I'll also recommend Home++. It is free and currently in its first beta but wow. So far it just appears to be lacking themes and being a beta has occassional crashes but it is REALLY nice. It has 4 screens that you can get to by scrolling in either direction (its a loop, no need to go BACK to your home screen, just keep scrolling until you get to it). Then there are a set of built in mini-icons at the bottom. There are icons for the following:
Global Search
Voice Search
App Drawer
Bookmarks
Tasks
Notifications
The Global and Voice searches aren't really necessary for us Droid users since we have a dedicated search button, so I hope they give the option of removing/changing those in the future, but for the time being, they don't give any problems, they just aren't so useful. Long pressing the search icon takes you straight to Search Options.
The app drawer is just what it sounds like. However you can long press it to jump directly to your Application Settings. This saves you a few steps.
The bookmarks tab is just that, you click it and a drawer slides up with your bookmarks. This saves you from having to open up the browser and hit the bookmarks tab. Sounds like no big deal but its pretty damned useful!
The Tasks drawer is a built in task manager. You click it and a drawer slides up with all running apps and you can kill any of them, check off multiple ones to kill at once, etc. Also, you can long press this icon to take you straight to Androids built-in "Running services" section of Settings.
The Notifications icon just slides your notification bar out. It sounds redundant since you can just tap the top bar but the reason for this icon is that Home++ lets you hide the top bar! Long press this notification to show/hide the top notification bar.
Now if you swipe the icons on the bottom (all the ones I just mentioned!) to the left, you essentially get the same info that the top bar would have but on the bottom (usb icon, wifi icon, silent/vibe icons, battery icon, date, time). The cool thing is, you can press on ANY of these icons and it will do something! Tapping the date gets you the calendar, tapping the time gets you the alarm clock, tapping the battery takes you to the screen that shows what is using what percentage of the battery, tapping the wifi icon lets you turn it on/off and manage networks, tapping the vibe/silent/ringer icon cycles through those 3 modes, tapping the usb icon brings up your notifications just like the notification icon if you swipe back to the list of icons.
There are also other small things in Home++ that are interesting. They are fairly proud of their Home Replacements ability to play animation in widgets. There is a test widget on the Market to show it off. Could make for some cool stuff in the future.
One thing I just noticed is, if you drag an icon from your screen and drop it on the trash can, it removes it like usual. If you hold it over the trashcan for a few seconds without letting go, it asks you if you want to uninstall it! Kinda cool!
So that's my run-down on what I have found in Home++ so far. I find it to be really nice and for its first beta it is great. You can email the developer directly through Home++'s preferences and if you enable it, Home++ will send errors/logs/usage info to the developer. I hope they are really active with this project!
[/rambling]
Global Search
Voice Search
App Drawer
Bookmarks
Tasks
Notifications
The Global and Voice searches aren't really necessary for us Droid users since we have a dedicated search button, so I hope they give the option of removing/changing those in the future, but for the time being, they don't give any problems, they just aren't so useful. Long pressing the search icon takes you straight to Search Options.
The app drawer is just what it sounds like. However you can long press it to jump directly to your Application Settings. This saves you a few steps.
The bookmarks tab is just that, you click it and a drawer slides up with your bookmarks. This saves you from having to open up the browser and hit the bookmarks tab. Sounds like no big deal but its pretty damned useful!
The Tasks drawer is a built in task manager. You click it and a drawer slides up with all running apps and you can kill any of them, check off multiple ones to kill at once, etc. Also, you can long press this icon to take you straight to Androids built-in "Running services" section of Settings.
The Notifications icon just slides your notification bar out. It sounds redundant since you can just tap the top bar but the reason for this icon is that Home++ lets you hide the top bar! Long press this notification to show/hide the top notification bar.
Now if you swipe the icons on the bottom (all the ones I just mentioned!) to the left, you essentially get the same info that the top bar would have but on the bottom (usb icon, wifi icon, silent/vibe icons, battery icon, date, time). The cool thing is, you can press on ANY of these icons and it will do something! Tapping the date gets you the calendar, tapping the time gets you the alarm clock, tapping the battery takes you to the screen that shows what is using what percentage of the battery, tapping the wifi icon lets you turn it on/off and manage networks, tapping the vibe/silent/ringer icon cycles through those 3 modes, tapping the usb icon brings up your notifications just like the notification icon if you swipe back to the list of icons.
There are also other small things in Home++ that are interesting. They are fairly proud of their Home Replacements ability to play animation in widgets. There is a test widget on the Market to show it off. Could make for some cool stuff in the future.
One thing I just noticed is, if you drag an icon from your screen and drop it on the trash can, it removes it like usual. If you hold it over the trashcan for a few seconds without letting go, it asks you if you want to uninstall it! Kinda cool!
So that's my run-down on what I have found in Home++ so far. I find it to be really nice and for its first beta it is great. You can email the developer directly through Home++'s preferences and if you enable it, Home++ will send errors/logs/usage info to the developer. I hope they are really active with this project!
[/rambling]
