alert button

[pruss]

What does the alert button (the exclamation mark) do? Under what circumstances does it light up?

(I'm thinking of an option in mySkin/myKbd to turn it into a battery indicator instead.)

[minimalposter]

It lights up when an alarm or event has passed. So, for example, if you had an alarm in datebook and you ignored it when you turned on the PDA the ! would be blinking.

Look forward to whatever you do Pruss. Your apps are first rate!

[PinCushionQueen]

I also get an ''alert'' from Chatopus when I become disconnected from the server. I don't really use it, but it can't be turned off. I'd rather have the battery meter though. Great idea!!

[PascalSmeets]

What does the alert button (the exclamation mark) do? Under what circumstances does it light up?
Also Resco Backup can use the feature if there has been an error in the automatic backup process.
(I'm thinking of an option in mySkin/myKbd to turn it into a battery indicator instead.)
Or even better, if you could include the alert function (lighting up the battery icon if there is an alert)

[pruss]

The only problem with lighting up the battery is that the I need a lot more battery bitmaps. Currently I think 36 are needed--about 12 per orientation.

[_Em]

Are you planning on doing 6 levels with charging on and 6 with charging off, or 11 levels with it off and one with it on? Launcher cheats by having one icon for when charging is taking place... you could do this too (as well as having only one when you have notification alerts).

[dmitrygr]

how do you intend to update it?
statusbar is not redrawn unless needed, you will need to force redrawing and I am scared to think of the performace impact. event once a second this is a lott of some time, on nvfs especially if the bitmaps are out of cache. I propose a different solution. have the bitmaps in the skin, and redraw JUST this one on a Timer(NOT an alarm please).



EDIT: better yet, redraw on a notification of battery level change (i will provide it if you are interested)

[pruss]

how do you intend to update it?
statusbar is not redrawn unless needed, you will need to force redrawing and I am scared to think of the performace impact. event once a second this is a lott of some time, on nvfs especially if the bitmaps are out of cache. I propose a different solution. have the bitmaps in the skin, and redraw JUST this one on a Timer(NOT an alarm please).

I was going to use a timer, and then just redraw the bitmap. But it does look to me like the only good way to do this is to write a custom statusbar plugin, and I don't quite know how to do that. The alternative is to keep the existing attention plugin, but just draw over it. (This is a bit harder on a T3 where I'm having trouble with using the aia API from ARM code.) However, then I would have to make sure to draw over it whenever the system redraws the attention icon, and I don't know how to check when that has happened. (I suppose I could change the attention abmp to be all transparent so it wouldn't overwrite the battery icon. But I would still have to have a way of detecting when the whole statbar was redrawn. Is there a notification?)

EDIT: better yet, redraw on a notification of battery level change (i will provide it if you are interested)

Yes, please do provide the information. It would be a valuable notification to know about.

Thanks!

Alex
p.s. I was thinking of ten battery levels, and a single charging icon, as on the Clie. Alternately, I could have ten battery levels, and then overdraw a charging icon like a lightning strike.

[Cygnet]

Guys,

Just another observation of when the exclamation (alarm) thingy flashes.... I'm in the UK where we have the whole GMT / BST change the clocks in March (spring forward) and October (fall back) the change happens at 2am when you nest turn on the Palm on waking, the exclamtion is flashing to let you know the gmt / bst change has done its thing....

I don't know whether this would affect or have to be a consideration on any patching / app that would 'overwrite' the exclamation thingy.....

SC

[_Em]

I wonder if it would be possible to use the WiFi plugin to figure out how to make a battery one? -also, if you are doing a lightning overlay, couldn't you do a ! overlay in the same way?

[Greek]

An idea. Why not tap on the "!" icon and open the command bar? That way you wouldn´t need to open the DIA and then do the diagonal line gesture to open the command bar. Lots of apps use it and the built-in Edit functions are there.

Perhaps tap and hold to launch the command bar, so you may still have the alert pop-up by tapping once on the "!" icon. :)

Regards,

[pruss]

I think I'll pass on this whole project for now. Too many other things to do... See my message in the Applications forum.