Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.One of the few glaring omissions in Psion's Series 5 'EIKON' interface is
that there's no way to activate the Extras bar without using the touch-screen.
So if the latter dies, the machine becomes unnecessarily useless for a great
many tasks.
Here's a possible solution in the form of Ad
Bosch's XtraLink. It's small, it's free and it's downloadable from
his web page.
![[Screen Shot]](/reviews/3lib/XtraLink/xtralink.gif)
Some applications, of course, already have associated documents within your
normal folder structure. Many others, however, are reference programs, games
and utilities which have no associations and more or less have to be
launched from the Extras bar (I suppose you could navigate to the application's
program folder within \system\apps and press Enter, but that would be extremely
tedious). XtraLink works by creating small short-cut files in any folder you
choose, each with an association to the correct .APP file in the system program
area.
It works well, though the Series 5's standard file dialogs are very slow
(not XtraLink's fault!) and so the one-off definition of your short-cuts takes
quite a long time. Each icon has the standard XtraLink icon but with the
program name of your choice. Pressing Enter on each short-cut launches with
required program with just a second or two's delay while the XtraLink mechanism
does its stuff.
Apparently the system is extensible and works with document files as well
(with the aid of Jason Kneen's ShortCut), giving plenty of ideas
about new ways to organise your documents and applications.
Great idea, a good implementation and it's completely free. Go give it a try!
Note that although in the documentation the author gives yet another use
for XtraLink, that of getting round the loss of Extras bar settings after a
reset, settings can actually be saved using just the built-in software. See my
tips page for details.
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