Freda - ebook reader program for Windows Mobile

[Jim Chapman]

Folks,

The 'TypeLoad Exception' problem will happen if Freda is installed in any location other than '\Program Files\Freda'. I think this may lead to problems in two cases:
1) Installation on Storage Card
2) Installation on non-English localised devices (where the folder is called, for instance, \Programas\Freda). I'm guessing you'd also have a problem with the name of the '\My Documents\Freda ebooks' folder too, but that can be fixed using the Settings/Folders screen.

In the short term, the solution to (1) is to install in main memory. The solution to (2) would be to create a \Program Files\Freda folder manually, copy the Freda files to it, and then adjust the start menu shortcut accordingly. Not ideal, and it would require messing about with a file explorer tool (I'd recommend Resco Explorer for the job). If anyone has tried that fix and found it doesn't work, I'd be very interested to get a report.

In the long run, I will fix this for v1.0

Thanks for all your feedback.

Jim

[AlexC]

I'm getting the following error on a Samsung Blackjack II running Windows Mobile 6.1. This is after installing the updated .NET framework.

Freda.exe
NotSupportedException

at Microsoft.AGL.Common.MISC.HandleAR() at
System.Windows.Forms.OpenFileDialog..ctor() at
Freda.Form1.InitializeComponent() at Freda.Form1..ctor() at
Freda.Program.Main()

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by AlexC

I'm getting the following error on a Samsung Blackjack II running Windows Mobile 6.1. This is after installing the updated .NET framework.

Freda.exe
NotSupportedException

at Microsoft.AGL.Common.MISC.HandleAR() at
System.Windows.Forms.OpenFileDialog..ctor() at
Freda.Form1.InitializeComponent() at Freda.Form1..ctor() at
Freda.Program.Main()

That's weird. Is there a \program files\freda\logfile.txt file? If so, could you send it to me (email home(at)jim-chapman.net). It looks like you must have got this error message before the initial splash screen was displayed; is that right?

Cheers,

Jim

[HansTWN]

I tried it on the bus yesterday, after I couldn't use my reader because they turned off the lights. Generally your program is well done, however, I basically had 3 gripes.

Firstly, you left zero left margin and no way to adjust this. It was less irritating after reversing the screen (white letters on black background) because the black background blends in with the bezel but that was only because it was dark around me. During the day I find this very uncomfortable.

Secondly, when I kept the font size at 8 the screen backlighting dimmed before I got to turn the page (I like to set this to a very short interval to prolong battery life and it is not practical to reset this just for reading). The problem is that every time you touch the screen so that backlighting comes back on to full strength your settings menu appears. Perhaps you can have a menu button in a corner somewhere or set either left or right swipe (they have no function now) to bring up the menu?

Finally, page turns are very slow (I am using the Touch Pro2, in the Mobipocket reader pages turn instantly and generally I have no lag using the device) and scrolling up from the bottom is counter intuitive (it seems every other program's page turns work right to left).

[starrigger]

My PDA runs Windows CE 3.0. Is that too old for Freda to run on?

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

My PDA runs Windows CE 3.0. Is that too old for Freda to run on?

Freda needs the Microsoft .Net Compact Framework (at least version 2); I don't think that's available for WinCE3.0. Actually, I don't think Microsoft provide support for WinCE3.0 any more.

But if you can install the Compact Framework on your PDA, you could have a go at installing Freda; it might work. I don't have access to a WinCE3.0 device, so I can't test it. If you try the experiment, please let me know how you get on.

Thanks,

Jim

[igorsk]

It seems CF2.0 requires at least WinCE 4.0. CF1.0 has support for 3.0 and even 2.0.

[jimnutt]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Finally, page turns are very slow (I am using the Touch Pro2, in the Mobipocket reader pages turn instantly and generally I have no lag using the device) and scrolling up from the bottom is counter intuitive (it seems every other program's page turns work right to left).

That's odd. I have a Touch Pro and it changes pages instantly, however, I did shut off the page scroll animation in the settings. That was just annoying, maybe that's your problem? Go into settings and on the appearance tab deselect "animate scrolling", I think you'll find things work much better.

I agree about the left margin though, a selectable margin would be nice (maybe an option on the appearance tab to set the number of pixels to shift the text over?)

jim nutt

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Finally, page turns are very slow (I am using the Touch Pro2, in the Mobipocket reader pages turn instantly and generally I have no lag using the device) and scrolling up from the bottom is counter intuitive (it seems every other program's page turns work right to left).

Turn off the scrolling and it improves a lot! And I've not yet come across one application that turns pages from right to left, but always from top to bottom, or when scrolling, from bottom to top.

[AlexC]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

That's weird. Is there a \program files\freda\logfile.txt file? If so, could you send it to me (email home(at)jim-chapman.net). It looks like you must have got this error message before the initial splash screen was displayed; is that right?
Jim

No log file is present. The error does indeed pop up before any splash screen.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Firstly, you left zero left margin and no way to adjust this. It was less irritating after reversing the screen (white letters on black background) because the black background blends in with the bezel but that was only because it was dark around me. During the day I find this very uncomfortable.

I'm working to increase the number of customisable settings, and margin will be one of them. It will also pick up margin settings from your book's CSS file. So hopefully the release version (1.0) in a couple of weeks, will suit you better. I am always going to want the option of fixing the margin at zero, since there are users out there (and I personally am one of them) who want to get the maximum use out of their limited screen space.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Secondly, when I kept the font size at 8 the screen backlighting dimmed before I got to turn the page (I like to set this to a very short interval to prolong battery life and it is not practical to reset this just for reading).

Why not? There are tools out there that let you automatically customise device settings depending on which app is running at the moment.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

The problem is that every time you touch the screen so that backlighting comes back on to full strength your settings menu appears.

That's an Operating System setting - I don't want to get into overriding system settings , for various reasons, including: (1) it could mean a need for Freda to be trusted/signed - which costs, and would make the open source model hard to apply (2) system settings work differently on every device, and what is fine on one device could create nasty snarl-ups on other devices (3) I think the behaviour "when the user touches the screen, the backlight comes up to its 'undimmed' level" is what users would expect, and it's what WinMo does automatically; to do something different will just confuse people.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Perhaps you can have a menu button in a corner somewhere or set either left or right swipe (they have no function now) to bring up the menu?

I guess I am being dim, but I don't see how it would help - these actions would still count as 'user interaction', and would still cause the backlight to un-dim.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Finally, page turns are very slow (I am using the Touch Pro2, in the Mobipocket reader pages turn instantly and generally I have no lag using the device) and scrolling up from the bottom is counter intuitive (it seems every other program's page turns work right to left).

If the animation annoys you, turn it off using the program's settings. For version 1.0 I plan to give you the choice - a vertical swipe will produce a scrolling animation, a horizontal swipe will produce a page-turning animation. Of course, this is all just eye-candy really! But I think there is benefit in giving a visual cue that a new page is coming up. One tip: the animation does require quite a lot of memory, and it will run faster if you have fewer other programs active. I could possibly make the animation faster, at the cost of making it more jerky - or add yet another customisable setting to control animation speed ... but this might be over-kill.

Thanks for trying the program, and thankyou for your feedback.

Jim

[HansTWN]

You misunderstood me. I want to "undim". The problem is not touching the screen to "undim" (it doesn't waste any time to hit the screen with my thumb while reading), the problem is that this touching action also brings up the settings menu which I have to close -- and that is a major distraction. Of course it is possible to set a separate "dim time" for Freda, if you leave everything as is that seems to be the best solution.

As for the slow page turns, I will try turning off the animation. By the way, my position on a reader application is: forget the eye candy and concentrate on optimizing the display for reading, loading books, bookmarks, etc. Unless we all upgrade to that new Touch HD2???

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Turn off the scrolling and it improves a lot! And I've not yet come across one application that turns pages from right to left, but always from top to bottom, or when scrolling, from bottom to top.

Will try turning off the scrolling. Mobipocket for WM turns pages back and forward by taping on the left or right edge of the screen. And on the iDon't both the Kindle app and Stanza allow either horizontal swipes or tapping the right or left of the screen to turn pages.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

You misunderstood me. I want to "undim".

OK I understand. I think the best solution would be to have an option to set which gesture is used to bring up the context menu. Possibilities would be:
- short-tap (as now)
- long tap-and-hold (in which case a short-tap will just restore application focus, which I think is what you need).

Actually when I first wrote the app, it used tap-and-hold to bring up the menu. I changed that because I personally found it inconvenient - but others may feel differently. In any case it is reasonably consistent with the WinMo GUI paradigm "tap and hold to set object properties"

I will implement this option for version 1.0

Cheers,

Jim

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Will try turning off the scrolling. Mobipocket for WM turns pages back and forward by taping on the left or right edge of the screen. And on the iDon't both the Kindle app and Stanza allow either horizontal swipes or tapping the right or left of the screen to turn pages.

Oh, I turned on the tapping to turn pages functions. I find it highly annoying myself. I like to annotate my books and I kept turning pages...