Customize Home Row/Dock?

[SterlingSpring]

I saw this in a video but I couldn't find it again but how do you customize the home row apps Phone, Email, Browser, and Applications? with something else etc. I remember in the video it was REALLY hidden..

 

[cobra302]

go to you apps pages, hit menu, then edit. then all the apps should have little boxes around them. drap them where you want them including the dock, hit the menu button then save. you should then be good to go.

 

[Terrigno]

Although the Applications Icon on the dock cannot be removed. All the other ones can.

 

[writerman]

I thought you could only change the middle two?

 

[Terrigno]

Browser, Phone and Email can be switched.

 

[writerman]

Browser, Phone and Email can be switched.

Learn something new every day...thanks!

 

[Terrigno]

Learn something new every day...thanks!

No problem buddy. We're all here to help eachother

 

[derande]

i've only had my Captivate for a few days but already installed LauncherPro: LauncherPro ?.
it allows you to increase your docked icons to 5 instead of 4 and change them to whatever you want. i also use it to hide the bloatware apps that at&t loads.

 

[Terrigno]

Do you have to root the phone to use that?

 

[lthomas926]

No you don't just search launcher pro on the market great UI

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using Tapatalk

 

[Joeybear23]

Yea, verily I say unto you: Launcher Pro rocketh.

 

[jeffq]

For others who find the above confusing...

I'm a newbie with Android and Captivate, and I couldn't figure out how the above info was supposed to work. After a lot of poking around, I discovered several major confusing aspects of Android use:

• To a newbie, the phrase "go to you[r] apps pages" can mean several different things. The most obvious is the "apps pages" that your phone displays when it's turned on; i.e., the home screens. But cobra302 means "click on the Applications icon in the home tray/dock/drawer", which is the comprehensive list of applications installed on your phone. (My professional experience helping tech newbies suggests that many might even find their way to the Settings' app's "Applications" group in their search for the correct meaning of "your apps pages"; not everyone will find the distinction between applications and settings obvious.)
  
• Many newbies may be confused, as I was initially, by the similarities between what they see when they press Menu->Edit from the home screen, and what was described above. The first (but wrong) interpretation also displays "all the apps" with "little boxes around them", except that the little boxes are home screens and they're around groups of apps, not individual apps. You only get the correct view if you got cobra302's meaning, except....
  
• Even those who follow the correct Applications->Menu chain may only see a "View type" button instead of that and an "Edit" button. In that situation, you must press View Type and select "Customizable grid". Only then will the Edit button will show up when you press Menu, and you'll see each application on the screen surrounded by its own "little box". (If you haven't already seen it, it's hard to know what "little box" might mean, and the correct version looks less like a "box" than the wrong one.) Then you're able to drag any of the boxed (or bracketed) apps over any of the dock's icons (except "Applications") to replace it in your dock.

Just searching for this topic was a huge pain. I've seen the static set of apps at the bottom called the "dock", the "home tray", a "drawer", a "row", and who knows what else. Every one of these terms is likely to occur in just about any discussion about Android phones, so they make for poor search terms.

This isn't so much an issue with the helpful instructions I've found here as it is with the inscrutably dynamic controls of Android systems, and the lack of useful documentation that comes with them (or at least with the Captivate). Terms like "applications" and "edit" get reused in dozens of places and pop up only under certain, often hard-to-predict conditions. (The "Settings" decision tree of K-9 Mail, which I find much more useful than the default Email app, is in a class by itself of Confuse-A-User.) I love the power of this phone, but it (and other Android phones, I'm sure) demand a hell of a lot of self-education (or friends who can demonstrate things for you) from its users.