.KEYWORD editorial798
.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE A more perfect Palm Desktop
.DEPT
.SUMMARY Do you like the Palm Desktop application? Do you think it could be better? So does PalmPower Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz. In this trend-setting article, he outlines PalmPower’s recommendations for a new and improved desktop design. It’s the Palm Desktop we all wish we had. Also, David bids a fond farewell to one overworked columnist and welcomes another. Plus, there’s a great way to win a leather PalmPilot jacket, but you’ll have to read this article before July 5th to find out how.
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
This month, I’ll be talking about PalmPower Magazine’s recommendations for an updated Palm Desktop architecture. But first, I’d like to make a couple of announcements.
This month marks the last installment of Chris Brown’s Tech Support Insider column. He’s getting really busy at 3Com as more and Palm III’s are sold and it’s only fair that we free him up. Hopefully, when he gets some breathing space, we’ll see some more great articles from him. Chris has turned into a promising new writer and I encourage him to explore writing as a talent both in and outside the technical field.
Taking Chris’ place with a monthly column is David Pogue. David’s a fabulous writer, author of a bunch of Dummies books (Macs for Dummies, More Macs for Dummies, Classical Music, Opera, and Magic for Dummies) as well as seven other books. He’s been a Macworld columnist, and his few singing scenes on the former MSNBC show The Site are legendary here in PalmPower HQ. David has just completed PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide (which will be independently reviewed by Claire Pieterek in a future issue) and will be signing on with PalmPower to do a column called "The Ultimate Guide". It promises to be both fun and useful at the same time.
David has asked us to share with you a contest opportunity, but you’ll need to act before July 5. If you purchase his book from Computer Literacy Bookstore (an absolutely cool Bay Area bookstore that really should have a branch in Princeton — hint, hint), you’ll have a chance to win one of five PalmPilot leather bomber jackets. You can find out more at David’s site: http://www.pogueman.com.
Finally, if you read either Bob Freud’s "Outliners for the PalmPilot" or Alan Jay Weiner’s "Resources, Forms, and Controls" last month in EasyPrint mode, you noticed that the tables had displayed in all black. There was a bug in our rendering software that’s now been fixed, so if you want to print out those articles, feel free to go ahead.
And now, onto the desktop…
.H1 The joy of the Desktop
I’m going to commit a sin. I’m going to be a blasphemer and tell you that Graffiti and I just don’t get along. I can use it, but I’ve never really liked it. I’m not much for handwriting, period. I never liked it in school and the prospect of writing anything longhand is enough to give me the chills. So when I have to write backwards ‘V’s or a strange shaped ‘F’, it’s damned disconcerting.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not critical of Graffiti. If you learn it and use it, it’s highly accurate. And as a way to keep processing cost down inside the Palm device, I think it’s a good design decision. But we don’t really get along. I’ll use it when I’m out and I have to, but otherwise, the Palm Desktop’s the toy for me.
I live in my Palm Desktop (actually, since I still carry an old-fashioned, pre-upgraded PalmPilot, I live in Pilot Desktop, but it’s the same idea). All my names, to-do items, dates, and even fun lists of goodies live in my Pilot Desktop. The thing is, I do the bulk of my work at my computer screen and I enter information using the keyboard. I like the keyboard. And I think it likes me. We’re a very cute couple.
I also like the add-on software for the PalmPilot. I love outliners. I think products like Mobile Generation’s Mobile Account Manager for keeping secure passwords are just the coolest (and most useful) things. Products that keep track of shopping lists (see our premier issue) and database tools like JFile (which Jason Perlow is writing about this month) seem incredibly useful on the road–until I start think about entering all that data.
Again, don’t get me wrong. I love those applications. But I want them to be integrated into my Pilot Desktop. Tightly. Intimately. Embarrassingly so.
When the original Pilot came out, the synchronization capabilities were far and above those of anything else on the market. In fact, the MessagePad 2000, arguably a better machine in terms of overall capacity, was rendered far less useful because of the brain-damaged Newton Connection Utilities and absolutely terrible synchronization. History shows the Newton being terminated and the Palm platform becoming a rousing success, in large part because Jeff Hawkins and his team understood the purpose of linking to the desktop.
But it’s been a long time since the Pilot was introduced. Conduits (the software architecture used for moving data between the machines) were a fine design. But they’re not good enough now. It’s time for the Palm Desktop to grow up.
.H1 Existing capabilities
Before we discuss PalmPower’s recommendations for future desktop capabilities, let’s review what exists today:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Applications run on the Palm device. A few applications are built-in and third-party applications can be downloaded using the PalmPilot Install Tool and a variety of third party products.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Some applications running on the Palm device can also support plug-ins that extend their capabilities. An example of this is Launch ‘Em from Synergy Solutions and the ubiquitous HackMaster utility.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Applications on the Palm device can synchronize their data with a PC through a mechanism called HotSync and using pathways called Conduits. Here’s how 3Com describes this:
.END_LIST
.EDNOTE The basic premise is that the process continuously runs on the PC or Mac monitoring a serial port. Pressing the HotSync button on the cradle wakes up the Palm device, causes it to send data out the serial port which is seen by the HotSync monitor on the desktop. At this point the two processes begin communicating then installing any .PRC files, loading conduits to synchronize data, and backing up databases.
.EDNOTE It is possible for a developer to create a conduit that is called during the HotSync process. This allows a developer to create a custom DLL that HotSync will load, and the code in this DLL will carry out the synchronization between the desktop and the Palm device.
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET On the PC, there are a number ways to access the data. The most common is from the Palm or Pilot Desktop application. Some applications directly read the Palm databases uploaded by the HotSync process. An example of this is the PC component of the TealPaint product. And still other applications read data in their native format, relying on the conduits to place the data appropriately. An example of this is the conduit between the Palm device and Symantec’s ACT! sales management system.
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Once data is changed on the PC, the HotSync process again is involved to properly synchronize everything between the two devices.
.END_LIST
To be fair, this process works better than synchronization on most other handheld devices. But as an old boss used to tell me, "What have you done for me lately?"
It is our opinion that integration between the Palm desktop application on a PC or Mac and the corresponding applications on the Palm device can be better. If you use the To Do List, or the Memo Pad, integration is wonderful. But if you use any of the enhancements to the PalmPilot To Do List or Memo Pad, such as Hands High’s Memo Plus or To Do Plus, you can’t edit the data on your PC. For example, in To Do Plus, you can attach a drawing to a To Do. When you’re on the Palm Desktop, you can’t see or edit that drawing. But you should be able to.
This isn’t the fault of Hands High (or other developers with similar cool apps on the Palm device who can’t reflect that coolness on the desktop). There’s really no fault to find. But the place this problem should be solved is in the design of the Palm Desktop.
In short, the Palm Desktop needs to allow plug-ins.
.H1 Plug-ins
In Photoshop, you can add plug-ins that do amazing things. In Internet Explorer and Netscape, you can add plug-ins that change the entire behavior of the browser (Ok, so sometimes that includes increased crashing, but the intent is good). In Director (a multimedia animation tool), you can add plug-ins that change the user interface, add special effects, and even provide entire database engines (I know, I wrote one).
But you can’t use plug-ins in the Palm Desktop.
Imagine it, if you can. A company like Hands High builds an enhancement to the Palm device’s To Do list. Now you can attach drawings. You do a HotSync, visit the To Do section of the Palm Desktop, and now there’s a drawing attached, and a little drawing interface. It would be so sweet.
What needs to happen is this: At the risk of repeating myself, the Palm Desktop needs to allow plug-ins. But it also needs the equivalent of Visual Basic’s custom controls so that independent developers can develop their own user interface enhancements. There needs to be a scrolling grid of applications (like the Windows Control Panel), so developers like Teal Software with TealPaint don’t need separate applications to access Palm data.
Much of the structure is already in place. Many apps run Visual Basic VBXs. If the Palm Desktop were rewritten to support VBXs, this would get the project over many hurdles. The conduit architecture already knows how to talk between Palm device applications and the desktop. It could also serve the purpose of talking between the desktop applications and any plug-ins (especially since those plug-ins would presumably use data in similar ways to the applications on the handheld device).
Developers are not shy about building software for the Palm platform. And since one of the key benefits of the Palm platform is synchronization, it seems a shame that third party applications aren’t available within the Palm Desktop framework. To make them work in such a way would be very Palm-like in nature.
And so, PalmPower Magazine strongly recommends 3Com develop an application plug-in architecture within the Palm Desktop. We further recommend that 3Com do this rather soon, perhaps aiming for availability by the Palm Platform Developer Conference in December. Finally, we recommend that in developing this architecture, they don’t forget their loyal users on the Macintosh. It would be nice to see a similar architecture for their upcoming Mac Desktop release.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Visit David Pogue’s site at http://www.pogueman.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO David Gewirtz is the Founder and Chairman of Component Enterprises, Inc. He is the Editor-in-Chief of PalmPower Magazine, published by Component, and The Insider for Lotus cc:Mail, published by The Cobb Group division of Ziff-Davis. He is also the author of "The Flexible Enterprise" and "Lotus Notes Revealed".
.DISCUSS http://www.component-net.com/webx?13@@.ee6c006
