TamsS60 - the S60 Blog

The folks at Forum Nokia’s have just announced an update to their Carbide plug-in for Visual Studio. Version 3.0.1 is compatible with Visual Studio 2005 and adds the following new features:

• Automatic project upgrade for projects that are created with Carbide.vs 2.0.x
• Project upgrade function helps to download missing WINSCW SDKs
• Edit/build/debug cycle without stopping/restarting emulator when only.cpp file are edited
• Support for project build decencies in templates and VS projects
• Resource, Icon and Help compilation in a similar way as.cpp compilation
• Changes to resource, help and icon file are detected in incremental builds
• .rss-,.miflist- and.cshlp-fill built when saved
• New templates and improvments in the Fragement template view
• Ability to group your templates and get a preview
• Support for Symbian OS C++ snippets, some provided by Nokia
• Requires an addition VSPowerToys tool from Microsoft
• Tools to help package a finalized project for Symbian Signing
• WSDL tool integrated with the product
• Improved debugging experience
• Filtered debug message view
• RDebug functions output to debug window
• Support for PRJ_EXPORTS in the bld.inf file

As always, Carbide.vs is a free download from Forum Nokia’s!

Use the discount code CHEAPWRITE3 in the TamsShop for a 20% rebate on the list price!
Entering texts on devices with MultiTap keyboards has always been a royal pain in the butt - even the oh-so-famous T9 utility cannot change much about this. MobileSystem’s QuickWrite plans to do something different in order to speed up your typing - instead of forcing you to enter a full word and then guess what you meant, their application lets you enter the first letters and tries to guess the rest. Can it stack up?

After installing the application, you are presented with a slightly confusing screen asking you to choose a “text engine”. A text engine is a special “driver program” that converts key presses into characters - AknFEP is the default S60 one, while QuickWrite is MobiSystem’s improved version:

Once QuickWrite is the active text engine, various settings can be configured in a fashion similar to the various Settings panels of the operating systems:

QuickWrite can be enabled/disabled via the Shift key(#) - if it is enabled, three horizontal lines are shown next to the input mode indicator:

Here’s an example of the program in use:

After having tested QuickWrite in the Note Pad, I decided to torture it a bit with Opera - no issues whatsoever. Entering long URL’s and other stuff not contained in the dictionary is no problem whatsoever - you just keep on typing and ignore the suggestion box:

This review looked at QuickWrite v2.50 on a Nokia N71. The program needs approximately 2MB of RAM and CAN NOT be installed onto an external memory card.

In the end, QuickWrite is a true must-have for every MultiTap-keyboarded device. While the price of 30$ before our discount looks a bit hefty, rest assured that it is worth every penny if you enter a lot of text. Save yourself time and frustration - get the free trial and see if you can live without it(hint: you can’t).