peacelovefleshbones
Member
Hi! I just wanted to dedicate a thread to people that are new to the pandora so that they can have some simple solutions to little problems. I hope this helps make things more accessible.
The first and most important example of this would be:
The nand only hass 100 MB of free space and some change, so deleting large amounts of data from an sd card can seem impossible to do without the help of another computer to connect to.
-To permanently delete data from your SD card instead of moving it to the trash simply right click the file as you normally would and hold down the left shoulder button when you click delete. Say yes when you are prompted about permanently deleting the data.
That way you will never get that error saying that there is no space for the file you were trying to just delete anyways.
Another problem some people seem to have is playing youtube videos fullscreen. This is also easy. First of all you need to download Firefox 11 for the pandora. It is the only browser I know of that supports flash and youtube on the pandora (besides fennec 4.0 but that is pretty slow I think). The first thing you'll notice when you set up firefox is that the screen is cramped. An easy fix for now is to right click the menu bar and uncheck the box labeled "menu bar". Now there is slightly more room. You can still access the menu functions through the small button labeled firefox on the far left next to the tabs. More about the browser in a minute. It's a nice browser.
Anyways, go to youtube.com and pick a video. You will notice it plays. nice. You will also notice that it appears slow usually. This is probably a RAM issue because it occurs no matter how fast the wifi is. Simply select 240p resolution in the youtube video box. The pandoras screen is small enough that it will still look nice and it runs full speed this way. (note that I have a new pandora with 512MB of ram). Anyways, if you press the fullscreen button in the video box you will notice that the screen will go black but sound will play. press esc (Fn+q) on your keyboard to go back if you get stuck there.
NOTE that you have to press ALT+TAB (start+Fn+space) or hold down the pandora superbutton for 5 seconds to either close or get away from the video because pressing F11 will not put it back into window mode.
- To make the video play full screen simply right click the video box and select "pop out". the video will play in an independent window. While in that window pres F11 (Fn+o) on your keyboard. It is now fullscreen. And it looks nice.
Speaking of F11, you can press it when browsing the internet on firefox to browse in fulscreen mode. This opens up the whole screen for internet goodness. Feel the power. You can aso put the browser in high contrast mode by going to PREFERENCES>CONTENT in the menu and selecting "colors" A window will pop up with various color options, but also check boxes. Uncheck the box labeled "allow pages to choose their own colors". This puts the browser in high contrast mode and is really nice if you want to simplify a page or if you are in harsh lighting conditions (it is primarily white). Anyways, there are two other ways to free up space in your firefox browser for comfortable web browsing. The first is the ability to zoom in and out.
-To zoom in and out in Firefox simply hold down the right shoulder button and press - (Fn+d) on your keyboard to zoom out, + (Fn+f) to zoom in. Use the arrow buttons to maneuver slowly. Use the game pad button "Y" to scroll up fast, "X" to scroll down fast. Use The gamepad "A" button to go to the top of the page, "B" to go to the bottom.
The second is using a program called "ABMOUSE". Download it. To activate it go to the start menu and select system. Click Ab mouse and the A and B buttons will act as alternate mouse buttons (A being left click, B being right). This is good I find for long browsing sessions because the nub can get annoying with prolonged usage. However, there is a catch. Games and other programs that use the A and B game pad buttons will not recognize them when you push them. Luckily you can go to START MENU>SYSTEM and select "NORMAL MOUSE" to make it normal again. I put these buttons on a task bar for ease of access but more on that later.
If you find organizing programs difficult, the FIRST program you should download is PNDMANAGER. It is a full screen suite for pnd management and makes it easy to both add and remove pnds. From what I can tell it also removes the appdata files as well when it removes a program. Note that the program is almost entirely touchscreen, so use your finger or the stylus and dont panic or catch fire when you dont see a mouse. (Ok, that one seemed extremely simple but I managed to crash the program when I first started it, so dont judge me). The only catch is that it also lists programs that are still being beta tested from repo.openpandora.org so some programs may still have problems. You should always find out more information in the boards when getting a program that either doesnt work or that you dont know a whole lot about. There are almost always already solutions made by other people when you get there.
I have more quick tips that i will post later but my number one piece of advice to new users is BE PATIENT. The pandora is a fast and powerul device but if it slows down occasionally it has a good reason for doing so. Especially when browsing the internet or using five programs at once.
Obviously this thread is dedicated to people that are not only new to the pandora but that have also had an extremely user friendly experience with computers. I think this actually makes up a good percentage of people interested in getting a pandora from a distance and things like this should help draw those people closer, as well as help new users and people that are just frustrated by the interface.
The first and most important example of this would be:
The nand only hass 100 MB of free space and some change, so deleting large amounts of data from an sd card can seem impossible to do without the help of another computer to connect to.
-To permanently delete data from your SD card instead of moving it to the trash simply right click the file as you normally would and hold down the left shoulder button when you click delete. Say yes when you are prompted about permanently deleting the data.
That way you will never get that error saying that there is no space for the file you were trying to just delete anyways.
Another problem some people seem to have is playing youtube videos fullscreen. This is also easy. First of all you need to download Firefox 11 for the pandora. It is the only browser I know of that supports flash and youtube on the pandora (besides fennec 4.0 but that is pretty slow I think). The first thing you'll notice when you set up firefox is that the screen is cramped. An easy fix for now is to right click the menu bar and uncheck the box labeled "menu bar". Now there is slightly more room. You can still access the menu functions through the small button labeled firefox on the far left next to the tabs. More about the browser in a minute. It's a nice browser.
Anyways, go to youtube.com and pick a video. You will notice it plays. nice. You will also notice that it appears slow usually. This is probably a RAM issue because it occurs no matter how fast the wifi is. Simply select 240p resolution in the youtube video box. The pandoras screen is small enough that it will still look nice and it runs full speed this way. (note that I have a new pandora with 512MB of ram). Anyways, if you press the fullscreen button in the video box you will notice that the screen will go black but sound will play. press esc (Fn+q) on your keyboard to go back if you get stuck there.
NOTE that you have to press ALT+TAB (start+Fn+space) or hold down the pandora superbutton for 5 seconds to either close or get away from the video because pressing F11 will not put it back into window mode.
- To make the video play full screen simply right click the video box and select "pop out". the video will play in an independent window. While in that window pres F11 (Fn+o) on your keyboard. It is now fullscreen. And it looks nice.
Speaking of F11, you can press it when browsing the internet on firefox to browse in fulscreen mode. This opens up the whole screen for internet goodness. Feel the power. You can aso put the browser in high contrast mode by going to PREFERENCES>CONTENT in the menu and selecting "colors" A window will pop up with various color options, but also check boxes. Uncheck the box labeled "allow pages to choose their own colors". This puts the browser in high contrast mode and is really nice if you want to simplify a page or if you are in harsh lighting conditions (it is primarily white). Anyways, there are two other ways to free up space in your firefox browser for comfortable web browsing. The first is the ability to zoom in and out.
-To zoom in and out in Firefox simply hold down the right shoulder button and press - (Fn+d) on your keyboard to zoom out, + (Fn+f) to zoom in. Use the arrow buttons to maneuver slowly. Use the game pad button "Y" to scroll up fast, "X" to scroll down fast. Use The gamepad "A" button to go to the top of the page, "B" to go to the bottom.
The second is using a program called "ABMOUSE". Download it. To activate it go to the start menu and select system. Click Ab mouse and the A and B buttons will act as alternate mouse buttons (A being left click, B being right). This is good I find for long browsing sessions because the nub can get annoying with prolonged usage. However, there is a catch. Games and other programs that use the A and B game pad buttons will not recognize them when you push them. Luckily you can go to START MENU>SYSTEM and select "NORMAL MOUSE" to make it normal again. I put these buttons on a task bar for ease of access but more on that later.
If you find organizing programs difficult, the FIRST program you should download is PNDMANAGER. It is a full screen suite for pnd management and makes it easy to both add and remove pnds. From what I can tell it also removes the appdata files as well when it removes a program. Note that the program is almost entirely touchscreen, so use your finger or the stylus and dont panic or catch fire when you dont see a mouse. (Ok, that one seemed extremely simple but I managed to crash the program when I first started it, so dont judge me). The only catch is that it also lists programs that are still being beta tested from repo.openpandora.org so some programs may still have problems. You should always find out more information in the boards when getting a program that either doesnt work or that you dont know a whole lot about. There are almost always already solutions made by other people when you get there.
I have more quick tips that i will post later but my number one piece of advice to new users is BE PATIENT. The pandora is a fast and powerul device but if it slows down occasionally it has a good reason for doing so. Especially when browsing the internet or using five programs at once.
Obviously this thread is dedicated to people that are not only new to the pandora but that have also had an extremely user friendly experience with computers. I think this actually makes up a good percentage of people interested in getting a pandora from a distance and things like this should help draw those people closer, as well as help new users and people that are just frustrated by the interface.
Last edited by a moderator:
