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Facer
August 22, 2002
There are all sorts of launching utilities available for the Palm OS, from Launch ‘em to Launcher III, Silverscreen to TealLaunch, to the long-awaited Launcher X (I’ll be writing a bit more about that one shortly). So why on earth do we need another one? Facer fills an interesting niche because it’s really two programs in one. The “Today Page” gives you a quick view of your upcoming appointments and to dos (four each), which is even scrollable so that you can see everything. You may also be wondering about those icons you see to the left of each datebook and to do item— those are actually my ActionNames icons, also viewable here in Facer. That’s a wonderful addition for people who use ActionNames from iambic as a replacement for their built-in Datebook, Address, and To Do applications. AN Text colors are also supported, which means that you can easily make important items stand out even further by making them red, purple, or any other color you like.Facer also provides four customizable “quick launch” buttons at the bottom of the screen. I have mine set to my favorite game, an image viewer, a database, and my TV listing program. With those buttons and the fact that the icons on the left hand side are also programmable (I have mine set to ActionNames and Shadow), I almost don’t need the launcher part of the program! That’s accessed by tapping on the second icon on the left (more about that later). The time is shown at the top right corner, and the buttons at the top give you information about the battery percentage you have left, as well as your free RAM.
The launcher side of things is also rather well thought-out. Instead of having tabs, the categories are accessed by tapping on the name of the visible category— that pulls down a list from which you can choose. That provides some extra room at the top for a few tools such as a file information utility, a trash can, beaming, and Facer preferences. You can choose to always start on the “Today Page” or on the launcher side of things, whether you want Facer to be your default launcher, etc. And the themes of course are where Facer really shines. Since it’s such a new product, there aren’t a whole lot available yet. Some of the nicer ones I’ve seen are Space, Nature, Drowning, and Peeps, all hi res and available on the FacerThemes group on Yahoo. Greyscale and low res themes are also available, so everyone can get in on the Facer fun.
Facer is still pretty new, and I’m amazed at how quickly it has progressed. I’m hopeful that future updates will support DateBk5 as well as ActionNames, add hi res + support, allow dynamic datebook and to do area sizing, so that if I have one appointment and 8 to dos that the space can be better used, as well as even more features that we haven’t thought to ask for yet. It’s available for $12.95 and is guaranteed to be OS5 compatible when the time comes. You can get a trial version or purchase it at the PocketCraft web site.
PocketGoddess rating for Facer: 
