Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Workin' the floor -- Convention Star 1.0.2 Review
Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM
Ever tried to organize all that stuff you picked up at the last big convention? Tried to remember which salesperson belonged to which vendor and what they promised? Well, next time you can take along your Pocket PC loaded with Convention Star and be well ahead of the game!
OK, let me state right up front that it's been years since I've been anywhere near a convention - either as an attendee or as a participant. I used to work the shows pretty regularly when I was a sales techie guru on operating systems, but that was during a much younger time, long ago... Then David Zhou from KST International contacted me regarding a review of a new application they had built called Convention Star, and all the memories started flooding back -- bags full of various pamphlets, doo-dads, handouts, and presentations; each with handwritten (scrawled) notes on the corners with numbers I no longer recognized. What I wouldn't have given for some way to organize all the notes and stuff I had!
Had it (or Pocket PCs!) been available back then, Convention Star looks like it would have been the answer for me. Convention Star is one of a new breed of applications starting to emerge which are specifically written for the Pocket PC .NET Compact Framework. It's basically a mini-database, providing a simple and effective way to keep track of products and offers as you wander the convention room floor.[/I]
Installation
A trial version of Convention Star 1.0.2 can be downloaded from Handango (affiliate). According to KST’s Web site, the demo is fully functional and has no time limit. The trial version, however, will only store 20 records.
Convention Star requires the .NET Compact Framework, so if you have a Pocket PC 2000 or 2002 device, you will need to download and install the .NET Compact Framework first. KST International provides a link from their Web site. Note: the .NET Compact Framework is fairly large (almost 3.2M) and will take up a sizeable chunk of RAM when running. I already had .NET Compact Framework installed to support Pocket Day, so I didn’t need to re-install. For those of you lucky enough to be running Windows Mobile 2003, the .NET Compact Framework is already included in ROM.
The Convention Star download is an executable which uses the typical ActiveSync program loader to install it on the Pocket PC. The application can be loaded to a CF card and takes about 313K of memory. It shows up under the Start/Programs menu as ConvenStar.
Starting up the program seems to take a bit of time for some reason. On my Pocket PC 2002 OS, it takes about 10 to 15 seconds after I tap the icon to get to the main screen of Convention Star. Operation of the program is fairly crisp once it's loaded, so it might have something to do with initialization of the .NET Compact Framework. Maybe things are a bit faster if the .NET Compact Framework is in ROM.
Interface
Convention Star comes pre-loaded with a demo database of about 10 records, using a book fair as a model. It’s a good framework, as it displays most of the capabilities of the product. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any way to start off with a clean slate except by deleting the records one by one.
Figure 1: Convention Star main screen
The main screen displayed after the application opens shows a scrollable list of the current records in the database. As you can see from Figure 1 above, KST International has taken the same route as other developers such as IBiz, in using a significant amount of colour and shading in their user interface. Personally, I find this rather distracting and unnecessary. I think developers should hire a professional graphics designer to take a look at their interfaces – especially with regard to layout and colour choices. Here, I think a few less colours and judicious use of shading would make for a more ‘professional’ appearance.
Generally, the interface is pretty intuitive, with most of the controls doing what you’d expect them to. According to David, Convention Star was built from the ground up using .Net (after an initial attempt in eVB), so it’s nice to see that all the usual standards are there. The scroll bars on the right and bottom operate as expected, with both incremental and screen-load jumps, and the width of the displayed fields can be adjusted by dragging the vertical line separators in the header row. The only ‘nit’ I have is that when you double tap on a record, I would have expected to go to the full-record display/update screen. Instead, you have to highlight the record, then press the Update button.
One interesting addition KST International has made is the ability to add icons to each entry, in order to assist visual cuing of the type of information contained within the record. Provided in the application are a pretty good selection of icons.
Figure 2: Convention Star icon selection screen
Unfortunately though, there doesn’t appear to be any way to turn off this feature, if you want to reclaim the screen landscape. Nor is there a way to add your own artistic endeavours to the list.
The green up and down arrows at the bottom of the scroll area change the selected record, while the green funnel icon provides a pretty powerful set of filters to let you show only those records you want.
Figure 3: Filter setting screen
The green question mark icon takes you to Convention Star’s help function, which is a bit different from what we normally see in a Pocket PC Help file. Instead of using the common HTML-based format, they have built their own, customized Help function which provides simple, straightforward descriptions of how to use the major functions of Convention Star. Although unconventional, it does get to the point, which I really appreciate.
Figure 4: Convention Star’s Help screen
Pre-Convention Prep
Before you head out to the convention floor, I’d strongly suggest you configure Convention Star, since doing it there would waste valuable cruisin’ time. :D Fortunately, Convention Star provides pretty good flexibility in this department.
The database provided consists of eight general fields called:
OK, let me state right up front that it's been years since I've been anywhere near a convention - either as an attendee or as a participant. I used to work the shows pretty regularly when I was a sales techie guru on operating systems, but that was during a much younger time, long ago... Then David Zhou from KST International contacted me regarding a review of a new application they had built called Convention Star, and all the memories started flooding back -- bags full of various pamphlets, doo-dads, handouts, and presentations; each with handwritten (scrawled) notes on the corners with numbers I no longer recognized. What I wouldn't have given for some way to organize all the notes and stuff I had!
Had it (or Pocket PCs!) been available back then, Convention Star looks like it would have been the answer for me. Convention Star is one of a new breed of applications starting to emerge which are specifically written for the Pocket PC .NET Compact Framework. It's basically a mini-database, providing a simple and effective way to keep track of products and offers as you wander the convention room floor.[/I]
Installation
A trial version of Convention Star 1.0.2 can be downloaded from Handango (affiliate). According to KST’s Web site, the demo is fully functional and has no time limit. The trial version, however, will only store 20 records.
Convention Star requires the .NET Compact Framework, so if you have a Pocket PC 2000 or 2002 device, you will need to download and install the .NET Compact Framework first. KST International provides a link from their Web site. Note: the .NET Compact Framework is fairly large (almost 3.2M) and will take up a sizeable chunk of RAM when running. I already had .NET Compact Framework installed to support Pocket Day, so I didn’t need to re-install. For those of you lucky enough to be running Windows Mobile 2003, the .NET Compact Framework is already included in ROM.
The Convention Star download is an executable which uses the typical ActiveSync program loader to install it on the Pocket PC. The application can be loaded to a CF card and takes about 313K of memory. It shows up under the Start/Programs menu as ConvenStar.
Starting up the program seems to take a bit of time for some reason. On my Pocket PC 2002 OS, it takes about 10 to 15 seconds after I tap the icon to get to the main screen of Convention Star. Operation of the program is fairly crisp once it's loaded, so it might have something to do with initialization of the .NET Compact Framework. Maybe things are a bit faster if the .NET Compact Framework is in ROM.
Interface
Convention Star comes pre-loaded with a demo database of about 10 records, using a book fair as a model. It’s a good framework, as it displays most of the capabilities of the product. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any way to start off with a clean slate except by deleting the records one by one.
Figure 1: Convention Star main screen
The main screen displayed after the application opens shows a scrollable list of the current records in the database. As you can see from Figure 1 above, KST International has taken the same route as other developers such as IBiz, in using a significant amount of colour and shading in their user interface. Personally, I find this rather distracting and unnecessary. I think developers should hire a professional graphics designer to take a look at their interfaces – especially with regard to layout and colour choices. Here, I think a few less colours and judicious use of shading would make for a more ‘professional’ appearance.
Generally, the interface is pretty intuitive, with most of the controls doing what you’d expect them to. According to David, Convention Star was built from the ground up using .Net (after an initial attempt in eVB), so it’s nice to see that all the usual standards are there. The scroll bars on the right and bottom operate as expected, with both incremental and screen-load jumps, and the width of the displayed fields can be adjusted by dragging the vertical line separators in the header row. The only ‘nit’ I have is that when you double tap on a record, I would have expected to go to the full-record display/update screen. Instead, you have to highlight the record, then press the Update button.
One interesting addition KST International has made is the ability to add icons to each entry, in order to assist visual cuing of the type of information contained within the record. Provided in the application are a pretty good selection of icons.
Figure 2: Convention Star icon selection screen
Unfortunately though, there doesn’t appear to be any way to turn off this feature, if you want to reclaim the screen landscape. Nor is there a way to add your own artistic endeavours to the list.
The green up and down arrows at the bottom of the scroll area change the selected record, while the green funnel icon provides a pretty powerful set of filters to let you show only those records you want.
Figure 3: Filter setting screen
The green question mark icon takes you to Convention Star’s help function, which is a bit different from what we normally see in a Pocket PC Help file. Instead of using the common HTML-based format, they have built their own, customized Help function which provides simple, straightforward descriptions of how to use the major functions of Convention Star. Although unconventional, it does get to the point, which I really appreciate.
Figure 4: Convention Star’s Help screen
Pre-Convention Prep
Before you head out to the convention floor, I’d strongly suggest you configure Convention Star, since doing it there would waste valuable cruisin’ time. :D Fortunately, Convention Star provides pretty good flexibility in this department.
The database provided consists of eight general fields called:
- Vendor
- Product Name
- Product ID
- Action
- Category
- Price
- List Price
- Discount
