Alternatives to AvantGo? 37
docricketts asks: "I've been scoping out some ways to expand the content of a few sites that I manage and have been considering creating versions for PDAs and phones. I've looked around but it looks like AvantGo, at least on PDAs, is the only option for those folks not connected via wireless networks. Now that they have changed their pricing structure, charging $1000 for 'channels' that have one to 100 subscribers, this looks completely inaccessible for content sites that are there to provide info rather than make money. Is AvantGo it, or are there alternatives that I'm not seeing?"
Use Plucker (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.plkr.org/index.plkr
Plucker: better than AvantGo! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Plucker: better than AvantGo! (Score:1)
I tossed AvantGo ages ago...
(Now all I want is PalmOS5 support... "work has been started", but when will it finish?)
No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:2)
Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:1, Insightful)
These guys don't work for you, or for anyone, they work for themselves. They write whatever code they thing will be useful TO THEM. I don't think the WinCE platform is open, and probably won't give you a free toolkit to produce software for it, and, well, it's Windows-based, so they aren't in a rush to go out and support your platform, since it's probably not in their best interests.
Get someone else to port it, Plucker IS open source.
Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:1)
Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:1)
There isn't a native WinCE program that will read Plucker files, but there is a fair amount of interest in one. Sadly, the interest doesn't seem to come from people who are able to program for WinCE, and the core developers would rather not spend their time writing products for platforms they don't use. However, I've found that they are happy to help people who want to help themselves, so if you start writing a WinCE viewer, I'm sure you would get a lot of help.
Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:2)
I'll have a look at the WinCE SDK and the sources of the client and see what is possible.
Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:1)
Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:2)
Thanks anyway for the hints.
Handstory (Score:3, Informative)
HandStory Suite reviewed as AvantGo Alternative by the Handheld Computing Weekly.
'HandStory Suite' 'Almost every Palm powered user knows about AvantGo. It's bundled on the installation disc with new PDAs, and it's long been billed as the killer app for your Palm. Its appeal is undeniable; the program is a free, convenient Web clipping service that delivers freshly-updated content you've subscribed to -- like the New York Times, Joke of the Day, and The Weather Channel--directly to your PDA at each HotSync to read on the road.' 'The once undisputed king of offline content is starting to show some cracks, though. AvantGo can't take advantage of the Sony Clie's popular full-screen, HiRes+display, for instance, and financial difficulties at the company have forced it to adopt a two-tiered service plan, with content beyond 2MB no longer free. Worse, the company has clamped down on its Web partners, charging them fees that have driven many to scale back their support for AvantGo.' 'But there are alternatives. If you'd like to experiment with offline browsing and want to see what the world has to offer beyond the reassuring AvantGo logo, step right up to... HandStory...' 'HandStory is the most complete and elegant of the AvantGo alternatives. Designed to be a complete media reader that features an integrated memo pad, doc reader, image viewer, eBook reader, and Web clip browser, it can also take advantage of the Clie's HiRes+mode. Armed with HandStory, you may be able to abandon several other apps and rely almost exclusively on one program.' 'The program's desktop component has conduits for converting Web pages, text documents, and graphics to the Palm. The big news, though, is that HandStory is trying to take on AvantGo in a big way, with a library of about 150 clips ready for download. That's small potatoes compared to the thousands of AvantGo channels available, but HandStory promises to continue building its collection.'
Re:Handstory (Score:1)
Plucker is your answer (Score:1)
it will convert any web page into a palm db and it has a browser... i haven't tried it but it sounds like it does what you want.
Re:Plucker is your answer (Score:1)
Re:Plucker is your answer (Score:1)
PocketPC Offline web pages (Score:2)
Re:PocketPC Offline web pages (Score:1)
Re:PocketPC Offline web pages (Score:2)
Just be sure to have a "light" URL (Score:3, Insightful)
Then on your "regular" page, offer a link to the light page. That way people can use whatever they want. Personally I use Plucker, but as noted in this thread there are other options.
For an example, take a look at RISKs digest.
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks
Down in the middle they have a link to the latest version of the digest (http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/go/risks/latest). That link is to a much lighter than the "full" version of the latest digest.
Re:Just be sure to have a "light" URL (Score:1)
Then there's stuff for spv [orange-today.co.uk] (icky evil nasty stinker) done in the same way.
Re: (Score:1)
Sitescooper, WWWOFLE and Zepo (Score:1)
For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a Zaurus there is a particularly nifty alternative Zepo (http://www.alterna.tv/zepo/ http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=
WWWOFLE (www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/ http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=
To summarize: working from your home computer with the Palm or Zaurus should use sitescooper. If you are travelling with a Zaurus use Zepo.
Plucker ... once some minor shortcomings are fixed (Score:3, Interesting)
However, there are two serious "gotchas" - not with Plucker itself, but with the (very new and nice) Plucker Desktop utility, which solves most of the usability issues we had with Plucker.
We need the Palm hotsync action to automatically trigger Plucker Desktop to perform the channel updating. This is probably a fairly simple bit of conduit work. (Under Windows, look into the registry, find the Plucker binary location, and exec it with the appropriate arguments).
The other item is a one-click "sign up for this channel" functionality -- basically just a metadata file on our Web server containing URL, depth and follow/nofollow directives, probably in XML. This requires some more work on the desktop app and installer.
I've corresponded with the primary author of Plucker Desktop, and they're both on his radar, but needing some smart programmers to dive in and help out.
Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:3, Informative)
Have a look at our project at www.plkr.org [plkr.org] and try it out for yourself. If you want to help us out, please do. We believe we have the superior product, for dozens of reasons. We're smaller, faster, more feature-rich, secure, and we put the user and content provider back in control of their own content.
The Plucker Desktop application can be found at desktop.plkr.org [plkr.org]. It is written in wxWindows, and works on Linux, Solaris, and Windows.
The High-resolution viewer application for Sony and Handera high-resolution devices can be found at hires.plkr.org [plkr.org].
We also have an irc channel, so feel free to join and talk to other Plucker users and developers. Point your irc client to irc.plkr.org and join #plucker to chat with us.
If you wish to help out with PDA-sized websites, take a look at OpenURLS [plkr.org] and help us out maintaining the list. I've done all of the work so far to fetch these urls (600+), but we need some help sorting them and categorizing them.
We have a lot of other things going on, and we are quite active. Jump aboard and help us out!
Re:Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:2)
Re:Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:2)
If not, can your PocketPC run the GTK+ viewer? If so, then yes.
If not, then someone will have to port it to PocketPC, i.e. not us.
Re:Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:2)
Re:Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:1)
And AvantGo does do things that Plucker doesn't, such as nicer table handling, and form submission.
Having said all that, I switched from AvantGo to Plucker because its advantages far outweigh its shortcomings, which are growing fewer by the day. I remember just a short while ago, when there was no Plucker Desktop, and things had to be done by hand. I also look to the future, and see two separate groups working on different approaches to making tables look nicer. I would expect to see a demo of prettier tables in the next two weeks.
Re:Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:2)
Actually, I'm being quite fair, malsync [tomw.org] is not an AvantGo product, nor is it supported by AvantGo in any way (and in fact, I host the mainline malsync sourcecode [sourcefubar.net] in my cvs). malsync is a reverse-engineered tool that provides functionally-similar capabilities to what AvantGo's Windows conduit provides, but it most-certainly is not supported or written by current AvantGo personnel (unless that changed very recently).
I didn't include third-party tools or patches in my assesment above, for both products, for exactly this reason. Otherwise, I would have included the fact that Plucker _does_ support forms and tables, through third-party patches and code.
I'm actually working on a better breakdown of pros and cons between both applications, which was spawned by my original post here. Hit me in private email for the link to it. I'd love to get your input on the featuresets.
And please don't use my real name here in an open forum. I didn't use it, so I trust that you'll respect that and do the same.