PreCentral: Messenger Mega Mix mixes in smartphone messaging improvements

[News Reporter]

It's been excluisvely up to the

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for over a year to make improvements to the existing crop of webOS devices. Smartphones like the Pre3 aren't going to get a software update from HP, just like the TouchPad isn't going to receive new official software. But that hasn't stopped the homebrew community, from the organized grand project groups like and to individual developers, from making improvements on their own. One of the latest improvements comes to use in the form of a combination patch: .

Coded up by webOS Nation Forums member michel_ng and recently added to , the Messenger Mega Mix patch makes a number of improvements to the built-in Messaging app for webOS 2.2.x smartphones, including some very enhancements. There are the improvements like adding a character counter (seriously, how did Palm and HP never get around to adding something so simple and yet so imminently useful to an app that deals with a character-limited service?) and putting the date and time of the sent and received messages into the conversation.

Messenger Mega Mix also wipes out the on-screen send/attach button, opting to instead have you attach media with a Gesture+P shortcut (or the app menu, which hasn't been changed here) and sending is accomplished with a forward swipe on the gesture area. As in, sending it to your friend with a swipe of the thumb. Magic.

We're digging a lot of the changes made by Messenger Mega Mix, though it's worth noting that by adding so much it could conflict with other patches (in particular the ) and not install alongside. The patch also isn't , though we'd like to think that's something that could be added in so we can turn on or off the one alteration made by Messenger Mega Mix that might not go over well with everybody: the Enter key switches to adding a new line in the composed message instead of sending said message.

Even with those caveats, michel_ng's Messenger Mega Mix is still an interesting patch. The gesture area is one of the most unique aspects of webOS smartphones, and is so beloved by webOS fans that even with it not explicitly needed in the WebOS Ports process of they . So we're quite pleased to see homebrew developers like michel_ng finding new and different ways to make use of the feature.