ShoZu 4.0 brings you more control

ShoZu Advanced options for Series 60, UIQ and Windows Mobile

Yes, we've been listening!

ShoZu has been asked ever since we launched version 1.7 back in November 2005 to allow the user to have more control over how ShoZu operates on the phone, especially from more advanced users who install multiple applications on their phones that have similar resource intensive requirements. Symbian signing has also put pressure on 3rd party application developers to allow users to control this side of their application. 

But why does ShoZu need to run in the background anyway?

Even in the earliest versions some of what we consider to be ShoZu’s best features require ShoZu to run in the background, for example:

• Background uploading of photos and videos

• Background downloading of feeds 

• One-click "Send to" popup within camera

• Polling for feed changes

• GPS media stamping

• Feed alerts

These features are just not possible without ShoZu running in the background. If you compare ShoZu on Symbian or Windows Mobile to our Java offering some of these features are completely absent because most Java phones do not allow applications to run in the background.

Resistance is Futile!

Obviously some users quite rightly may (and have) said they are not interested in these features, "please let us just turn them off!" ShoZu has many reasons for its reluctance to bow to these requests for so long, for example, we have always tried to adopt the policy of 'the less options the better', as increasing the user configurable options can clutter up the user interface and confuse the majority of people who won't ever use these features. It also makes the QA process far more complex as each option has to be tested thoroughly creating a knock-on effect which may slow down our release cycle (and putting more and more pressure on our poor test team who really do work their butts off to bring you every release on time!).

As Symbian signing has now defined expected behaviours with regards to applications that run in the background, ShoZu has now added user configurable options to allow you greater control over how ShoZu operates.

Introducing new Advanced settings

ShoZu 4.0 introduces two new advanced options:  Run in background and Start automatically.

To locate these, select Options > Go to > Settings > Advanced

Run in Background

This is set to "Yes" by default. With this option set to "Yes" ShoZu will not unload out of memory when you exit, it will silently slip into the background just like it did in earlier versions. However, you can turn off this setting by changing it to "No" and ShoZu will warn you that the features listed above will be disabled when exiting. Also when you try to exit and ShoZu is busy transferring (either uploading media or downloading feeds) ShoZu will warn you that exiting will stop all transfers.

Start Automatically 

This option is set to "No" by default and ShoZu will not autostart whenever you restart your phone, you will have to manually open ShoZu from the applications menu.  You will be prompted with a message encouraging you to turn this setting on when you first activate ShoZu so you can take advantage of all of the above features. We highly recommend switching this option to "Yes" so you can experience how much simpler and smoother ShoZu is to use when you have this option enabled.

One thing to remember

If you are used to older versions, you’ll remember that when you click the ShoZu icon ShoZu instantly appears and is ready to go. In version 4.0 with either of these options set to "No" you will notice the ShoZu splash screen appears for a few seconds while ShoZu loads itself each time you start it.

We hope you enjoy the new advanced features!

Neil Pepper

Client Architect, ShoZu