Application menu and tagging

Posted by sky | Tags: Mobile, Python, Sky-Explorer, tagging, user-guide

What is this? It is like the Nokia application menu, except that it is built within the program itself. The menus in the program is equivalent to the tags that you have tagged to an application.

Initially, none of the application is tagged, when you navigate to the Apps folder, you should see a list of applications. Now, you may not recognize them because what is shown is really the application filename. (The program doesn't know the name itself, it just gather from the file system all the available applications) You can launch the application either using the right arrow key or the selection key.

You will be able to find this program itself within the Apps list, it is listed as SkyExplorer. (Note: you won't be able to launch another instance of SkyExplorer) Let say, I tag SkyExplorer with Python,Utils (2 tags), each tag will now appear as a subfolder within the Apps folder, and if you navigate into each tag Python (or Utils), you will be able to see SkyExplorer listed within it and you can also see the other tag (as a subfolder). (Display is not refreshed immediately after tagging, you may need to navigate somewhere and then back again) Easier to understand with a diagram below, name with a * behind is displayed as a folder.

Basically, this gives you a way to organize your applications through tagging.

Apps*
  |__Python*
  |       |___Utils*
  |       |        |___SkyExplorer
  |       |___SkyExplorer
  |__Utils*
  |       |___Python*
  |       |        |___SkyExplorer
  |       |___SkyExplorer
  |
  ..
  |__SkyExplorer

You can also search for application or tag name at any level in the application menu, the search is performed within the current tag (or folder). For eg. below, I search for Exp. It simply tries to search Exp within the application or tag names. (Yes, this is a bit different from the actual file searching and the display text is the same which is not right!)

Search for Exp

Apps *Exp*

And there is an Uninstall menu which will not immediately uninstall the selected applications. (The program doesn't know how, yet) But, it will just launch the Application manager. In fact, it is now hardcoded to run this \system\Apps\AppMngr\AppMngr.app if it exists in one of your phone's drive. You can inform me if your phone uses a different one or just don't use Uninstall at all.

For developers, the applications tags are saved into a python file named explorertag.py and is imported into the program when it starts. You can see my explorertag.py.

15 Mar 2007

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