Wifi Network Tools and Other Mobile Widgets
Below are some of the wifi rescucitating wonder-workers and other useful widgets
without which I'm certain I'd have committed 'harikari' long before this project met its less-than satisfactory end!:
- Cirond Corporation's PocketWinc enables you to "see" your whole network, as well as quickly detect nearby wifi access points. It is also an amazing network diagnostic tool. While not free, like Wififofum, which I found difficult to install and use, PocketWinc is worth every penny of its $19.95 price and then some! While other apps could perform individual functions, PocketWinc gives you, as they say, "the whole enchilada". The interface design is so elegant and easy to use, problems are easier to resolve and clarity comes much sooner than using a combination of other "one trick ponies".
- VXUtil and VXipconfig are must-have handheld utilities. Combined, they are the handheld equivalence of 'netstat', a Windows operating system command line network analyzing tool. Some of the many features are: DNS Lookup, Ping, TraceRoute, Finger, Whois, Port Scanner, a password generator and more. It is one of the only utility suites that allow you to release/renew your dynamic address (DHCP). Best of all, the personal version is free! These are can't be without them super utilities.
- Registry VooDoo. One of the most maddening things about WinCE for handhelds is that Microsoft has made it real hard
to get into the "guts" of the O/S, and by that I mean the registry and configuration files, making it
real hard to troubleshoot ALL THE PROBLEMS with this less than perfect, feature and functionality depraved
operating system. It is necessary to rely on third-party software to execute basic and simple tasks that
should have been possible with the standalone O/S.
Among those applications is Regedit by BitsInside Software. It is a free application, although it does require registration in order to use the software. Another good basic registry tool is RegKing, altho it is quite a bit more limited in its features. It's most valuable feature is the ability to 'undo' or disable any of several registry tweaks. Using Regedit is a bit more of a walk on the wildside, akin to a desktop registry editor. You could bring your whole system down if you don't know what you are doing. My best advise? READ MY LIPS: Back up your files before messin' with your registry! - Mobile Flash – More Than Ready for Prime Time. Macromedia has lead the way in adaptability
of cross-platform Flash technology to mobile devices with some pretty amazing
results. Except...they left out a solution for the Palm Pilot O/S, with the exception of the Sony CLIE, which shuts out
virtually half the handheld market from viewing Flash. Palm users get a blank page or a black rectangle.
Yeah...go figure!
Readers, Viewers, Players and Candlestick Makers
- FlashAssist by AntMobile Software is the best way to view
Macromedia Flash movies on a mobile device. Unlike viewing Flash files in Pocket IE, which requires embedding
into an html file, and cannot be viewed at full-screen size, FlashAssist enables the viewing of .swf files, and
can even be used to view files in landscape mode, altho not very well on certain handhelds. Next version will
be "the charmed" one that will do that and more. There is also a pro version which is a distributable, freestanding
player that will run full Flash applications and .exe files. It is a little pricey for the student or for
personal use only, but it is a terrific must-have commercial product.
The Bryhtflash Player is a similar product. - AB Draw is a moderately-priced shareware
svg editor and viewer for Pocket PC for my dabbles in svg. With all the unresolved wifi network issues that
totally consumed my summer instead of project objectives, I was just beginning to fool around with svg drawing.
I started that experiment in a Flash MX II class I took, where I became enamored with the API drawing capabilities of
Flash MX using actionscripting only. Imagine it: shapes and art created with math. No actual drawing occurred.
I fully intend to continue my svg experimentation beyond the scope of this project.
Drawing Without Drawing. I also dabbled a bit with SMIL+SVG, which can be viewed right in the desktop browser! Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 for Windows were the most stable in their display of SMIL and SVG. Opera 6 and 7 were much better at displaying svg files than smil or a combination of the two. Mozilla/FireFox also displayed svg but was the most unstable of the three. I even managed to display svg files in Netscape 7.01, after reading that NN did not support svg or the Adobe SVG Viewer plug-in. Viewing svg files in NN7.01 did crash not only the browser but on occasion, my whole system.
I could not entice Mozilla/FireFox to display SMIL in any way shape or form. A combination of SVG+SMIL crashed any Gecko-flavored browser, even the new and mighty FireFox. Mozilla is working on a fix for that. In fact, Mozilla is moving toward native SVG display in the next generation of Gecko-based browsers. They are working on a mobile viewer/browser as well, but so far, very far away from "prime-time" use! Here is a link to Croczilla, the mobile project. Check it out!
