There have been a few concept videos going round recently on how the iPhone ‘s springboard might be changed and improved in future, to incorporate concepts like multitasking via coverflow and use of a Mac OS X style Expose-like treatment.
One new concept that ‘s already alive and kicking in the Cydia store is PogoPlank, and I ‘ve been getting to know it a little this afternoon.
Here ‘s a little Intro to PogoPlank courtesy of the BigBoss site:
PogoPlank ($1.99 in CydiaStore) replaces the traditional iPhone ‘Pages of Icons ‘ with a ‘Wheel of Categories ‘. Each category has a user defined name and list of applications contained within using the PPSettings app. Once all categories are configured, a user can then scroll through the wheel to the category they like, tap the folder and see a list of applications in that category which they can choose to launch.
One of the best features of PogoPlank is it ‘s completely themeable, both within itself as well as using winterboard wallpapers, icons, etc. With the PogoPlank themes, users can customize the theme to their liking all the way down to the opacity of each image. This makes it great if you have a background you want to be able to see while having your folders on top of it.
When I initially saw PogoPlank I thought it looked quite interesting but a little clumsy / awkward as well “ but I ‘ve remained curious about it and this afternoon my curiosity got the better of me, and I bought it for $1.99 and installed it.
So here are some quick first impressions on it:
Appearance
It feels much cleaner to me than I expected. Super clean. All of a sudden you ‘ve only got one home screen, and only the left-most 1/3 of it is occupied at all. The rest is free to display just your dock items and wallpaper. I like this a lot.
The built-in themes are pretty naff and not up to much, IMO. There is a pretty drab default one that many of you have likely seen in video demos, and a couple alternatives like ‘Alien ‘ for instance
The good news though is that PogoPlank is themeable, and there are already some much nicer choices around than the defaults (at least for my taste). The one shown in the screencap at the top of this post is the Leopard theme and its lovely and subtle and clean.
You can also mess around and customize the themes further within the PPSettings app “ setting things like opacity for the wheel, folders, and lists of apps. I haven ‘t got to tinkering with that yet.
Its themes do suffer from one flaw that general themes have “ there are not custom icons for all my apps, so I get some that stand out and break up the smooth look of things a bit.
User Interface & Usage
I ‘m really finding PogoPlank a pleasure to use thus far. It ‘s as simple to navigate as it looks. You just flick along the wheel to get to the folder for the category you want to grab an app from, tap once on the folder to center it as your selecting point, and then tap to expand its contents out to the right so that you can browse through and launch an app from its group
Everything about PogoPlank is smooth and responsive so far “ no jerkiness when moving up or down within the wheel to find a folder, no need to tap more than once when selecting folders and apps.
Using PogoPlank is not interfering in any way so far with using my favorite jailbreak apps that interact with the springboard. SBSettings, mQuickDo, and Kirikae are all working just fine.
If you have a lot of apps, as I do, it ‘s going to take quite a fair while to get your setup going with PogoPlank “ as it only comes ‘out of the box ‘ with a small handful of categories and apps within them. I found I needed to create a fair number of new categories, and of course populate all of the categories. This is relatively easy to do via the PPSettings app, but it is time-consuming.
Here are a few more folders I ‘ve setup so far (I ‘m sure I ‘m not anywhere near done with this process). Family ..
Social
Reference
Stores (and store helpers)
And Utilities
Some Issues & Downsides
Using PogoPlank seems to make the ‘home screen to the left ‘ “ where Spotlight lives “ disappear. And Spotlight is not listed as an app, so you can ‘t put it into a folder within PogoPlank. So, for now using PogoPlank means losing Spotlight “ a potential dealbreaker for some I imagine, and something the devs will fix soon I hope “ especially since the Cydia store doesn ‘t entail such an arduous reviews / updates process.
Every time you even go into the PPSettings app, even if you nose around, change nothing and exit, it forces a respring “ which as you all know takes a fair little while and is a PITA. Hopefully this can also be resolved in a future update.
Currently, you cannot re-order apps within the category folders “ they just show in the order they were added to the folder. The list you get to browse apps when adding them is alphabetical, so it ‘s natural to tick them off to select them in alphabetical order “ but this will leave you with a list that probably won ‘t match your actual order of most used / favorites. Normally, in nearly all iPhone apps, you ‘d just hit edit and tap, hold, drag items in the list to move them up and down. This capability is missing from PogoPlank right now. That definitely needs fixing.
One further wish-list item for me is for apps to be able to slot into more than one folder. This would be super handy for apps that may be a very natural fit for more than one category that you create.
Overall
The above are obviously some very quick and very initial impressions of PogoPlank. It will take some time to get to know it better and see whether it ‘s a viable option for me as a springboard replacement. For now though, I like enough about it to want to give it a try and get to know it further.
It feels very clean and sleek, at the expense of some major home comforts like a trusty first home screen and Spotlight search “ but to compensate I ‘ve still got mQuickDo with my five most-used apps and Kirikae with its list of actively running apps and favorites “ so there are safety nets for me.
How about you guys / gals? Have any of you given PogoPlank a look as yet? If so, what are your reactions?
*** This app was independently purchased by the post author in the Cydia Store. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: iPhone springboard replacements, PogoPlank
