SBSH Pocket Breeze

Supplier:www.sbsh.net
Product:PocketBreeze
Version:4.2.10 02/01/2005
Cost: $12.95
Tested on: XDA II


A very customisable Today Screen plug-in replacement for Calendar and Tasks.

When I published my first TekGuru review for Wisbar Advance, a forum member - nickpope asked me why I was not running PocketBreeze. The answer was that I didn't think that I needed the software as the built in today screen items were fine for me. But, after just a couple of days using PocketBreeze it's got a permanent placement on my Today Screen.

Check out this screen shot using one of Juni's free Extended Today Screen and PocketBreeze skins.





The current version is 4.2.10, and the program is frequently updated, this version was released on the 2nd January 2005. No holiday rest for some eh?

PocketBreeze Features include

• Up to 30 days of appointments and tasks on the Today screen.
• Seamless integration with Agenda Fusion and Pocket Informant aswell as the default PIM.
• Easy switch between categories for display purposes.
• Skinnable and Extendable!
• Pop-out Calender allowing any day / week of appointments and tasks to be loaded.
• Tons! of options for complete customisation.
• Frequently updated.

My first step was getting a trial version which you can also find at SBSH. Installation was typical no-nonsence ActiveSync installation and very straight forward. The first thing I noticed after installation was that the plug-in automatically registers itself and disables the standard calendar and task plug-ins. The presentation of PocketBreeze is excellent, and even on first glance I was delighted to see my actual tasks expanded and not just a counter.



I was a little perturbed at the height of the plug-in as I like to use PocketPlus with large icons and PocketZenPhone too, so the initial height being set to 160 pixels was a little too big for me as it caused the scroll bar to appear on the right. However, this is easily adjusted from within the settings which I'll demonstrate later.

Let me first explain what appears on the screen when the plug-in is loaded.

The toolbar line of PocketBreeze contains a number of icons, the first one is for the calendar, tapping on it reveals a pop-up month allowing individual date or a selection of dates to be selected. You can tap and hold and choose to load up the appointments / tasks that are due during your selected time.

I find this feature excellent, and my one niggle with it, is that the pop-up calendar has to be closed by tapping on the X icon on the right of the pop-up, it's more intuitive to tap again on the calendar icon so maybe that should be a feature request. To close the selection you have loaded and return to Today's appointments, you tap on the little arrow that extends from the calendar icon.





To the right of the calendar icon another button resides for the category selection. Tapping this button can filter the display appropriately, this uses your default category list. To return to 'All' categories tap the icon again and choose All.

Lastly on this bar you have a little cluster of four icons, these are Settings, Calendar, Tasks and SpecialEvents. (We'll deal with the setting icon last.)

The use of the calendar button displays appointments and tasks for the configured number of days.

Tapping on the tasks button shows the task list. Also while in this screen the Calendar icon dynamically changes to a list icon and tapping here allows multiple sorting and 'group-by' filters to be applied to the list, again this is an excellent feature and one I use repetitively.

The SpecialEvents tab is a great implementation and it counts down the number of days remaining to a SpecialEvent such as Birthdays or Anniversaries.





Lastly then into the settings icon, the pop-up selection offers the settings menu, a global search function, a category icon selection editor, a minimise option (to shrink the plug-in to it's minimum), two options for collapsing all appointments and expanding all appointments.

I tried out the PocketBreeze search function and compared the results with Pocket Informants search results. In the screen shot you can see both sets of results, the search string was Johanna and PI found more items, as it scanned through all the contact fields and found Johanna in my contact details as my Spouse!





Moving on, tapping on the settings we open the general settings page. There really is an incredible amount of settings for this Today Screen Plug-in, unfortunately the sheer number of settings can be off-putting at first. Tap the drop down box next to general settings and see the list! It's a testament to the developer and shows a true understanding of the amount of individual customisation needs and desires, I'd expect that no matter what way you want your appointments and tasks shown, that PocketBreeze can take care of it.





From the general settings page you can change the height of the plug-in as I mentioned earlier, I reduced it to 140 pixels and this works for me, also as the application is Landscape compatible you can also adjust the landscape height if needed. There's also the ability to set PocketBreeze to use Pocket Informant, Agenda Fusion, the default PIM or a custom PIM.

PocketBreeze is also skinable which is another excellent addition to this plug-in, from this page of settings, if you tap the skins option, you can choose to use any loaded skins. You can download a number of free and (expensive) custom skins from the SBSH website - Juni's skins are particularly excellent.

Another setting I adjusted here is to disable the sound which emits when you tap any of the icons in the toolbar. In fact the entire toolbar can be hidden from view if desired, in this instance you then need to tap Start, Programs and PocketBreeze Settings to get back into the settings page.

In the calendar settings page, some of the options available are to change the default time and date format settings, the number of days to display, enable the smart folding buttons and lots more. The second page of the calendar settings allows you to change the appointment display style to any of ten different settings and the order in which the items are displayed within the plug-in. Additionally, you disable tasks from appearing in the calendar list and so much more.



A very cool feature is the ability to use the D-PAD on your device to scroll up and down the plug-in as required, a left and right click switches between the available tabs, this is cleverly implemented and removes the need for the stylus to navigate. PocketBreeze is also expandable through the use of Tabs, ContactBreeze - another program from SBSH can be loaded into PocketBreeze and allows the display of contact information directly on the Today Screen.

In this last image, I've created a collage of screens to show some of the screen shots I've taken for this review.




Conclusion

In my use of the program, I've come to really enjoy it! I thought that I did not needs such a program, but I'd encourage anyone to try it out for a couple of days and I'm sure that you'll agree it's a great program. Furthermore, plug-ins can slow down your device, but I found PocketBreeze very fast at loading and refreshing. In fact it's the first plug-in that appears when I soft-reset my XDA II. Overall this program is so well thought out and implemented that I just have to have it!

For.
• Customisable appointments and tasks views on the today screen.
• D-PAD navigation.
• An exceptional amount of settings for complete customisation.
• Fast
• Expandable and skinable
• Integration with most popular PIMS.

Against
• An exceptional amount of settings.
• Plug-in height can be an issue for screen real-estate.




4WM Rating 98%