Surreal Start for Smartphone 2002 and Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone

This is a replacement for the programs menu on Microsoft Smartphone.

Surreal Start will only work on application unlocked devices. This includes the e200 which needs to be unlocked due to registry restrictions.

Surreal Start is available to the public at £5. Registration requires the Owner Name which can be found in Settings-Owner Information. Please use the trial before purchase to confirm that the program runs on your phone.

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Current Features

• Fast startup
• Replicates all behaviour and features of the original programs menu.
• High performance when going in and out of sub folders
• Supports homescreen and color scheme backgrounds fully.
• Support for standard skins for backgrounds and colours
• Works with start menus of any depth and size
• T9 Mode. Works similar to Contacts, where pressing keys will narrow down the start menu.
• Start Menu on SD Card. If your SD Card contains a directory Start Menu this is automatically spliced into the main start menu. Changing cards only requires a "refresh menu"
• Internet Favourites on Start menu
• Speed dial creation.

Future features

• Automatic refresh

Screenshots

The first image shows the menu running using the stripey definitions from the homescreen colorscheme. The second shot is with the Red Dragon skin (by DavidRM) installed. Notice that with a skinned background there is no highlight box, this is the same as the original programs menu.

Download

The trial version is fully functional however the start menu has an unregistered banner and will display a registration message every third time you execute an application.

• Version 1.19 for all Microsoft Smartphone platforms (unsigned)

Instructions and Information

1. To remove the start menu, first quit the application this can be done by selecting menu-Refresh Menu. Then uninstall from the settings-remove programs tool. If for some reason it is not uninstalling correctly copy this cab to /IPSM/Windows/Startup and reboot the phone.
2. Backgrounds, if the phone is skinned then the skin background is used. Otherwise the background will be based on the color scheme defined for the home screen.
3. If you add icons or install programs or change the skin you will need to choose menu-Refresh Menu (which closes Surreal Start). On next run the menu will be reread and any changes you have made to your phone should be represented.
4. To add a speed dial choose Add Speed Dial from the menu. The speed dial will be given the next available speed dial number and the Shortcuts app will open. If you want to change the number of the speed dail in the speed dial app press action to select the right shortcut, then press Edit (left softkey) and update the number.
5. To check your version pick menu - about within Surreal Start.

• SDCard Start Menu. If you create a directory /Storage Card/Start Menu you can place all the shortcuts for the apps on your sdcard in this directory. When you change sdcards you only need to "refresh menu" to update your start menu for the newly inserted card.
• To override the background quickly while still haveing the default highlighting behaviour copy a image called "background.gif" or "background.jpg" to the /Storage/Program Files/SurrealStart directory.
• *To get a gradiented or stripey look on your phone, don't use a background. Then edit your *.home.xml file (for your current homescreen) and change the bits that look like:
  <color name="COLOR_GRADLEFT" value="#FFFFFF" />
  <color name="COLOR_GRADRIGHT" value="#FFFFFF" />
  <color name="COLOR_INTGRADLEFT" value="#FFFFFF" />
  <color name="COLOR_INTGRADRIGHT" value="#FFFFFF" />
  They control alternating lines GRAD controlling the first, INTGRAD controlling the second. FFFFFF is white, 000000 is black. FF0000 is red 00FF00 is green 0000FF is blue and numbers inbetween are darker shades. So 700070 should be a bit purple.
• *To add backgrounds the skinning way (such as the full skins you can download off the web), use regedit and go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:MSStart and edit the values BKBitmapFile (for a background) and BannerImage (for a 20 pixel high banner) Make sure you get these paths right as people have reported problems when they get it wrong. When using skins the highlighting behaviour has no background, only the font colour and style will change.
• *To order the items on your start menu use regedit and go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Shell\StartMenu and edit the Order value. Items listed in this value will appear before all other items and they will appear in the order shown by the value.

Bug list

• None

Changelog:

• Favourites is more robust. Supports https favourites

• Accented Characters
• Caching options
• Internet Favourites
• SD Card Start Menu

• Correction of bugs where Surreal Start doesn't run successfully when regional translation is running
• Support for handango

• background.gif and background.jpg can be used for easy backgrounding with default highlighting

• Fixed banneted mode bug where it would scroll to the next page of the menu.
• Adjusted alphabetical sorting to sort non alpha characters eg "_" to the top of the list. This is overridden by registry based sorting however
• Fixed a translation related bug where the destination language was missing it replaced item titles with (null)

• Fixed a bug in bannered mode which was causing the wrong app to execute

• One version for all platforms
• T9 mode now supports mutli word
• Backgrounds in non-skinned mode support standard microsoft color schemes
• Quick startup

• Speed Dial creation added
• Sequencing based on HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Shell\StartMenu\Order
• Language translation based on the microsoft translation database.
• Performance improvements.

• More bug fixes

• Bug fixes to do with T9 Mode

• T9 Mode Added
• Screen refresh bug fixed

• Resolved a bug where a single item on a page would not properly clear the rest of the page.
• Added feature where pressing up at the top of the menu jumps the selection to the bottom and pressing down at the bottom jumps to the top.
• Returning from a sub folder now places the start menu at the page containing that sub folder in the parent menu

• Released directly to a number of users at the MoDaCo summer event