Pronto Dial

[wayne@angrygoat]

Announcements, questions, discussions

Links to apps in PreCentral Gallery:

Pronto Dial
http://www.precentral.net/app-galler...og/pronto-dial

[wayne@angrygoat]

Pronto Dial v1.1.0 is now available.

New features:

- Double tap the picture to open the contact in the Contacts app.

- Option to only show the SMS icon for mobile or pager numbers

- Shortcut keys for switching categories

[baldric]

Howdy,
Great program, however when I click on the SMS icon, it jumps to the Messaging app but instead of addressing to the linked person from before, it says "Unknown".

Is this a setup thing on my end, or is it a bug?

Thanks
baldric

[wayne@angrygoat]

It means that you've made changes to that contact. You need to update the contact in Pronto. To do that go to the View All Contacts screen and add the contact again. Adding the contact again in the main list will update it too, but that of course will make an extra entry of that contact.

[wayne@angrygoat]

Pronto Dial v1.1.1 is now available.

New features:

- Option to automatically close the app when a contact is used.
- Option to automatically close the app when the Dialer or Contacts button is tapped.
- Double tapping the picture to open the contact in the Contacts app now works in the 'View All Contacts' screen.
- Added to Help the missing instruction about double tapping the picture.

And by popular request...

- Support for sending email. You will need to add a contact again to add the email addresses to the drawer. Please see the Help for more information.

[rwhitby]

This app has earned itself a place on my quick launch bar.

A great example of a webOS app that provides exactly the right functionality without unnecessary and distracting colours, pictures, scrim, glitz, etc.

More webOS applications should be like this. I personally will pay more for an application that has less of the distracting "decoration" that a lot of authors for some reason think is necessary.

-- Rod

[SlapVanVoila]

First off, fantastic app! Thank you!

I am having a bit of trouble getting shortcut keys to work. I've assigned 'Q', 'B' and 'F' to the Quick List, Business and Friends categories respectively but when I tap any of those keys (Q, B or F) with the app open nothing happens, i.e. the categories don't change. Surely I'm missing something?

[wayne@angrygoat]

The shortcut keys work like WebOS shortcut keys, which means you have to have one finger on the gesture area when you press the key. This, incidentally, is why X, C, and V are not available as a shortcut key, since they are pre-assigned by the OS for cut, copy, and paste.

[SlapVanVoila]

D'oh! Well, there ya go. The 'Operator Headspace error' strikes again!

Thanks Wayne - for both the reply AND a truly fabtastic app!

[Speebs]

I've said this before but I love your apps. Is it possible to change the interface so that you can choose multiple contacts to add at once? going back into the contacts app and scrolling through the list for every contact in every group is pretty cumbersome (but once it's set up it isn't too big a deal).

[jjeffcoat]

Hey angrygoat,

I'm interested in purchasing your app. I was wondering - does Pronto Dial do pretty much everything that Super Contacts Plus does? How does it compare feature wise?

Thanks

[STBXXL]

I just purchased Pronto Dial (ver. 1.1.1.) and so far I like it a lot.

However, I think I have discovered a bug. I set up a contact for my voice mail that needs a PIN number. So the contact phone no. is 1231231234T1111# (1111 is an exemplary PIN). Dialing this from the contacts program directly (or another speed dialer such as 1-Touch-Dial) works just fine. However, with Pronto Dial the "T" does not get transferred to the Phone program (or in other words the phone no. transferred is 12312312341111#) and I get a wrong number message.

Can you please take a look and fix it?

Thanks.

[wayne@angrygoat]

Originally Posted by Speebs

I've said this before but I love your apps. Is it possible to change the interface so that you can choose multiple contacts to add at once? going back into the contacts app and scrolling through the list for every contact in every group is pretty cumbersome (but once it's set up it isn't too big a deal).

No, there's no way to add multiple contacts. It's a security restriction of webOS.

[wayne@angrygoat]

Originally Posted by jjeffcoat

I'm interested in purchasing your app. I was wondering - does Pronto Dial do pretty much everything that Super Contacts Plus does? How does it compare feature wise?

I've only tried the free version of Super Contacts. One of the reasons I wrote the app was because I didn't find an app I wanted to pay for that I liked

Here's the differences that I see.

- Obviously a different UI.
- Pronto launches faster.
- Pronto uses a drawer to show all the numbers/email instead of multi-tapping for different numbers. You single tap to text/email/dial any contact.
- Pronto has customizable shortcut keys for switching between categories.
- Pronto has screen that lets you see every contact you've added to the app.
- You can open a contact in the contacts App by double tapping the picture

- Pronto doesn't have distribution lists.
- Pronto can't have different colors for groups/categories
- You can't use the Phone's Universal Search to find a group in Pronto.
- Pronto only has app launch buttons for the dialer and contacts app
- Pronto doesn't allow you to copy/move contacts between categories.

Here's what I'm planning to add to Pronto:
- More app launch buttons and you can choose which one you want (already done and will be available in the next update)
- Swiping to switch categories (working on this right now)
- Colors for categories
- Customizable predefined text messages.
- Copying/moving contacts between categories, if I can find a good way to fit this into the UI.
- Maybe distribution lists, if there is a demand for it.

[wayne@angrygoat]

Originally Posted by STBXXL

However, I think I have discovered a bug. I set up a contact for my voice mail that needs a PIN number. So the contact phone no. is 1231231234T1111# (1111 is an exemplary PIN). Dialing this from the contacts program directly (or another speed dialer such as 1-Touch-Dial) works just fine. However, with Pronto Dial the "T" does not get transferred to the Phone program (or in other words the phone no. transferred is 12312312341111#) and I get a wrong number message.

Ok I found the problem. The dialer doesn't accept capital letters. The Contacts app (and I assume others) automatically changes the letters to lowercase before sending to the dialer. I'll add that to the next update.

In the meantime, just change it to a lowercase t.

[STBXXL]

Originally Posted by wayne@angrygoat

Ok I found the problem. The dialer doesn't accept capital letters. The Contacts app (and I assume others) automatically changes the letters to lowercase before sending to the dialer. I'll add that to the next update.

In the meantime, just change it to a lowercase t.

Thanks for looking into this so quickly. I can confirm that using a lowercase "t" works just fine. Will add a 5 star rating now.

[jjeffcoat]

Thanks for your answer. A few additional questions: What happens to the default contacts app - is it pretty much unaffected by Pronto Dial?

I.e., if you change info in a contact (phone # e.g.) in "Contacts" does it automatically get updated in Pronto, and vice-versa? Will changes made to data in Pronto ultimately get synced via synergy to whatever you sync with (Palm profile, Google, Yahoo, etc.)?

Since categories are not supported by Contacts, does the default app just ignore the categories created in Pronto?

Also, will the categories let you view everyone in a given category at once? (For example if I have a call list I use for work, and need to go down that entire list to call everyone if looking for someone to come in to work... that's my biggest frustration with the default Contacts app).

Sorry for all the questions, but thanks in advance!

[wayne@angrygoat]

Originally Posted by jjeffcoat

Thanks for your answer. A few additional questions: What happens to the default contacts app - is it pretty much unaffected by Pronto Dial?

Yes, Pronto doesn't use the Contacts system to store anything, unlike Super Contacts. It stores everything in it's own database. This is also why Universal Search won't work on the categories.

Originally Posted by jjeffcoat

I.e., if you change info in a contact (phone # e.g.) in "Contacts" does it automatically get updated in Pronto, and vice-versa? Will changes made to data in Pronto ultimately get synced via synergy to whatever you sync with (Palm profile, Google, Yahoo, etc.)?

No, it is a security limitation of WebOS. No third party app can sync contact data without user intervention. You can't make any changes to the data in Pronto. Since WebOS won't allow you sync the data back into the Contacts system so other apps can use it, it seemed pointless to allow data editing.

To Update the data in Pronto you can just add the contact again. This will update every instance of the contact. There's also a View All Contacts screen where adding a contact just updates without adding a new entry.

Originally Posted by jjeffcoat

Since categories are not supported by Contacts, does the default app just ignore the categories created in Pronto?

As noted above, Pronto doesn't create anything in the contacts app, so categories have absolutely on affect on the Contacts app.

Originally Posted by jjeffcoat

Also, will the categories let you view everyone in a given category at once? (For example if I have a call list I use for work, and need to go down that entire list to call everyone if looking for someone to come in to work... that's my biggest frustration with the default Contacts app).

I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Each category is just a scrollable list of contacts. It won't automatically call everyone on the list, but you can certain see everyone on that list.

[jjeffcoat]

Originally Posted by wayne@angrygoat

I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Each category is just a scrollable list of contacts. It won't automatically call everyone on the list, but you can certain see everyone on that list.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. That would be a big help.

THanks!

[wayne@angrygoat]

Pronto Dial v1.2.1 is now available.

New features:
- Swiping left or right to change category.
- Customizable app launch buttons. Choose which app launch button (Dialer, Messaging, Email, Contacts) you want to display and in what order.
- Copy/Move contacts between categories.
- Option to close the drawer when any contact is used.
- Successfully updating a contact in 'View all Contacts' will trigger a notification.
- Fix the problem of the dialer not accepting uppercase letters by changing letters in the phone number to lowercase before sending it to dialer.
- Fix problem of name prefix and suffix not being imported.