Facade User Guide

Facade User Guide

Managing your life from your Smartphone Home screen

Last updated December 1, 2006 (for Facade version 1.20)

SBSH Mobile Software

http://www.sbsh.net
Facade User Guide

Table of Contents

Glossary of Terms.................................................................................................................................... 3
Home Screen basics ................................................................................................................................ 5
Home Screen internals.......................................................................................................................... 6
The Facade plugin ................................................................................................................................ 6
Using Facade........................................................................................................................................... 7
Launcher Bar ........................................................................................................................................ 7
Tab Bar ................................................................................................................................................. 8
Schedule View ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Tasks View ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Configuring Facade................................................................................................................................ 10
Navigating the Configuration Screens ................................................................................................. 10
Home Screen Selection ...................................................................................................................... 12
General Settings ................................................................................................................................. 14
Layout Settings ................................................................................................................................... 18
Color Settings ..................................................................................................................................... 20
Launcher Buttons and Settings ........................................................................................................... 21
Launcher Buttons ............................................................................................................................. 21
Launcher Settings ............................................................................................................................ 23
Plugin Settings .................................................................................................................................... 24
Manual XML Configuration..................................................................................................................... 25
More information ................................................................................................................................. 25
XML example ...................................................................................................................................... 25
Download links and purchase information .............................................................................................. 27

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Facade User Guide

Glossary of Terms
Facade: A highly customizable home screen plugin that displays information about upcoming
appointments/tasks, a launcher bar to run your most frequently used programs, meters to display
memory/storage usage and battery information, and a tab bar to switch between multiple views of
information. Facade also includes a custom “skin” with professionally designed graphics, and the
ability for designers to create additional skins for a variety of attractive home screen layout options.

Facade Settings: A program that can be accessed from the start menu or a Facade launcher
button. This program provides multiple pages of configuration options that can be used to
customize the behavior and presentation of Facade.

Home screen: The main screen that is always available on a Windows Mobile Smartphone.
When running other programs, after a timeout period the phone will automatically return to the
home screen. The “Home” button will also take you to this screen.

Launcher bar: A row of “buttons” shown by Facade, each representing a particular program,
meter, or function (such as reload/reboot/configure). Use the left/right arrows to move between
the buttons on this bar, and the “action” key to select the button and run the associated action.

Meters: These are buttons on the “launcher bar” portion of Facade which show a small gauge
that graphically displays the percentage of free memory, storage space, or battery remaining.
The appearance of the meters can be customized by applying different skins to Facade.

Plugin: A component on the home screen which is responsible for presenting information in a
specific vertical area. The Smartphone operating system includes several standard plugins to
display “one line” information such as the date/time/carrier, message counts, MRU program
list, profile, missed calls, and next appointment. Facade expands on this concept by providing
customizable launchers, meters, tab bars, and enhanced schedule and task information.

Papyrus: A full featured calendar management solution, also created by SBSH Mobile Software.
Facade supports integration with Papyrus when both are installed.

Pocket Informant for Smartphone (PISP): A branded variant of Papyrus. Facade supports PISP
in the same manner as it supports Papyrus.

Skin: A set of graphic files (typically .tga, .jpg, or .bmp files), which customize the appearance of
Facade by replacing the standard look for buttons, icons, etc. This files are typically stored in a
separate directory on the phone and selected by changing the “skin” setting for a particular
home screen layout. This causes Facade to look first in the specified skin location for any image
files that are needed. If a particular image is not found in the custom skin directory, the
corresponding image from the standard skin directory will be used.

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Facade User Guide

Tab Bar: The section of Facade that displays visual “tabs” that each represent a particular
section of Facade (Schedule information, Task information, or Launcher bar). By moving
left/right, a particular tab is made active, showing the corresponding section of the screen and
hiding the information controlled by the remaining tabs.

XML: A file format consisting of <tags> and matching </tags> (the “/” denotes the end tag).
Home screens are defined in xml files using a filename like something.home.xml. These files
reside in the “Application Data/Home” directory (“Application Data” is found under the
“/Storage” directory on older WM2002/2003 phones)

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Facade User Guide

Home Screen basics

The main screen on a Windows Mobile Smartphone device is known as the “Home Screen”. The
various lines of information on this screen are configured by a layout file. Multiple layouts can be
defined, each stored in a separate file on the Smartphone. To select a Home screen layout, use
the Start menu to select “Settings”, then select “4 Home Screen”. This will allow you to choose
the current Home screen layout, color scheme, and background image.

A typical default home screen looks something like this:

These individual sections are each called “plugins”. Each

represents a specific function in a vertical region of the screen.

This plugin is the built-in schedule information. It displays only

the next appointment for the current day.

Other plugin lines may appear only when they have information to show.

This is a standard component of the Smartphone operating

system, as provided by Microsoft. Several standard plugins are provided with the phone,
and others may be provided by your particular phone vendor or carrier.

To navigate within the Home screen, use the up/down buttons to move from plugin to plugin. The up/down
buttons are dedicated to this function so they are not available for use by individual plugins. When a
particular plugin is selected by moving to it, the left/right buttons and the action button (center of the joy-
pad) may provide additional functionality. Most of the standard built-in plugins support only the action
button, which is generally used to open a related application, such as a mail program or calendar.

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