I’m looking at how to tweak the OS and applications so that they make the best use of the small screen on my LS800. In part 1 I looked at the OS and in Part 2 I looked at one of my favorite application – Mind Manager. In this post I’ll look at how to make the best use of the space in Office 2007 (Beta 2) and IE7 (Beta 2) and a few other bits.
Outlook – the “Shell”
In Outlook speak the shell is the main window – i.e. when you are not editing a message, appointment or other item. It is to Outlook’s great credit that there is not much tweaking to do here. I often use Outlook as an example of how to write an app for mobile PCs. Why? That will need to be another post 
However there are some things to do – especially when working in portrait mode. Don’t forget that you can minimize the folders pane and the new “To-Do Bar” this will give you a lot more room to skim your messages on the go.
Portrait mode before
Portrait mode after:
Other Office Apps
There are a couple of things that are common to the core Office 2007 applications that are also of use for the smaller screen tablet user. Firstly is the Ribbon interface – or rather getting rid of it. If you need a bit more space to work in a document (this also applies to composing email messages in Outlook) you can reduce the amount of space that the new Ribobn interface takes up. If you double-tap a tab the ribbon will “minimise” to just a row of tabs. Just double tap again to restore the ribbon interface.
Before:
After:
Another handy feature that is common to the core Office 2007 applications is the zoom slider. Located in the lower right hand corner this slider can be used to quickly zoom in and out in a document. I find that because of the low resolution of the LS800 I can zoom out to about 70% and it is still quite readable, but I fit a bit more text on the screen. Sadly the zoom slider is not included in the message reading window in Outlook.
One Note 207
OneNote 2007 includes a fantastic feature. There is a button on the tool bar that, with one click, maximises the writing area.
The screenshot below shows where the horizontal edge of the writing area is on the LS800 in the following modes:
· Standard Portrait Mode
· Portrait mode with folder pane hidden
· Portrait mode maxed
· Landscape mode
· Landscape with no folders
· Landscape maxed
My favorite mode for note taking is portrait maxed and as you can see it offers more width than landscape with the folders showing (and much more height of course).
Live Messenger
I have seen people struggling away to enter ink into Messenger at its standard size. Don’t forget you can resize or maximise the window!
IE
The absolute best feature in IE7 for users of a small screen tablet is the zoom tool. Don’t just take my word for it Kevin Tofel has fount the same thing on his Samsung Q1. Read about Kevin’s Favorite IE 7 feature for UMPCs
Ditto.