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Treo essentials:
Chapter 2

Part II

• Send a Text Message
• Visit a Web Page
• Take a Digital Picture
• Use the Calculator
• Search Your Treo for Text
• Reset Your Treo
• Preserve the Treo Battery

Topics Covered in Part I

• Navigate the Treo User Interface
• Make a Phone Call

Click here for Part I

Part II: Performing the Treo Essentials

Send a Text Message

The full QWERTY keyboard on the Treo devices opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities for text messaging. Granted, hardcore text message users have become quite adept at cranking out messages on tiny phone keypads with only a few keys. With the Treo, however, you can start using your smartphone as more of a true text communicator. To send an SMS (Short Message Service) text message on your Treo, follow these steps:

1. If the mobile radio isn't turned on, hold down the Power/End button until you hear a tone and a screen appears that indicates you're being connected to the wireless network.
2. After you are connected to the network, press the Messaging button (to the lower right of the five-way navigator) to launch the Messaging application.

3. Tap the New button to begin creating a new message. The Compose screen opens, as shown in Figure 2.15.

   
   
   
   Figure 2.15: Use the Compose screen in the Messaging application to enter a text message.
4. Press the number keys on the keyboard to enter the phone number of the text message's recipient next to the To: label. If you want to send a text message to an email address instead, you can enter the address in the To: field.

5. Press the Down button on the five-way navigator to move to the message body and begin entering the message text (see Figure 2.16).

   
   
   
   Figure 2.16:Entering text for a text message simply involves typing text in the body of the message in the Compose screen.
6. When you're ready to send the message, tap the Send button near the bottom of the screen. After a few seconds, the message is sent to the recipient.

You probably noticed some additional buttons along the bottom of the Compose screen that I neglected to mention in the previous steps on how to send a text message. You can use these buttons to do some useful things, such as insert QuickText, which consists of commonly used phrases that you can select and insert to save time. You can also select emoticons (smilies) to insert in a message. To add pizzazz to your text messages, you can turn them into multimedia messages by adding a voice memo, digital picture, or video clip. All these topics are tackled in detail in Chapter 9, "Communicating with Text and Multimedia Messages."

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Note - SMS text messages are limited to only 160 characters, so the idea is to keep them short and sweet. However, if you find yourself rambling past the 160-character limit, don't fret because the Treo's Messaging application automatically breaks longer messages into 160-character chunks that are sent as separate messages.

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Visit a Web Page

Accessing the wireless Web is truly one of the most exciting facets of any smartphone, and the Treo makes this prospect particularly compelling, given its relatively high screen resolution (320x320). Blazer is the standard Web browser on Treo devices, and it does a good job of allowing you to view both mobile-specific and general websites designed for full-sized computers. To visit a web page by using the Blazer Web browser on your Treo, follow these steps:

1. If the mobile radio isn't turned on, hold down the Power/End button until you hear a tone and a screen appears that indicates you're being connected to the wireless network.
2. After you are connected to the network, press the Option key followed by the Phone/Send button to launch the Blazer Web browser. The web page for your wireless service provider will likely open by default.

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Note - As a shortcut for entering the URL of a web page you'd like to visit, tap the Earth icon in the Blazer toolbar to open the Go to Web Page screen, or just tap the address bar of the Blazer browser and enter the URL directly in it. If you enter the URL directly in the address bar, tap the Go button to open the page.

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3. To visit a different page, press the Menu button, scroll over once to the Go menu, and then scroll to select the Go to Web Page menu item. Press the Center button to issue the menu command and open the Go to Web Page screen, as shown in Figure 2.17.

Figure 2.17: The Go to Web Page screen enables you
to enter a URL for a web page to visit, and it includes
several helper boxes for entering common URL components.

4. Enter the URL of the web page you want to visit by typing it on the keyboard. You can use the helper boxes just above the text entry area for common parts of the URL, such as the www. at the beginning and the .com at the end.
5. When you're finished entering the URL, tap the OK button to accept it and open the page in the browser. Figure 2.18 shows the splash page for my website (http://www.michaelmorrison.com/) open in Blazer.

Figure 2.18:The web page you specified opens in the
Blazer Web browser and displays as best it can, given
the limited screen size.

Although the layout is different when you view the page in a normal desktop Web browser, the content is still visible in a reasonable format in Treo's Blazer browser. Some pages scale down better than others, but most pages are at least readable on your Treo. Just keep in mind that the Blazer browser tends to stack Web content vertically down the screen even if its original layout is horizontal. Figure 2.19 shows my page on a normal desktop Web browser, which illustrates what I'm talking about because the image and text appear horizontally as they were intended. (Compare this layout to the one shown in Figure 2.18.)

Figure 2.19: This full-size web page is oriented properly in the
desktop Firefox Web browser.

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Note - The Blazer Web browser also supports a Wide Page view, which doesn't stack the content on a wide page vertically as in the default Optimized view. Instead, you must scroll left and right in the browser to view the full width of the page. To toggle between Optimized and Wide Page view, tap the toolbar icon that looks like a miniature Blazer screen (located to the left of the Earth icon). You'll find that Wide Page view is often preferable on pages with a layout you're accustomed to viewing a certain way.

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The toolbar along the top of the Blazer screen allows you to perform common Web-browsing tasks, such as navigating backward or forward a page, refreshing the page, changing the page view (Wide Page or Optimized), jumping to the Home page, and accessing bookmarks. The Blazer browser is a powerful little Web browser with lots of handy features that are covered in detail in Chapter 10, "Browsing the Wireless Web."

About the Author
Michael Morrison is a writer, developer, toy inventor, and author of a variety of computer technology books and interactive Web-based courses. He has been using wireless handheld devices for over a decade, dating back to early HP handheld calculators. His previous books include Special Edition Using Pocket PC 2002, The Unauthorized Guide to Pocket PC, Beginning Mobile Phone Game Programming, and Sams Teach Yourself Wireless Java in 21 Days.



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