Mother of All Launchers Now Underway!

I

Ich bin dick...

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We've gone back and forth with each other on here about the best launcher (great fun!) but now it's time to get REALLY serious.

The following was posted on Tealpoint's forum today:
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"Hello,

We're now in the early stages of development of a new program
launcher, and we wanted to get your feedback.

The field is already pretty crowded with a number of excellent
programs, so we want to take the program in a direction that hasn't been fully explored.

The idea is to make the launcher theme-based, but much more so than other programs that we've seen so far, that mostly just let you swap a background image, some fonts, and swap in and out some icons. The idea is to make our new program completely open-ended, so you could create themes that place buttons, icons, and controls anywhere you wanted, letting the launcher support radically different interfaces, such as layouts that open up the background to see an image better (for categories with not too many programs) or ones that pay tribute to hobbies, sports, or other operating systems.

We've got a basic code base that doesn't do too much yet, but will be able to post something up on Beta soon. Let us know what things you use or would like to see in a launcher so we can try to plan for it in the code.

thanks"
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Well well, boys and girls - seems like with OS6 coming they're getting a jump on replacing my beloved TealLaunch. Hopefully the new one won't be too mega-huge (TL is 67k so I can give that dream up, pretty much!). I suppose 500-900k wouldn't be out of the question but I'll miss the simplicity and power of TealLaunch.

It would be a tremendous thing if some of you got involved in this - especially those of you who like "themes and stuff;" you can participate in TealTalk Forum if you join Yahoo, which isn't a bad idea anyway since they give you a free 100MB/10MB attachment mailbox. I know Hotmail is up to 250MB now, but it's just not as good or "clean," so you wouldn't lose anything getting a Yahoo mail address.

This will IMHO be the "Mother of All Launchers," because, well . . . . . . . look who's doing it, for heaven's sake. Now if they just made PDAs, WiFi stuff AND KEYBOARD DRIVERS!!

(Oh yeah . . . and a CALENDAR app).
 
It does sound interesting. I'll be sure to try this out once it goes up on Beta.

In other news, there's something called iSpin available for free at: http://www.taptarget.com

It's definitely still an alpha revision, but to me it looks like it's got some promise. It's very themable too, you can change stuff around to mimic OS's and such. If they continue development and funding, we could have a challenger to ZLauncher and this new TealPoint program they're working on. I love it when the consumer has the choice!! :D
 
I'm not about to try an "alpha" launcher, but I'll say right here from the website looks of it, it's already better than any other launcher save TealLaunch.

Good, good, good find mhamann!!

I use a combination of the T/Launch popup menu with "ScreenButton" listed last (that's freeware too) - and it gives me a similar "launching hierarchy."

HOWEVER, this one is PC-ish with drag-over to next category plus some other extras and look VERY interesting.

In fact, I'd say it's the only launcher I'd CONSIDER other than T/L -- and that's saying something.

That's just a REALLY GOOD Find! Bravo.
 
sorry guys but what does ispin have that Zlauncher doesnt already. As for the new Teal launcher, its sounds like a serious attempt by these guys to brew up a real 'desk top' like environment on a pda....if so, I'm there but ill stick with ZL for now.
 
iSpin may be useful to a corporate environment enterprise solution that's never exposed their staff to a Palm OS device but other then looking like the PC.....I'm with SoS - it's ZL for now and the foreseeable future.
 
sos and mooseman, you're missing one imporant point...you can skin iSpin any way you want. You don't even have to have a start menu equivalent if you don't want. (At least, that's how I read it). It's also got a new built-in web browser (on and offline via a "plugin").

We'll see, some of it doesn't work yet. Once it goes full Beta, we'll know more.
 
iSpin would have to rock my world and it may very well be able to do that but after the finished product comes out.

It does look interesting just not ready to plunge into the undiscovered country.
 
I'm curious about how well the multitasking feature works on it. While it would require extra effort to go through the submenus to launch a program, it does have an interesting look to it.

It is nice to know that there are still free launchers available.

On a side note, the other products at the iSpin web site look interesting. I am especially interested in the offline content reader and the iScript program.
 
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