Facer
2.02
Facer stands as PocketCraft's flagship
application. They designed it to be simple to use for even
the novice. Although we just reviewed Facer a few months
ago, this major upgrade looked interesting enough to evaluate
again.
Although very similar in appearance to
the previous version, PocketCraft coded Facer 2.0 from scratch
and incorporated some significant changes. The most dramatic
involves its new support for plug-in modules for the today
page. It ships with the standard datebook and todo modules,
retaining its look and feel. Third-party developers will
undoubtedly produce more viewers, including email, SMS, Bible
verse of the day, reminders, et al. This new feature alone
should propel Facer to dominance in the today app market.
The today page fonts can now be enhanced
with the included FontBucket and a very limited font database.
Each of the modules can be customized to display only the
information the user desires. They can be set to roll into
the next day if the current day doesn't fill the screen.
Tapping on an appointment or task will take you to that item
in the applicable built-in PIM. These plug-ins also will
display Agendus icons, but was having difficulty with Datebk5
with an identical icon set in the tested release.
Facer has always been skinable, but 2.0
greatly increases the items that can be customized in skins.
PocketCraft apparently partnered with PocketPixel to
produce a number of new, more comprehensive themes.
The launcher portion of Facer benefited
greatly from the upgrade. First and most welcome, it automatically
imports the category information from the default launcher.
It also allows the user to re-import this information later.
Other new features include sound effects on actions, and
more comprehensive drag & drop functionality for category
assignment, shortcuts, and favorites. Tap and hold on an
app icon to bring up a short popup menu to copy, move, delete,
beam/send, or get info on the app. The info display has the
basic app info plus the ability to change some basic file
attributes.
The hi res graphics have been enhanced
and overall stability improved. Facer picked up significant
speed in the upgrade as well. The information icons got a
balloon help-type operation with more useful data. The favorites
bar may be populated either by drag & drop or tap and
hold on an entry. The bar holds 5 favorites plus the fixed
recent list, which displays up to 10 apps. Unfortunately,
the favorites bar doesn't recognize apps in flash or on card
on tap-and-hold, but you can drag them there.
One of my earlier complaints concerned
the previous versions' fixed font color, making the icon
labels virtually invisible against a dark background. That's
now rectified nicely, plus the fonts even look better. The
icon labels can even be shadowed now. The category tabs have
more icons in this version from which to choose.
Most obvious to me the first time I opened
2.0, it now supports the newest devices and displays. This
includes the T3 in both portrait and landscape modes, and
UX50 landscape display.
Coded from scratch, Facer
2.02 really is the major upgrade that PocketCraft advertises,
though many of the most significant changes lie beneath
the surface. It can now be customized to a much greater
degree. Previous users will easily transition to this version
and be pleased with the upgrades. Planned development continues
with an eye toward adding features and functionality. At
$18.95, Facer offers a simple-to-use launcher combined
with a powerful today application.
Pros :
Simple to use
Full T3 & UX50 support
Plug-in API for almost unlimited today page flexibility
More extensive theme flexibility/power
Cons :
Although a now at an acceptable level
of power, the launcher is still pretty basic at this point |
