---------- ---------- PC Pro Realworld Computing: Paul Lynch - PDAs

HandWeb

When I need a screen grab from the Pilot, I have been using the method that I described a few columns back for generating an image of the screen; this requires me to run the software under CoPilot on a PC. This is fine for most programs, but not so good when I need to show a screen from a on-line session. This is perfectly possible under CoPilot, if I have a modem attached to my PC, although as I don't have a modem under usual circumstances, it can get very laborious.

I don't have much use for drawing programs on the Pilot as a rule, but there is something about TealPaint that I like. It has the facility to capture a screen on working PalmPilot. This is just what I need, and a far better process than using CoPilot. When you HotSync the Pilot to a PC, it takes a backup of the data from all your programs into your backup directory, in the form of a .pdb file; one of the files is for TealPaint, containing libraries of images. TealPaint comes with a Windows 95 program that can manage these files, including converting them to .BMP files.



Screens captured on the Pilot...
Screens captured on the Pilot...



...loaded on a PC
...loaded on a PC

For some time now I have used TGWingman on the Pilot, a freeware web browser. It takes a fairly radical approach to displaying web pages, requiring a specialised proxy server. If you install TGWingman, it is preconfigured to use a server running at UC Berkeley in California. I haven't had any problems with performance, but it does present web pages in an unfamiliar form. It shows images and links in a reasonable way, but makes a poor showing with forms and tables. With the web applications that I built last month, it was good enough that I could partially run the applications, but I had to take care to design the apps knowing that TGWingman would be running them. But it does only take under 50K of space on the Pilot, which is a big advantage.



No forms support...
No forms support...



the same page in HandWeb
the same page in HandWeb

The commercial alternative for the Pilot is HandWeb, from Smartcode Software. It works as a full web browser, not requiring a special proxy server like TGWingman, and so it takes up a lot more space. Including a small working cache, mine is using 138K, making it the fourth largest memory space used by a program and its data on my Pilot. HandWeb works well with forms, and presents tables in a usable manner. If you need to use forms for your web applications, HandWeb can cope when TGWingman can't. If you don't need these extras, then either browser is perfectly good for viewing the latest Dilbert strip.

TealPaint: http://www.tealpoint.com
HandWeb: http://www.smartcodesoft.com
TGWingMan: http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/pilot/


Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: March 11, 1998

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