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-   -   witter - a python twitter client (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35596)

markusm 2009-12-17 16:52

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
My input on the layout. A kind of compromise from all the previous and would be easy to make user selectable color schemes for.

http://www.moubail.com/temp/maemo/wi...ter-left-1.jpg

http://www.moubail.com/temp/maemo/wi...ter-left-2.jpg

http://www.moubail.com/temp/maemo/wi...tter-right.jpg

slate8 2009-12-17 19:44

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Loving the mockups. Would be great to see such twitter beauty on the N900. :)

thp 2009-12-18 09:16

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Testing 0.1.1-9 here, some feedback:
  • Scrolling the list with arrow keys would be nice (currently, the arrow keys switch focus - that's okay too, but but then the view should scroll with the focused item - HildonPannableArea has "scroll_to" and "scroll_to_child" methods for doing this)
  • "Set UID/PWD" could be renamed to "Set login data" or "Authentication setup" or "Login" or something (some people might fear three-character uppercase abbreviations ;))
  • Properties: Use a GtkDialog with one action button (add this using GtkDialog's "add_button" method) "Save" instead of OK and remove the Cancel button (Cancel is clicking outside the dialog)
  • Properties: Instead of having labels and these spin boxes, think about having a HildonPickerButton for selecting values (Click on the clock, "New alarm" and then on "Time" to see what I mean, although you obviously only want one column)
  • "Properties" itself should probably be renamed to "Preferences" or "Settings"
  • What does "Toggle ServiceType do"? (I know now from looking at the window title, but it was not really obvious to me at first) Maybe change it to a HildonPickerButton "ServiceType" that will display a list of possible types (the PickerButton will also show the currently selected value, making the current system state more visible to the user)
  • Related to the service type changes (thanks for supporting identi.ca, btw!) - what does happen with the login data? Shouldn't the login data be saved per-service and when switching the service (I haven't set up identi.ca yet) a username/password prompt should pop up?
  • The longpress context menu is still not finger friendly (set the widget name correctly to get the bigger padding)

If you have a bug tracker (request a product on bugs.maemo.org), I can enter these as bug reports if you want to make it easier for you to manage, proritize and merge requests.

The app is getting nicer and nicer with every release, good work!

dwould 2009-12-18 15:06

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
Testing 0.1.1-9 here, some feedback:
  • Scrolling the list with arrow keys would be nice (currently, the arrow keys switch focus - that's okay too, but but then the view should scroll with the focused item - HildonPannableArea has "scroll_to" and "scroll_to_child" methods for doing this)

  • ok good tip, I'll see if I can connect this up
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
  • "Set UID/PWD" could be renamed to "Set login data" or "Authentication setup" or "Login" or something (some people might fear three-character uppercase abbreviations ;))

  • fair point, and easy to change
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
  • Properties: Use a GtkDialog with one action button (add this using GtkDialog's "add_button" method) "Save" instead of OK and remove the Cancel button (Cancel is clicking outside the dialog)

  • depends on if this will fix my problem...I find that once I've cancelled a dialog by clicking outside, I can no longer open the dialog properly. I have no idea why, it works fine if you hit the cancel button
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
  • Properties: Instead of having labels and these spin boxes, think about having a HildonPickerButton for selecting values (Click on the clock, "New alarm" and then on "Time" to see what I mean, although you obviously only want one column)

  • Hmm.. I'll think about it, but the spinner buttons seem faster to me to use than the hildon picker stuff.
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
  • "Properties" itself should probably be renamed to "Preferences" or "Settings"

  • I guess preferences is reasonable
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
  • What does "Toggle ServiceType do"? (I know now from looking at the window title, but it was not really obvious to me at first) Maybe change it to a HildonPickerButton "ServiceType" that will display a list of possible types (the PickerButton will also show the currently selected value, making the current system state more visible to the user)
  • Related to the service type changes (thanks for supporting identi.ca, btw!) - what does happen with the login data? Shouldn't the login data be saved per-service and when switching the service (I haven't set up identi.ca yet) a username/password prompt should pop up?

  • I only included this as a hack to let people try identi.ca if you can confirm it works then I'll think about integrating this in a nicer way. and actually I may just expose a setting to let people set the rooturl to what ever.
    Yes Ideally auth settings would be saved per service, that's all part of support for multiple accounts which I haven't gotten around to yet.
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
  • The longpress context menu is still not finger friendly (set the widget name correctly to get the bigger padding)

I'm not sure what the means.. but I guess if I google I'll find out what setting the widget name correctly involves.
Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
If you have a bug tracker (request a product on bugs.maemo.org), I can enter these as bug reports if you want to make it easier for you to manage, proritize and merge requests.

if you go to http://garage.maemo.org/projects/witter then there seems to be the ability to use a bug/feature tracker there. feel free to add these things, and anything else there.
Quote:

Originally Posted by thp (Post 433103)
The app is getting nicer and nicer with every release, good work!

thank you.

dwould 2009-12-18 15:10

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by markusm (Post 432119)
My input on the layout. A kind of compromise from all the previous and would be easy to make user selectable color schemes for.

http://www.moubail.com/temp/maemo/wi...ter-left-1.jpg

http://www.moubail.com/temp/maemo/wi...ter-left-2.jpg

http://www.moubail.com/temp/maemo/wi...tter-right.jpg

interesting ideas... I have a couple of questions...

Where do I get the icons?
how do I set the icons in gtkbuiblder?

how do I get the chars remaining counter *inside* the text entry box? I looked everywhere for info on that, and found nothing, which is why it is currently a label next to the entry box.

I'm actually playing at the moment with a ui which will hide everything except the tweets. And will bring them back if you type anything.
I am hoping to spend this evening investigating gestures, so that you can swipe left/right to switch views.
My plan is to bring the buttons etc back when you switch, then dissapear them again after a few seconds.
I'd love to make the buttons pretty pictures instead of text, but they are they way they are because that's all I've figured out so far.;-)

dwould 2009-12-18 15:17

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by twaelti (Post 431930)
I believe 1.1.9 is not storing credentials (a filesystem permissions problem? BTW: Better store config things in GConf).

it stores things in a file in /home/user/.witter
so if it has no permission there then it won't store anything
I take it as a good point that I should investigate using GConf instead. don't suppose you can point me to a guide on doing that?
Quote:

Originally Posted by twaelti (Post 431930)
In fact, while the app shows up, I can't see any twitter content. All UI is there and I can do "Set UID/PWD". However, trying to send a Tweet then gives me an error "401, not authorised: check uid/pwd"

the password field for some reason auto-capitalises which sometimes catches people out thinking they've entered details correctly when they have not. I don't know why. I will probably switch to using one of the build it dialogs for obtaining credentials and hope is resolves that issue
Quote:

Originally Posted by twaelti (Post 431930)

After quiting and restarting, UID/PWD still is empty.

(Starting from Terminal shows "store_creds called" after OKing "Set UID/PWD", so this step looks good. Where are the creds currently stored?)

they are base64 encoded in the .witter file.
Quote:

Originally Posted by twaelti (Post 431930)
The only thing that work for me is the [search] function (as this is probably anonymous). Still really cool to see all the Japanese and Arab results in their native fonts :-)

annoyingly this seems to be something that textRenderer 'just handles' which rendering myself using cairo does not handle. so my current dev version no longer displays international chars. trying to figure out what to do about that.

markusm 2009-12-18 15:28

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
You get the icons from me (if you want) as I made them :). I'm happy to help designing the graphics if you so wish. (I'm an Art Director / UI/UX designer by profession.)

I was going to suggest a disappearing UI as using Twitter is mostly reading stuff and less posting - at least usually I think this is the case.

You could just copy the layout concept from the Conversations view. Have a big "Tweet" button on top of the messages that scrolls away with the messages but as soon as the scrolling stops or the user taps the screen the button appears on top of the list again (fixed position). And I also think the writing of the new tweet could be done in a dialogue with only the text box and a button for sending. Clicking outside the dialogue cancels (but you could still remember the text that was written in case the user want's pick up where he/she left.

If you want I could try to do some mockups of different scenarios.

dwould 2009-12-18 15:39

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by markusm (Post 433462)
You get the icons from me (if you want) as I made them :). I'm happy to help designing the graphics if you so wish. (I'm an Art Director / UI/UX designer by profession.)

I was going to suggest a disappearing UI as using Twitter is mostly reading stuff and less posting - at least usually I think this is the case.

You could just copy the layout concept from the Conversations view. Have a big "Tweet" button on top of the messages that scrolls away with the messages but as soon as the scrolling stops or the user taps the screen the button appears on top of the list again (fixed position). And I also think the writing of the new tweet could be done in a dialogue with only the text box and a button for sending. Clicking outside the dialogue cancels (but you could still remember the text that was written in case the user want's pick up where he/she left.

If you want I could try to do some mockups of different scenarios.

Well if you could send me a package of the icons then I can play with a few ideas.
I'm still loathe to ask people to spend too much time generating things, since I'm still not sure I know how to actually implement a given design. I'm very much bound by what I've figured out so far.

If I can figure out gestures, then that's a start.
I obviously need to figure out more event handling code to be able to detect scrolling and inactivity etc.
With christmas approaching, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to spend on it.

dwould 2009-12-20 19:54

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
ok, so once again autobuilder is being painfully slow. however, witter 0.2.0-1 is on it's way to extras-devel.

no, there is still no support for avatars.

the buttons are still text, though I'm hoping the next drop will have icons.

also if you previously relied on non romanised chars being shown. don't update. as this isn't working at the moment.

so what have I spent my time doing?

there is now a custom cell renderer which makes things look a little nicer. but at the moment I'm using cairo to render text and haven't figured out how to make pango render non romanised glyphs, so no chinese/arabic or whatever. sorry.
but it does look nicer.

i've changed colours to match the colours of the other window buttons.

retweet not jus copies a tweet to the entry field so you can do 'old style' retweet.

reply_to put s focus in the entry field at the rightplace.

you can reply from the search view without losing our search terms

there are now 'gestures' so you can swipe left or right to change views.

changing views scrolls to the top of the new view. (i wanted to remember position in each view, but I'm not there yet)

scrolling hides all controls to give full space to tweets.
switching views or pressing any key brings controls back.

communications are now encrypted as witter uses https.

that's probably everything. still loads to do, but figured it was worth moving up to 0.2.0 for.
there was a temptation to keep fixing things and tweaking things without releasing and update. but at least this way i get feedback.

yes i know you want avatars. no i haven't decided to add them, the amount of coding, memory usage and the extra network traffic leave me still unconvinced.

twaelti 2009-12-20 21:37

Re: witter - a python twitter client
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by dwould (Post 433451)
I take it as a good point that I should investigate using GConf instead. don't suppose you can point me to a guide on doing that?
the password field for some reason auto-capitalises which sometimes catches people out thinking they've entered details correctly when they have not. I don't know why. I will probably switch to using one of the build it dialogs for obtaining credentials and hope is resolves that issue

Indeed: It was a user problem on my side :o. Your password field uppercased the first char in the field and I didn't see that. Perhaps a "Test connection" button might make it clearer.

In mClock, I do the following python code with gconf to load a stored conf variable called timeMode and reset it to the initial value of "maxi" if the read value is invalid.

Code:

global timeMode
 conf_client = gconf.client_get_default()
 conf_client.add_dir("/apps/tomch.com/mClock/general", gconf.CLIENT_PRELOAD_NONE)
 timeModeStored = conf_client.get_string("/apps/tomch.com/mClock/general/timeMode")
 if(timeModeStored!="maxi" and timeModeStored!="mini"):
  conf_client.set_string("/apps/tomch.com/mClock/general/timeMode", "maxi")
  timeModeStored = "maxi"

Thanks again for witter, it's great!


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