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 Monday 13 October 2008
Saint Edward the Confessor, King
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Universalis on a handheld computer with AvantGo

AvantGo is a service that allows you to download pages from the Web for use with Palm, Windows Mobile (Pocket PC), and Symbian handhelds. Here is how it works:

  1. You register for the AvantGo service (this is free) and download and install the free AvantGo software. See the AvantGo web page.
  2. You tell AvantGo what "channels" you want to subscribe to. Each channel is supplied by an information provider and is essentially a miniature web site. Universalis is one such channel: we'll give you instructions for subscribing to it below.
  3. Whenever you synchronize your handheld with your PC or directly with the Internet, the channels you have subscribed to are downloaded to your handheld.
  4. You can now browse and read the downloaded channels on your handheld without having to be connected to the Internet or to anything else.

Universalis provides a weekly channel, which means that you get a week's worth of pages in advance and don't have to connect to the Internet every day. It also provides a daily channel, which has fewer pages and so uses less memory on your handheld, but most people prefer the weekly version.

See the note on screen format with Pocket PC.

AvantGo logoAvantGo is a commercial organisation. The company has chosen to make the Universalis channel available as a public service.  We would like to record our appreciation of this generosity.

Instructions for subscribing to AvantGo

To set up your own personal AvantGo channel, click on the channel name below:

Channel name Maximum size
Universalis (weekly) 800KB
Universalis (daily) 70KB
For the daily Universalis only: before you click, make sure that you are viewing Universalis using the correct calendar (currently you are using Europe - England - Westminster) and that the time zone is correct (the time in the current time zone is now Mon 2:46 am), so that you get the right daily readings and they change at the right time of day.

Once you have set this channel up, your handheld computer will receive a compact version of the day's Universalis site each time that you synchronize it (the process of synchronization is fully described on the AvantGo web site).  This compact version of Universalis contains only the liturgy and Mass readings for each day, without any of the explanatory and background material.

Similar services

Other services also exist that do the same sort of thing as AvantGo. We can't give you much advice about these but ultimately they all work in essentially the same way. When they are fetching pages from Universalis they all need to know where to start and how deeply they should follow the links from the starting page.  Here is that information:

Content Address Link depth
A week at a time http://www.universalis.com/avgo/Europe.England.Westminster/thisweek.htm 2
A single day http://www.universalis.com/avgo/Europe.England.Westminster/330/today.htm 1
Before you use these links, make sure that the calendar and time zone are correct (currently the calendar is Europe - England - Westminster and the time is Mon 2:46 am).

See also

Download and install
You can make yourself completely independent of any Internet connection by downloading the whole of Universalis and installing it on your PC. This also means that you are no longer restricted by dates: you can read the liturgy far into the past and far into the future. In addition, the display may be clearer and simpler to navigate than that provided by AvantGo.

Note on screen format on Pocket PC

People using AvantGo to read Universalis on the Pocket PC have been complaining that AvantGo makes the Universalis page slightly too wide for the screen, so that you have to keep on scrolling left and right as you read each line.

I’ve tried this out on my iPaq, and the reports are true; but here is a way round it:

  1. In AvantGo, view a Universalis content page: for example, the About Today page for any day (it doesn’t seem to matter which page, actually).
  2. Tap on the word “Menu” at the bottom left-hand corner, and a menu will pop up.
  3. From the pop-up menu, select “Options” and then “Page Options”.
  4. An Option Manager window will open, giving options that will apply to the Universalis pages. This page has multiple pages but it usually opens on the “Browser” page, which is the one you want.
  5. You’ll see that “Maximum font size” is set to “x-Large”. Set it to “Large” instead, and tap on “OK”.
  6. The Universalis page will now appear narrow enough to fit on your screen, and the horizontal scroll bar (at the bottom of the screen) will have disappeared.

While you’re in the Option Manager window, you may find life more convenient if you change “Dragging pen” from “selects” to “scrolls”, since you’re more likely to be scrolling through Universalis than you are to be selecting text within it.

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