even if renamed) will start every time you launch iDesk.

I suggest the author to create a default layout with an empty "startup" sub-folder, plus an "office" sub-folder containing "document", "spreadsheet", "presentation", "acrobat reader" and "calculator", plus a "tools" sub-folder containing "control panel", "backup" and "connection manager" (for example). This would make clear how to use iDesk efficiently.

Also, if you choose to not display the "header" in the general preferences, anything you specify in the "title" format string will not be shown.

Nice tool anyway.

Wirelessly posted (9500: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Series80/2.0 Nokia9500/05.22 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1))

Arjen wrote:iDesk 1.42 has been released. iDesk is a very versatile desktop replacement for Nokia 9300/9500 devices.

iDesk is now a FreEPOC release. The latest version contains lots of new usability enhancements and a fixes all known bugs from previous versions. You can download iDesk 1.42 from the FreEPOC wesite of from my own homepage.

Best regards
Arjen

Edit: the downloads link on my own homepage wasn't updated, so the new version cannot be found on the downloads page. I will update the page later. For now, you can download iDesk 1.42 from FreEPOC.org or from the following direct link.

Argh! I am posting on my 9500 using the terrble AAS WAP pages and this posting editor makes the Unix 'ed' look like a dream editor. Anyway, I have been using iDesk for a day now and it simply rocks! Kudos! This is the closest to macro5 simplicity and power I havev seen on the 9500. Letting Ctrl-space cycle through the task list is worth this product alone. Many, many thanks!

iDesk is undoubtedly a great freeware app, but I still prefer PowerDesk. How Cedesguin can claim that PowerDesk is unstable is beyond my comprehension. To me it is the other way around. Even though this latest version of iDesk is much more stable than previous versions, it is far from as well polished as PowerDesk, IMO. Some of which may be because PD is a native Symbian app, while iDesk is written in OPL. In general I've found that OPL and Java apps are just not as stable as those native c++ apps - which is understandable of course.

PowerDesk has a few features I've come to rely on that are missing from iDesk, such as 'actions hotkeys' for things like; New call, new SMS, new e-mail, new meeting etc. So, when I need to write an SMS to someone I can, as an example, just press Chr and the first letter in that persons name and I will be brought directly to the message editor with that persons number in the 'To' field. I find that incredibly handy. Another feature I use all the time is Chr + L to keep the backlight in always ON mode. Useful when reading e-books and browsing the web. The Today view is also quite useful, but not really a necessity.

And of course iDesk has a few features that are missing from PowerDesk, but nothing I would find essential. It's a matter of preferences to a large extent too I would say. I just like the way PD looks and works much better, but iDesk is not doubt a great freeware alternative.

EDIT: I just noticed the features planned for the next releases of iDesk - awesome! Maybe that will finally sway me away from PD, seeing as the good people at SymbianWare seems to have vanished from the face of the earth... 🙄

Plans for next releases:

• Find a fix for the fact that the "Desk" and "My Own" keys cannot be used in hotkey combinations after firmware version 5.22
• Macro's - create and run Macro 5 compatible Macros
• Import for Notes and Passwords
• Scheduled start of applications, files etc
• Screensaver
• Automatic screenlock with password
• Directly send notes and documents via email, infrared or bluetooth
• Auto-detect new installed applications and offer to add them to folder

Raven wrote:Another feature I use all the time is Chr + L to keep the backlight in always ON mode. Useful when reading e-books and browsing the web.

Plans for next releases:

• Macro's - create and run Macro 5 compatible Macros
  

iDesk can run Roman Keller's Light Plus utility to turn the backlight on permanently. I use MobiPocket and I don't have any problem with the backlight.

I have been using iDesk since 1.20 (I think!) and I now find it indispensable. But, I'm really looking forward to the Macro running version which will turn it into a killer app!

Regards,
Martin

It's nice to see so many different opinions in one thread 😊

iDesk was never intended as a replacement for Powerdesk. It just slowly grew in this direction, based on requests from users and things I found handy myself. I also think Powerdesk is a great application (as you can see from the AAS review I've written about it).

I do not completely agree with Raven that OPL applications are not quite as stable as their C++ counterparts. There are a couple of glitches in OPL (mostly related to redrawing screen elements like titlebar, statusfield and CBA-area) but sofar I've found nothing that makes OPL applications crash more often than C++ applications. Most of the time when an application crashes, it's due to a programming error (and since I also make mistakes, iDesk is no exception -although the latest version is quite stable 😊
The only drawback for OPL is the fact that it's interpreted which makes it somewhat slower than C++ applications.

@Cedesguin: I like the "default setup" scenario you've described. I'll add that in the next iDesk version. Another addition to the "plans for next version" is the backlight. Since Roman stopped his OPL development completely (and it's getting more and more difficult to download his software), I think this would be a useful addition to iDesk as well. Messaging is something I'm looking into, but that takes a little more work, since the native support of OPL in this area is quite limited.

Cheers, Arjen

Good stuff. This version has the two functions I was hoping for:

1 - Ability to add buttons that allows you to open file manager at a specific folder
2 - Being able to add sub folders in iDesk.

My one wish for future versions... have it keep the buttons and settings from this version so I don't have to set them up again.

I got the impression this would happen for this version when I was installing it and got the option to check/uncheck various options and settings but although I elected to keep all available settings, it was all gone when I started iDesk and had to set it up again.

Did I do something wrong or is this how it should act?

Raven wrote:How Cedesguin can claim that PowerDesk is unstable is beyond my comprehension.

Well it crashes for sure on my Communicator, but I admit it's perhaps a specific problem. PD is great otherwise, I agree. I will check it again when I have time to upgrade my firmware (currently 4.51). Last time I upgraded, Nokia service centre crashed the device and I had to wait three weeks to have it back from them...

BTW, I also have persistent crashes with ALL Psiloc stuff with my present configuration, so I uninstalled all Psiloc products until further notice.

Obviously, I am not lucky. :frown:

Well, I have the same firmware and PD never crashes on me.

Btw., Psiloc sucks. It is one of very few Symbian developers that make unstable software. I stopped using their apps years ago. Nothing but problems.

After installing the latest version of iDesk as per the instructions, I've found that 'Rebooter' no longer runs. It says 'OPLUTILS.OPX' is missing.

Did I do something wrong and what can I do to fix it?

I just installed iDesk 1.42 on my 9500 (5.22). This is the 1st time I have tried the app and I am mightily impressed! I'm only beginning to understand what iDesk can do - I wish I had started with an early version and grown with the program. Well done Arjen and please keep up the good work.

I seem to be frequently turning Bluetooth active / inactive - it is a pain to have to scroll down the Control Panel list to Connections and then across to Bluetooth every time. Is it possible to create a link straight to the Bluetooth page? If so, how? If not, is it something that could be built into iDesk somehow?

Thanks,

Tomahawk

andygrunt wrote:After installing the latest version of iDesk as per the instructions, I've found that 'Rebooter' no longer runs. It says 'OPLUTILS.OPX' is missing.

Did I do something wrong and what can I do to fix it?

You didn't do anything wrong. Rebooter relies on OplUtils.opx. Why it was deinstalled when you uninstalled iDesk is a mistery, but then again, it seems that there are many bugs in the Symbian installer for the 9300/9500.

You don't need to install Rebooter if you have iDesk installed. iDesk includes a rebooter as well. You can assign it to a button or assign a hotkey for it through the "Tools"-"iDesk hotkeys".

If you want Rebooter to work again, you should reinstall the application.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Arjen

Tomahawk wrote:I seem to be frequently turning Bluetooth active / inactive - it is a pain to have to scroll down the Control Panel list to Connections and then across to Bluetooth every time. Is it possible to create a link straight to the Bluetooth page? If so, how? If not, is it something that could be built into iDesk somehow?

I hope I'm not misunderstanding your questions, but activating/deactivating Bluetooth can be done very easily already. Just press Chr-Left arrow. On my Communicator this toggles Bluetooth.

Cheers, Arjen

You are not missing anything at all - I was! Amazing what you find on a keyboard if you look hard enough! Thanks! 😊

Arjen wrote:You don't need to install Rebooter if you have iDesk installed. iDesk includes a rebooter as well. You can assign it to a button or assign a hotkey for it through the "Tools"-"iDesk hotkeys".

For anyone else having this problem...

When I installed iDesk, it already had a button for 'Rebooter' on the desktop and I thought that was the inbuilt Rebooter (knowing it was written by the same author). Then I realised I had to delete that button and create a new one with the iDesk 'Restart device' option.

All is working fine now, thanks.

I have discovered another problem that I am having - I created a hotkey (Chr+P - highly original) to start Presentations. However, when activated, a screen come up with "Presentations" in the header and then a white dialogue box with "Statup file error - Unable to open the specified file". I have also created a "Presentations" button in the Office subfolder of iDesk - I get the same problem when I select this.

I deleted the hotkey and re-created it and the problem persists. Word and Sheet work fine with similar setups.

Presentations opens fine from the office folder of the 9500 Desk view.

Can anybody else replicate the problem or is it specific to my 9500?

Thanks, Tomahawk

Dear Tomahawk

This is a bug in iDesk. I found this same behavior with another application myself yesterday. I will supply a fix for this in an upgrade release this week.

Best regards

Arjen

Hi Arjen,

Thanks - I'm glad its not me this time! I look forward to the next release although I would say that this particular item is hardly painful so no hurry.😊

BTW, do you have any plans to add to iDesk any Calendar-related functionality? If not, it is a great app anyway.

If you do, there are two features I would request you to particularly consider:
a) A simple chronological listing of forthcoming appointments. For me, this would be best with each item fitting onto a single line so that the maximum number of appointments can be viewed on the screen at once
b) A listing of overdue and forthcoming tasks in due date order - one line per item again

These could be in 2 columns, one for each set of items.

One enhancement might be to have the option (toggle key?) to display only Calendar entries in 2 columns to fit more entries on the screen and an alternative similar option for Tasks.

I used Active Desk on my 9210 and particularly miss those two aspects today. Most of the other stuff in those displays (messages, etc) was at best nice-to-have and I usually disabled it to maximise the space for calendar and task entries. I also tended to use the Full Screen mode so that the header had the day/date and the rest of the screen was given over to appointments / tasks.

If this is something you are considering, I personally would be very interested in it.

If it would be any help, I should be able to get Active Desk (there was a lot I liked about that app but it never got ported to the 9500) running on my old 9210 again and give you some more direct input for features to consider for this facility.

I had Power Desk on my old 9500 but it had three major faults for me:
i) It is very slow bringing the data up both in absolute terms and compared with Active Desk on the 9210 � I have about 30 task lists and typically 2-3 calendar entries per day.
ii) I just can't cope with the way the data is presented � dates on different lines from the entries and mixed up text justification
iii) iDesk very neatly delivers most of the rest of its functionality already

As a result, I haven�t got round to requesting a transfer of the registration to my new one.

Best regards,

Tomahawk

Discovered a serious problem with iDesk: it keeps the CPU activity level quite high (about 35 - 40%) all the time, so it is very greedy, and the battery doesn't last more than 9 to 10 hours if iDesk is running without any other activity. Too bad, and probaby not easy to fix (because of OPL)

Raven wrote:How Cedesguin can claim that PowerDesk is unstable is beyond my comprehension.

I think I may have an explanation: I am using a one-Gbyte (Pretec) MMC card, which may be not fast enough to comply with the Symbian system requirements. Perhaps "big" cards are slower than small ones, perhaps too Symbian system (or application software) lacks time-out protections to comply with them.

Well, that shouldn't matter. I also use a 1G card (TwinMos) and it works exactly the same as the 128MB card that came with the phone. I do have PD installed on the internal memory though. All other apps are installed on the memory card. Although that really shouldn't affect performance either, it might be worth a try if you have it installed on the card atm. Or maybe you have some files that have gotten corrupt on your card? Or another third party app is conflicting with PD somehow...

As to battery drainage, I haven't tested iDesk long enough to notice, but I do know a couple of other third party apps that will drain the battery dry if you leave them open - OggPlay and Opera Mini. Fortunately my two most used apps; PD and ProfiMail have no such effect on the battery.

Raven wrote:I do have PD installed on the internal memory

OK, I will give a new try with internal memory installation. BTW, why did you install PD onto the main memory? Did you experience unstability problems when installed onto the MMC?

No, I just chose the internal memory because PD replaces the default Desk application and acts as a system app, so I figured it best to have it running from the main memory. I haven't tried installing it on the memory card.

Raven wrote:PD replaces the default Desk application and acts as a system app.

(crossing my fingers)
Re-installed into the main memory about 8 hours ago, no crash so far...

cedesguin wrote:Discovered a serious problem with iDesk: it keeps the CPU activity level quite high (about 35 - 40%) all the time, so it is very greedy, and the battery doesn't last more than 9 to 10 hours if iDesk is running without any other activity. Too bad, and probaby not easy to fix (because of OPL)

Most people have no problem with battery life when running iDesk, but at least one other iDesk user also found battery life to be shorter if iDesk was active. The reason is that iDesk has to update the header information regularly (time, date, free memory etc). But, since there is a bug in the OPL-runtime for asynchronous events, iDesk uses a workaround which could be responsible for the high cpu activity level.

In the mean time I have found a better way of working around the asynch bug in the OPL-runtime, which should reduce the CPU-activity level of iDesk, but I need proof. Which tool can I use to find out the CPU-usage? Any pointers?

Edit: just downloaded the freeware application TaskSpy (great application). This shows the CPU-level on my Nokia 9500 with iDesk running in the background or the foreground in idle mode consistently at 0% (i.e. iDesk does not use any CPU-power when active). I will double-check with a previous version of iDesk and report here as well.

Just checked with iDesk 1.42 and this version also has a CPU-usage of 0%, but:

When you change the header of title-bar to include a seconds (i.e. [ss] in the format string for header or title), the CPU-uage jumps to 30%-45%.

I can optimize this for the next version, but I cannot completely get rid of it, so I will also add a warning that adding seconds to the header or title will increase the CPU-usage and should be avoided.

@Cedesguin: can you confirm that you have/had display of seconds turned on in your iDesk configuration?

I'm another user who's found that battery life is very much worse if running iDesk. I do not have seconds displayed though.

I do display week, time (e.g. 12:20), used space (MB and percent).

Could the drive space display also be eating into the battery?

Hi andy

As noted above, I've checked without the seconds display, the CPU usage in idle mode is zero (both in 1.42 and the new version which is under development).

Can you check what's happening on your Communicator by running TaskSpy and check the CPU usage with and without iDesk? If you find a significant difference, I'd like to know. Maybe it's the combination with other software that causes this to happen, so it would be helpful if you could send me an overview of everything that is running.

Ok, the optimization of updating header and titlebar is done. In idle mode without the display of seconds, the CPU-usage is still 0% (therefore should have no effect on battery).

If seconds display is activated, the CPU-usage jumps to 6% if it's displayed in the header and 16% when it's displayed in the title. There is nothing more I can do to optimize that. I've also added a warning about the CPU-usage when they select seconds to be displayed in the the header or title.

I will release an updated iDesk version at the end of the week, which includes this change, fixes some other bugs and has a couple of small but nice enhancements. Macro5 support is still heavily under development and will not be present yet in this release.