switch5 navigation weirdness

[tarverator]

I have been getting some weird effects with switch5 on my TX. I can't find any reference to anything like it anywhere else, and lots of people are using switch5 so I kind of doubt that anything this buggy would go unnoticed in such a popular hack, and yet...

Two weird things happen, but only sometimes. 1) When the list of recent apps comes up with a hardware button, every press of the nav button moves two items up or down the list. 2) When a recently-used app is selected and comes up, whatever control happens to have the focus is immediately clicked/executed. This was especially alarming when I switch5'ed back to PowerBtn, and was presented with a confirmation dialog, "Are you sure you want to hard reset your device?" No, thank-you.

[PinCushionQueen]

What is switch5? I've never heard of it...

[tarverator]

"Freeware. Switch5 is a PalmOS 5 preference panel which provides a simple way to switch between recently used applications. Think of it as a PalmOS 5 version of SwitchHack."

Five stars on Palmgear (http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&PartnerREF=&siteid=1&prodID=50373)

It appears quite regularly on lists of favorite apps.

[hroldan]

"Recently used applications... "

My guess is you don't need to install anything.

Ok, you are mentioning its a freeware app... I never heard of it as I'm new on the palm world, BUT, my TX has nothing installed for this and it does what you mention. Even doing a full restore from rom and it does, so the TX is able of doing this without any additional software.

In my case, on my TX, I can press (and hold) the home button and after a sec or two, it displays a list of the 5 recent used apps. Try it and let us know how it goes

[phreakonaleash]

hrolden is right... but it is kinda low quality. there are better reecents programs than the builtin and switch5 is one of them. Also mykbd can, mcphling, la, ...

[tarverator]

I am myself semi-new to Palm. I used to have a Handspring Visor about 5 years ago, but I never replaced it after its unfortunate demise by misadventure -- cracked screen, ouch! But I do find that now, as then, fiddling and tweaking are at least half the fun, if I can get all the little utilities and hacks to work together nicely. Not exactly "hacks" on OS 5, but still.

I find that switch5 has several advantages over the built-in functionality. It allows the MRU list to be pre-populated with true "favorites" (as distinct from actually recently-used), the list grows well beyond 6 apps, it makes toggling back to the previous app much easier, and it can be accessed with the stylus (like a DA).

Having turned it off, I just realized that I was also using it as a kind of very simple "event log", just to remember which apps I had executed since the last soft reset (although the list doesn't survive the reset, unfortunately.) Does anyone know of a simple utility that simply tracks which apps have been used, and perhaps for how long? No keyword that I could think of turned up anything like what I am looking for.

[tarverator]

I got a private note (thanks!!) answering my offhand question about how one might track which apps have been used. Try: Ak AppLog (http://www.akeysoft.com/product_details.asp?prodname=Ak%20AppLog) or AppLog (http://www.ninelocks.com/AppLog/applog.html) ...in case anyone else gets the words "event log" jammed in their brains, when they should instead be searching on "AppLog". Enjoy.