SPB Pocket Plus Making the Best Even Better

FAQ

General

1. Can I install Spb Pocket Plus to a storage card or to a built-in storage folder?
2. Does Pocket Plus adversely affect my Pocket PC's performance?

Close Button

1. When I press the X button programs close just like they did before I installed Spb Pocket Plus. What new functionality has Spb Pocket Plus added then?
2. I've read that I can choose to minimize programs by default and close them by gesture. What gesture do I use?
3. How can I open the Pocket Plus Task Manager?
4. Can I assign the Spb Pocket Plus Task Manager menu to a hardware button?

Pocket Internet Explorer

1. How can I open a new tab in Pocket Internet Explorer?
2. How can I view the source of a document in Pocket Internet Explorer?
3. What the Page Panning feature does?

File Explorer

1. How can I view file properties?
2. What is the "format" command for?
3. How can I compress a file?
4. How can I get the folder size?
5. What encryption algorithm is used for file encryption? Is it strong enough?

Today Plug-In

1. How can I add more items in a tab?
2. Can I change item positions on my Today screen?
3. What is the "Custom" category for?
4. I have five Pocket Word documents in one tab but I cannot distinguish them. What should I do?
5. Estimated battery lifetime in the Spb Pocket Plus Today Plug-In does not correspond with my device specification. Why?
6. How can I add a shortcut to a program that is not included in the Start->Programs menu?

Safe Mode

1. What is safe mode for?
2. I do not see any safe mode prompt during system loading. Is anything wrong?
3. How does safe mode work?

Buttons

1. How does Spb Pocket Plus extend the functionality of the hardware buttons?
2. What are some additional commands I can assign to hardware buttons after I install Spb Pocket Plus?

Pocket Plus skins

1. What is Pocket Plus skins?
2. What about extended themes used before?

Yes, Spb Pocket Plus 3.0 and later supports installation to a built-in storage or to a storage card.

When you install Spb Pocket Plus to a built-in storage some files will still be copied to the Windows folder, however. This is because the built-in storage driver is loaded with a delay during system restart, so critical low-level components must be copied to Windows folder.

We strongly recommend that you not install Spb Pocket Plus to a storage card because storage card drivers can be loaded with up to a 5 second delay after system restart and important files will not be available for loading. One other reason is that Spb Pocket Plus is a system utility and some of its components run in the background. If you remove the storage card Spb Pocket Plus will not be able to load its resources.

All tests performed using different Pocket PC benchmarks show that there is no measurable difference in device performance when Spb Pocket Plus has been installed.

Originally, a Pocket PC does not close its applications -- it minimizes them. They continue working in the background and eat up Pocket PC resources. After installing Spb Pocket Plus the X button will truly close applications, not just minimize them. Spb Pocket Plus changes the behavior of your Pocket PC, not the user interface.

To make a 'gesture', tap the X button, move the stylus half an inch (1-2 centimeters) without releasing and then release it (flourish gesture). In Spb Pocket Plus you can choose whether to close programs by default and minimize them by gesture, or minimize them by default and close by gesture. In fact, you can assign any effect (closing, minimizing, and showing Pocket Plus Task Manager) to any action (tap, gesture, and tap-and-hold) on the Close button. This behavior is configured in the Pocket Plus options -> Close button feature options -> Button tab.

Tap-and-hold on the X button to open the Pocket Plus Task Manager. You can also change this behavior and assign another action to open the Task Manager (e.g. tap or gesture on the Close button). This behavior is configured in the Pocket Plus options -> Close button feature options -> Button tab.

Yes. This feature was presented in Spb Pocket Plus 3.0. After installing Spb Pocket Plus 3.0 or later you will find that the list of commands that you can assign to hardware buttons in Start->Settings->Personal->Buttons has been extended. In the end of this list you will find the new commands. For example you can assign "[Close Button Context Menu]" to one of the hardware buttons.

If you assign the "close button context menu" command to one of hardware buttons we recommend that you change its default configuration. You probably will use this menu for task switching, so we recommend that you move "" to the top of the list (in Spb Pocket Plus Options -> Close Button). This way you do not need to scroll through commands like "Close", "Minimize" each time you want to switch to another program.

A new button will appear in the Pocket Internet Explorer toolbar after installing Spb Pocket Plus. To open a new Pocket Internet Explorer window, just tap this button and choose New Tab in the menu. Another way to open a new tab is to open a link in it. Tap-and-hold on a link in the current page you are viewing in Pocket Internet Explorer, and select Open in New Tab from the context menu. Please note that the tab header will appear if you have two or more opened tabs. If you have more than four open tabs all the remaining tabs can be selected from the drop down list at right.

Tap the Spb Pocket Plus button that has been added to the Pocket Internet Explorer toolbar. In the menu select View Source.

By default, when you move the stylus or finger slowly on the page content in the Internet Explorer it starts text selection. With Page Panning we changed this behaviour to a more appropriate one: now moveing stylus on the window content will start dragging of the window content.

In File Explorer, tap-and-hold on a file and select Properties... from the context menu. In the same way you can view the properties of a folder or a selected group of files.

With the format command, you can format your storage cards right from your File Explorer. That's why the format command is added to the storage card context menu.

Tap-and-hold on a file and select Add to Zip from the context menu. The same operation can be performed with a group of files or a folder.

To decompress a ZIP file, tap-and-hold on it and select Extract from the context menu.

In File Explorer, tap-and-hold on a desired folder and select Properties... from the context menu. In the properties dialog you will see the overall size of files in this folder.

We use Rijndael algorithm for file encryption. This algorithm has been selected as American Encryption Standard (AES) by the US Government. You can read more about AES at Wikipedia. By the way please be aware that there is no way to restore the file content in case you have forget or lost the password for the encrypted file.

Tap-and-hold on a tab area and select Add->Items... from the context menu. Then you will be asked to select items from six categories. Select a category, and then select check boxes of the items you want to add to you tab.

Yes, you can. The easiest way to move items is using drag-and-drop. You can drag-and-drop items within one tab and between different tabs. To move an item to another tab, drag it and drop on the tab name. You can also select Arrange Items from the context menu, which will arrange your items in a grid.

The tabs themselves can also be moved using drag-and-drop.

You can add any file or folder from your Pocket PC to this category. Later on you can select files and folders from the Custom category to add to your Today screen. To add a file or folder to this category, go to the Spb Pocket Plus options dialog -> Today Plug-in feature options -> Tabs tab -> Items button and select Add->File or Add-Folder from the toolbar menu. Then select a file or a folder from your device.

In this case you can provide a separate icon for each of these files. Tap-and-hold an item, select Change Icon... from the context menu and choose an icon from Spb Pocket Plus icon collection. Starting with Spb Pocket Plus 4.0 you can use icon labels for Today plug-in items. Just open item context menu and check "Show Label" menu item.

Spb Pocket Plus uses real statistics to learn your device battery lifetime. After 2-3 days of usage it will show the time, which is more likely the real estimated working time for your device. If you usually use your Pocket PC as an MP3 player or use Bluetooth a lot this estimated time will be less then that written in the specification.

1. Go to the Spb Pocket Plus options dialog.
2. Select the Today Plug-in tab. Tap Feature Options.
3. Select the Tabs tab.
4. Tap on Items. You will see the list of categories.
5. Select Add->File from the menu of this dialog.
6. Choose your executable file.

If you install a third-party Today plug-in or a program that runs in the background and this plug-in or program has a bug you may have problems starting your device. Here, the only choice for you would be to completely hard-reset your device and lose all data. Unfortunately, this is not a rare problem. Spb Pocket PC Survey shows that 44% of respondents indicated that they have had such problems and had to hard-reset their Pocket PC.

When you boot your Pocket PC in safe mode the system does not load Today plug-ins, autorun applications or services. So you will be able to uninstall the bad application and reboot your device in normal mode.

With the default setting, the safe mode menu will only appear after the system has worked for less than three minutes. So, if you have problems during system loading and you soft-reset Pocket PC (or it is reset by itself) the safe mode menu will be shown.

You can change this setting to show the safe mode menu every time the system re-starts.

When you see the safe mode menu during system loading you can either press and hold the Action hardware key or tap and hold the safe mode menu to load in safe mode. The Pocket PC will reboot again, only this time in safe mode. Before rebooting, Spb Pocket Plus will backup and disable all Today plug-ins, services and autorun applications. Then, the next time you reset your Pocket PC all Today plug-ins, services and autorun applications will be restored and your Pocket PC will be loaded in its normal state.

There are two thing Buttons feature does. First, it adds long hardware button press to be selectable in the Buttons control panel applet. Now user can double the number of actions he or she can do with device hardware buttons, for example assigning an Internet Explorer to the simple btton press and add Messaging to the button hold. The second thing is, Apb Pocket Plus provides additional commands that you can assign to hardware buttons in the Start->Settings->Personal->Buttons applet. These additional commands are placed at the end of the list (commands like [Switch Programs (Alt-Tab)], [Backlight Loop], [Close Button Context Menu], etc).

Different people will use different commands. Spb Pocket Plus provides about 40 new commands. The following are just a few examples:

If you need a simple task manager you will probably like the "Alt-Tab" command ([Switch Programs (Alt-Tab)]). It works almost the same as Alt-Tab on desktop PC.

Or, if you need a more advanced task manager that can also close, minimize applications you can assign the "close button context menu" command to a hardware button ([Close Button Context Menu]). This is the same context menu that you can open by tap-and-holding the close button.

If you use your PIM a lot, you may want to be able to create a new task or an appointment with one button press.

You can also control the backlight settings and volume using hardware buttons now.

Spb Pocket Plus allows you to personalize your Pocket PC Today indicatos by means of skins. There are two skins that are installed by default: one is the new default skin and the other called Classic which is represents the default skin from version 3.0. You can change the style of the indicator through it's "Skins" context menu. When you click the "" menu item it will opened with a special page for download more skins

With version 4.0 we have split the Extended theme into the Pocket PC theme itslef and the skin for the indicator. It gives a user more freedom of choosing the style of his or her device. You can download the skin and the appropriate theme from the download page.