Another competitor is HandScape by MobiMate. According to the developer, Palm helps us organize our life and HandScape helps us organize our Palm. Well, let’s see whether it does what it should.

The first weird thing I came across is that the latest version was released pretty ago. Usually it doesn’t promise anything good, and this time there was no exception. When I ran the program on the Zire 71, it started in Low-res and wouldn’t switch to the higher resolution. However, HandScape supports Sony Hi-res and will work fine on older CLIEs but Palm’s Double Density is unknown to it. That is why if you own a Palm OS 5 powered device you’ll have to content yourself with this limitation.

HandScape consists of two main screens – a Live Desktop and so-called File Manager. You can take a look at my Live Desktop at the picture.

On the whole, the desktop is quite similar to what we can see in the majority of other launchers. At the bottom there is a tab selection bar, application icons are displayed in the middle of the screen, plus there is a status bar at the bottom. The status bar includes a time/date indicator, battery meter, which cycles through voltage/percentage figures, special button for switching view modes, File Manager button, and toolbar pop up button.

At once you can have either four or five tabs. If you use more categories (or folders, as the launcher calls them) you can scroll tabs with the help of small arrows or via a pop up list. In Low-res you can have either three or four big icons or two small icons (in fact, it’s List View) in a row. If you are a lefty you can easily place the scrollbar on your left. With HandScape you can take advantage of both Drag-and-Drop and Tap-and-Hold technologies. In a common context menu you will find the following commands: Open, Delete, Rename, Beam, Make Shortcut, Properties, and Move to.

Here is a sample file properties screen.

As you can see, it lets you find out almost all information regarding a program and of course allows you to change some its options. Due to Drag-and-Drop you can easily interact with almost everything you can see on the screen: categorize applications, rearrange tabs, work with the toolbar, etc.

The launcher doesn’t interpret programs stored on memory cards as those installed in the RAM. Instead, it has a separate card category. But you can take advantage of shortcuts, which represent a program in the main memory. With the help of these you can categorize your ‘external’ applications and then treat them as if they were in the main memory. In addition, whenever you try to drag a program from your memory card, a special window is displayed, in which you can decide whether you want to copy/move it from the card or create a shortcut to it.

You can create shortcuts to applications in the main memory as well – this can be useful if you want to have one and the same program in several categories.

The toolbar contains six buttons that can be triggered by either taps or dragging an icon on them. They allow you to delete, beam, categorize programs, move them to the expansion card, get info about them, and adjust the brightness/contrast. In addition, the Card button puts you through to the card category, Category button allows you to edit categories, and Info button shows general info on your device when tapped.

HandScape sports special plug-ins called Views, which provide additional functionality to the launcher.

Here they are:

• Analog Clock View displays the time on your Palm handheld. Use the view's preferences to set usage of the seconds hand.
• DateBook View displays the next events from your DateBook. Use preferences to show end time of events and ‘no time’ events.
• ToDo View displays the top items from the ToDo list. It can also display completed or just due items. In addition the view can be minimized to a light bulb, which turns on if you have items in your ToDo list.
• Memo View shows previews of records of the native MemoPad application. You can cycle through memos using special buttons.
• Sticky View is the analogue of common sticky notes. Just type in the provided space and never forget the tasks you have to do anymore.
• HandScape Tips View is a tickler, which displays some tips on how to use the launcher more effectively.

The Views are very similar to application windows on your desktop in their behavior. You are free to hide, move, resize or collapse them. In addition most of the Views can hide their border to use the screen space more effectively. The Views I mentioned don’t make the full list and you may find more of them on other sites. However, most of them have been created for the previous versions of the launcher or specific hardware and in some cases may fail to work. I have come across the Battery, Toolbar, Luach, DigiClock, FlashPro, DateMate, and IOUMate views. The last two display items from the applications of the same name by the developer.

In addition, Views are treated the same way as application icons. This means you are allowed to have both program icons and your favorite Views in a single folder. Personally I liked to have DateBook and ToDo Views right in my most used one. By default all Views can be found in the vUnfiled folder.

Nearly forgot to tell you about another ‘special’ folder available in the Live Desktop mode. It is called Docs and stores all your DOC files. Unfortunately, memory cards are not supported. But on the other hand, HandScape managed to find my Word To Go documents. What’s more, it was possible to access those files by simply taping on them – the launcher then would run Word To Go and open the selected document in it. In a word, that was a very good surprise.

Now it’s about time we switched HandScape to the File Manager mode. This mode is specially designed to help you manage all the files you have installed on your device. The File Manager screen consists of a Folder view, File view, Toolbar, and Status bar.

The folder view provides a hierarchical view of your folders. It has two additional ‘special’ folders entitled Data and Hacks. The first one is where all databases are stored while the second one has only hacks inside. By the way, you are allowed to create subfolders but this feature is more than weird. The point is subfolders are not displayed in the Live Desktop mode. Neither are the programs they contain. It is only possible to see subfolders in the File Manager mode, but this doesn’t influence the overall functionality of the launcher at all.

The File view displays all files in the selected folder. In the Status bar you can find a File View Selector, which changes the viewing options of the view. The first mode is Classic View with big icons and names, the second one is List View with small icons and names, and the last one is Details View, which displays the files as small icons in two rows with their name and version or size.

As you can see it from the screenshot, HandScape failed to display half of the files in this mode on my device. List View has the same bug. It turned out that the problem would show up only on Palm OS 5 powered handhelds, and on older devices everything was pretty fine.

The Toolbar is right below the Folder and File views. There are five buttons and two scrollbars in it. The scrollbars allow you to scroll the contents of the appropriate views while the buttons do the following. The first one powers off the device, the second one displays HandScape’s preferences screen, the next one allows you to adjust brightness/contrast, the fourth button displays system Prefs, and the last one shuts down and locks the handheld.

By the way, you can access these and some other commands via a special menu when in the Live Desktop mode.

Unfortunately HandScape doesn’t support any visual improvements over the standard UI (fonts, backgrounds, etc), and thus you won’t be able to change the way your handheld looks. Of course, this doesn’t diminish the functional value of the launcher, but does influence its overall worth.

In the downloaded pack you will find a single HandScape executable (approximately 303 KB), License Agreement, Readme, and a tiny program, which for easy uninstall of the launcher.

So, what do we have? To tell, the truth I can’t say that I liked HandScape. Neither can I say that it is definitely useless or futile. In my opinion, it’s somewhat outdated. If I wrote this review, for instance, two years ago, then I would perhaps recommend you to try it, but today it can be of some use only to the owners of older Palm OS handhelds. What’s more, as you could see it, sometimes the launcher can be practically of no use if your device runs Palm OS 5 or higher.

Summary (out of 10 stars)
Functionality
Usability
User Interface
Additional Specifications

Once HandScape was good. Unfortunately, it’s not anymore.