(Last edited Feb 26, 2008)

Before I start this blog posting, I just wanted to take a moment to thank Alan from Daily Gadget for mentioning my blog on their site’s front page on November 5th. Thanks to Alan from Daily Gadget for the support!

So far we have covered many of the different Palm applications that can be launched on the screen. But what about this funny gray area at the bottom of the screen? I will attempt to explain.

Simulation of the Graffiti/Silkscreen area

Alternative links: Image Shack

This is a simulation showing the Graffiti/Silkscreen area. We will show what each icon represents and what they do and go through the various screens.

The simulation will play through to the end unless I’ve inserted a pop up note to explain specific points.

To continue playing the simulation, press the button.
To go back to a previous paused segment, click on the button.
To pause the simulation at any time, press the button. To continue after it’s paused, press the button again.
To scroll forwards or backwards in the simulation, click anywhere on the left (to go back earlier in the simulation), or right (to go forward in the simulation) on the progress bar.

Screenshot of the Graffiti/Silkscreen area

The gray area that covers approximately one quarter of the screen that resides at the bottom is what’s called the Graffiti or Silkscreen area. Normally, this is the area where the Palm Graffiti 2 software will attempt to detect your strokes and output a character that hopefully is what you intend to write. At the edges of the Graffiti/silkscreen area are four icons enclosed in a circle.

The top left icon looking like a house is the Home icon. Tapping on this Home icon will take you to the default Launcher application. Tapping again, will toggle the Launcher application to show the various Categories (All, Games, Main, Utilities, System, Unfiled, etc) and the programs/icons that are sorted in each Category.

The bottom left icon is the Menu icon. Tapping on this will bring up the first menu option listing of the current application you are currently in. Tapping it again will close the menu option listing.

The top right icon with a star is by default, either unspecified or it’s assigned to the Calc Application. You can easily set that icon to launch any application you wish by setting that in the Prefs application under Buttons. Please refer back to my previous posting on the Prefs Application for more info.

The bottom right icon with a magnifying glass is the Find icon which allows you to search through your Palm for specific data or entries. Tapping on this icon will bring up a pop up window. Simply enter the information you wish to look up or find and it will go through your address book, calendar, etc and come up with results that match the term you’ve entered. To go to that specific search result, simply click on it and the Palm will go to that entry.

Going inwards, you will notice that there are four smaller icons located at the edge of the two boxes in the silkscreen. These bring up a pop up menu that may last a few seconds before disappearing or stay up until you close it.

At the top left, the clock icon represents the Clock/World Clock application. Tapping on this little icon will bring up the Clock/World Clock application. After a few seconds, the application will disappear.

At the bottom left, the ABC represents the pop up Alphabetic keyboard. Tapping on that will bring up the QWERTY keyboard. This won’t disappear after a few seconds so you’ll need to close it in order to get rid of it from the screen.

At the top right, the sun icon represents the Brightness setting. Tapping on this icon will bring up a brightness setting slider. To increase the brightness, simply drag the slider over to the right and vice versa to decrease brightness. Unfortunately, even at the lowest brightness setting, the screen is still quite bright. In order to lower the brightness setting even further, you’d need a third party application that can do it.

There are some third party applications that can decrease the brightness even further by decreasing the backlight. Such applications include: AutoDimmer (freeware), SilkDimmer (freeware), and shareware programs include EnergyDimmer, myDimmer. And if none of these applications work (ie. Zire 72 or other newer Palm devices), try Brightness Fix (freeware).

I have also mentioned these applications in this posting on backlight customization apps so you may be interested in reading that.

Once these are installed, tapping on the sun icon will bring up these brightness programs instead of the default Brightness slider. Removing them from the Palm will result in the default brightness pop up to come back.

At the bottom right corner the 123 represents the pop up Numeric keyboard. Just like the QWERTY keyboard, this will bring up the numeric keyboard and remain on the screen until you close it.

Thanks for visiting and supporting Palm Discovery. If you are not reading this article from Palmdiscovery.com or palmdiscovery.net, the website you are reading it from is guilty of copying and posting my content without consent. Please visit Palm Discovery for the original source of the material.

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