Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

but from a style pov, it seems to be a winner...

and when i try to drag with my finger on the N800 screen i can see why...

thing is that when one use a finger to apply pressure to a screen, it also creates resistance between the surface of the finger and the surface of the screen.

but with a capacitive touch screen, one only have to hold the finger near to have it react. therefor its easier to drag things along on the screen.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

but who would want to to this with fingers? there's a reason why iphone-users buy high-priced stylus-replacements that work with capacitive touch screens.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Interesting discussion here. The touchscreen question is a really important one. Capacitive touchscreens have certain benefits, for instance they allow multitouch usage whereas resistive do not. (As well as the overall finger usage experience is better.)

Please take the following as hypothetical input: if a platform would be considering moving for instance towards multitouch usage, this then would mean moving towards capacitive screens, which then means that it doesn't make much sense continue developing a dual stylus/finger touch UI style. (That would make no sense, actually - styluses simply stop working.) It's a -lot- of work to do, increasing design and implementation effort.

By designing for one input mechanism designs can be optimized for that input. It's a rather fundamental question, affecting widget design, application UI's, how much information can you fit on screen at any one time etc. etc.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

that they are buying these would be news to me...

as for doing it with finger vs stylus. i think the common claim is that a finger is always available ;)

btw, i am of that opinion that a finger friendly ui will always be stylus and even mouse friendly, but that a stylus or mouse friendly ui may not always be finger friendly...

and yes, i find myself using a finger on the N800 as often as i use a stylus for small stuff like finding a bookmark to open.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

See? That's what talking to other people is good for. I know 2 jesusPhone-users, both decided to go stylus after a while.

as is the thing that waits for you in the upper right corner of your tablet.

the point is that on such a small screen (and is is small compared to desktop PCs, not to other mobile devices of course) screen estate is the most valuable thing you have. "finger-friendly" UI-elements have to be big and therefore waste a lot of this valuable space, which drives me nuts. Why doesn't the RSS reader applet show me more headlines in its small box? Oh, because it's "finger friendly", so headlines need to take at least the space of the fattest thumb, no matter how short they are. Why can't I read the full subject of the emails in the inbox? Oh, because the UI is "finger friendly" and therefore we need a scroolbar you can play soccer in. It's just absurd for such a small device.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

silly question, but do they happen to be old school smartphone users?

yep, but there is that extra moment to remove that from the holder. i also find myself with a lack of precision when applying pressure to the screen for those long-taps (or for that matter, double-taps). but then i was never that good with pencils or pens anyways. my handwriting is a complete mess for instance.

the rss applet i never bothered with, nor with the mail applet or similar. but then i dont have either of those set for automatic checking of new items. i use those kinds of features on my desktop computer, but i never felt the need for it on a handheld. but then i pay by the data amount if im using tethering so...

on the rss there another reason also, it keeps reseting where im at in the feed when the check interval comes around.

what i have sitting on my desktop are homeip, homefreespace and personal-launcher. the clock i have in the statusbar thanks to statusbarclock (not the large one btw).

i also use echowb so that using scrollbars with a finger is easy.

oh, and i use personal-menu in place of the default contacts/mail icon on the sidebar.

and maybe i should add that i use advanced backlight control so that i can use the dpad to adjust sound and light level ;)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

;) not that I would know. I doubt it, though, as they both don't have use for any smartphone functionality. They're just Apple-subscribers, the buy everything (literally!) the dark lord throws on the market. (I know for sure one of them has every single ipod model ever released by Apple. The other one has some, although I'm not sure if he got all of them.)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

What you say is critically important. Important in the sense that the fact that people prefer different things must not be hidden under the carpet, it must be accepted up front.

The GREAT thing about X11 compared to MS Windows is that X11 gives you choice, you can find whatever UI that fits how you want to use it, while Windows is (mainly) about one-size-fits-all. The NITs have Linux/X11 under the hood, and this should leveraged to give the individual user easy options to set up the environment the way that user wants it. As it is, I'm not even allowed to extend the status bar to make room for all the status bar icons I'm using, and I can't shrink the 'Google' search bar to something not wasting half the screen. Just to begin with.

Some like large icons and few items in a menu, and they enjoy squashing a fat finger on that icon. Others shudder by the thought (as you may understand I'm one of them.. ;) - if I must use a finger I use a nail.) There's IMO nothing stopping the powers-that-be from incorporating flexibility into the GUI design, it's currently extremely rigid and this is totally counter to how X11 GUIs traditionally work.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

It was removed because, although a nice idea, ISTR it was found to be unreliable and frustrating for many people (I accept it may have always worked perfectly for you).

Perhaps the N900 will introduce a touchscreen where this becomes a reality (perhaps a capacitive screen supporting finger and supplied stylus, with the ability to distinguish them).

However it's done, supporting two modes simply costs more money. This means something else won't be done in supporting a dual-mode UI. Therefore, I support a wholly finger-based UI - it just needs to be much better implemented :-)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

or they could go for something like the dual mode screens that one find on tablet pc's...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I would like a finger based menuing system, but I certainly would not appreciate losing my stylus.
I got the n810 in part because I wanted the precision a stylus can give.

A finger based UI on a device this size works nicely with stylus simply because big fat targets are easy to hit, and even with the stylus I hate aiming for the smallest of icons (ie power/brightness/network etc)

For me though, the biggest problem with the frankenUI we have is scrolling, there are so many different unusable cludges on standard list browsing that its not workable, however unless something really good comes along and replaces everything these kinds of problems will remain for a long time.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

It seems we'll have consistency in Fremantle:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2564

However, whether everyone will like the resulting UI is a different matter ;-)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

sadly one cant satisfy everyone all the time. anyone thats a parent will know that...

another thing to consider is "the silent majority"...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I started trying this a while ago. It's really hard to test in scratchbox :D It wasn't working on the device either. I used a Hildon Helper method for finger detection and tried to roll my own.

Maybe it is time to try that again...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

fiferboy,

pressure information is available through the xsp x extension, the wiki is out of date and the information may not be totally correct (offsets were wrong for my device), but you should be able to boil this down into something you can use.

https://wiki.maemo.org/Using_touch_screen_pressure_data

liqbase makes use of this and it gives pressure readings from "are you touching me?" to "MEDIC!" so I know it works.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Finger-friendlyness allows for one-handed usage.
I prefer the simplicity and big buttons of the finger-friendly parts of the UI. But then, I'm not a PDA person and the Nokia 770 was my first stylus-driven device. But even on OS 2005, which was far far away from being finger friendly, I found myself often being too lazy to pull out the stylus and used my digits (=built-in stylus :) ) instead.

I don't want a small screen crowded with tiny fonts and many items. That's what I have a computer for. The NITs suck at replacing a computer anyway (small screen, slow CPU, little RAM, no keyboard/bad keyboard) in my opinion.
I find OS 2008 quite a big leap in the right direction, but consistency in the UI got somewhat lost. Unfortunately, Diablo doesn't improve this situation at all.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Very interesting statement. Because in some way this boils down to the original question people asked about the 770 when in was introduced years ago: "What is it? And: Why?!". And shows that there are still very different use cases for the tablets:

To me, the tablet does replace the desktop PC when I'm not at home (or too lazy to go to the other room). In fact, it's faster and more powerful than some of the PCs I work on every now and then.
So I expect it to act like a desktop PC and have the look&feel of a desktop PC. For everything else I have my mobile phone which I use for quickly looking something up in wikipedia when on the train or check my mail while waiting for the bus. I expect my phone to be simple and I appreciate everything I can do with it one-handed. (No, it doesnt have a touch screen, but it's still "finger friendly": I can use my fingers to press the buttons.)

Giving the tablet the same functionality would simply duplicate my phone, only much bigger. I don't have use for two devices that do the same, so I'd go and sell my tablet then.

But I can see now that people who want to use their tablets for the tasks I do with my phone might be attracted by a more finger friendly UI.

Maybe there shouldn't be a "UI for the tablets". There should be a UI for using the tablet as a mobile browsing device (=the "phone-use-case") and a different one for using the tablet as a micro-laptop (=the way I use it).

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

benny1967,
I have no problem in having a really nice front end on my tablet, nice finger friendly menus and options for the things we do most of the time.
I just don't want that to be all the device can do, and adon't want the iphone-esq problems of being FORCED to use finger for everything.

Once I start applications if (for instance) I start a drawing program I expect to use my stylus, afterall I stopped finger painting when I was about 4, and if I want to do other things I should be able to.

It makes the device usable for quick operations whilst retaining the flexibility of precision as you go deeper.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

the big diff for me between checking mail on my phone and checking mail on the tablet is the screen size. same with web (i use opera mini on the phone).

and yes, my N800 with a bluetooth keyboard can take the job of a computer if needed...

thats why i cant really justify getting a eeepc, even tho my geek side wants one.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

from my experience the current screen (could be different on the N810 but i doubt it) do not really work as a drawing pad.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

tso,
I find the screen and everything nice - liqbase manages to refresh the screen MUCH faster than anything else and I sketch and doodle all the time.

The screen is pressure sensitive and as long as you update it fast enough it works perfectly.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

ok, maybe i have just not found the right program then...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Maybe there's still no answer to this question. When the Nokia 770 came out it was unique and something completely new on the market. Now three years later the world looks different and people stopped looking at NITs at weird angles because they got used to the idea of tablets thanks to the UMPC and iPhone hype. But still, what is it for? Nokia claims the N800 and N810 are internet tablets (the same was claimed for the 770). Many users however use it for more, so it becomes some kind of laptop replacement (again, the same was already true for the 770). So, did anything change?

The thing that really changed was the UI. When the 770 arrived, it had a completely stylus-driven UI. This is no surprise because the closest relatives to the tablets where PDAs at that time. Nobody ever thought of controlling their PDAs solely with fingers.
But as time evolved, people found out that the new use cases of the NITs are often better controlled with fingers. Nokia must have noticed this and started some finger-friendliness experiments in OS 2007.
I think if they want to go to mass market with a device that isn't a PDA, and less capable than a UMPC, a finger-friendly UI is essential. Not because of the iPhone, but because "mass market" means non-geeks, and many non-geeky people would never accept a geeky stylus that could easily be lost and needs to be pulled out first.

A good finger-friendly UI could be used with a stylus as well. But I think that before discussing about the
proper UI for the NITs, everyone should find an answer to the question of what NITs actually are good for herself/himself.
I think the user base will always be split into two parties: "internet tablet users" who love it simple and want to touch with fingers, and "pocket computer users" who want a real desktop on their tablet and use a stylus as mouse replacement.

For myself, I found out that I rather am a "internet tablet user". This might have to do with the fact that I use computers most of the time for system administration and software development. In my opinion, doing these sorts of things is really awkward on the tiny screen and with the built-in keyboard. OK, I could use a BT keyboard, but then I would have to carry a lot of stuff around, and I could use the eeePC as well (because the keyboard is built-in).
All other tasks like web surfing, multimedia, book reading, games are well handled by my NITs. But those don't require a real desktop. The tablet 2008 UI is good for this kind of stuff.


The same here, but with different use cases. It replaces my PC for web browsing and checking mail.

I seldom use my phone for webbrowsing or anything other than phone, calendar, and contacts. The webbrowser on my windows mobile phone is crappy. And that's what I have a NIT for.

Yeah, I fully agree. But is the latter UI a responsibility of Nokia? The community has already ported great desktops to the NIT (gnome, icewem, kde, enlightenment, xfce, windowmaker) so maybe the "micro-laptop" UI is already there and Nokia can fully concentrate on a mass market compatible "internet tablet" UI. :)

A crappy UI is one that doesn't fit your use cases. Of course OS 2008 is crappy for the micro-laptop use case.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

pycage,
How do you use your finger for browsing?
Its not like you can comfortably slide the page around with your finger pad (ala iphone), the display does not react properly, and your finger pad is too big to grab the scrollbar.

Unless you are confusing finger browsing with fingernail use (which is just a short stylus) I cannot see how it works well.
It could be that I've just got a crappeh screen and its entirely possible to do full touch stuff with it.


I see finger friendly as in large touch pads for menu interaction - the main maemo app menu has it pretty much right, the iphone has it and liqbase has similar.
it "works" on many levels for menu systems to simply give as much screen estate as possible to ui elements and make it easy to touch without aiming.

It fails at other things though like the bookmarks list - which wants to be finger friendly but just makes finding things a slow slug through the list.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Careful what you wish for.

The trackpads on IBM (Lenovo) T series laptops are notorious for their touchiness. On my previous T43 I'd just get near the thing with a thumb and suddenly files are vanishing... images are randomly edited... porn popups are proliferating...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Well, I'm fine with both finger friendly and stylus friendly. And honestly it's easy to program both into a UI. I've already done it in small scale on some other projects. I realize why some want finger friendly, as it saves them the time of working with the stylus, while others want screen realestate and don't mind the stylus.

The way we solved that was to have what was called the "fat menus" and the "thin menus". Fat menus were for people who wanted a finger friendly interface. It had larger icons, larger text, and operated differently on the screen. The thin menus used midget icons, small text, and was very stylus friendly. And it was easy to program in on a system wide, and application wide basis, and adjustable from the control panel.

The only question after that is if Nokia is willing to do it.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

In my opinion what's called for here is a revolutionary approach that throws old paradigms out the window and starts from scratch. Some time back we had that discussion here but unfortunately it seemed to have ultimately gone nowhere.

I want to forget conventional menus, zooming, scrolling, etc, and come up with an approach that is specifically designed around the tablets' capabilities. That means, IMO, increased usage of gestures and decreased emphasis on things like dropdown menus. Long clicks, finger motions, multitaps, etc. I'll take heat for this from traditionalists I know but something that borrows heavily from Canola, iPhone and other similar approaches.

Out with the old.

In with the new.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

The feature was in the OS for a while, and vanished in Chinook.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Texrat,

:) liqbase is doing all of those things, I've started from a completely blank page and I'm seeing what works and what doesn't.

Part of me just nosying around and trying to code up what I've had in my head for years.
I've been forced to rethink everything since nothing is available for me already, its been interesting so far to see the work involved in building a UI from scratch.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I was just going to try to whip up a test program using this, but then I remembered my touchscreen is completely broken and I am about to send my device in for repair :( It will be quite a while before I can do any programming that needs testing on a device.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

would it be running windows? if so i dont think its the touchpad thats the problem. and who uses the pad on a thinkpad anyways? they all got that nub in the keyboard, no? something i really wish one would transplant to consumer level laptops. but then they would risk undermining their oh so valuable corporate only price level...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

No, not really. The only thing crappy are the large GUI-elements that waste so much space on the screen. Make them smaller (as they were before OS2007) and its the perfect "micro-laptop" UI.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

One of the things I like most about the concept of the tablets is that they use well-established desktop technologies (such as GTK). End users dont care about this, but it makes it easier to bring already existing applications to the tablets without re-writing too much.

Breaking with well-established concepts might (not necessarily has to, but there's a risk) cause incompatibilities here. Its not that thousands of developers work on 3rd party apps for the tablets right now, right? I wonder if this number would further decrease if completely new UI-concepts would require devs to re-learn everything from scratch and make it harder (or impossible) to port desktop-application to the tablets.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

while i dont have a problem with the general idea (kde did something similar with kde4, to the point where they found they had to stop talking about the launcher as a "menu" to really get people to think about new ways of launching programs) but im not sure if canola is a good starting point.

this is because the kind of interface they have there only allows for very defined tasks. ones one move on to infinite expandability like what one have on maemo today, one basically have to provide a blank slate and allow each addon/program to create its own interface.

this while at the same time allowing for easy switching between any and all tasks/programs being performed at that moment.

what i would move like nokia to do is take a look at android. provide a set of connectors between different programs so that anyone can write a mail, browser or other program and have it become the default.

so that one could say keep the existing interface, but have the bookmark/browser icon in the upper right corner launch fennec rather then microb, or even links if someone wants to use that.

find a pdf in a mail? if evince is your default, thats what will open.

another option is to drop the program concept completely and go for something like haystack (and "old" mit project im somewhat in love with).

if one go that way, the only interface one would really have would be a file browser. everything else would depend on what files one launched...

the only icon needed then would be one to launch a new file browser window, and some way to swap between existing ones...

a potential example there would be konqueror ;)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Funny. I wonder how old you are... Maybe this is a clash of cultures or something like that ;)

To me, stylus is the normal thing that hundreds of thousands people use every day with their PDAs and feel comfortable with. Using fingers on a touch screen is the new way to do it, so for me this is what's geeky and what scares people away sometimes (remember the 2 people I wrote about who bought themselves a stylus for their iPhone).

So thinking of mass market appeal, the stylus would be the natural choice for a device like the tablet thats too powerful for the few functions that can be controlled with fat fingers.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Just to throw my .02 out there I did like the ability of multiple touch-points, and also the tilt-screen capability on the iphone 3g. (I am not a MAC fan.. and would only ever pick a mac if the options were MAC and Windows.)

I was geeking out with a friend who bought the latest iphone and he showed me the Monkey balls port where all he has to do is tilt the ipod and the monkey rolls down that way, etc.. it was really quite cool... and of course the Frets on Fire port.. these things would be nice to have on the tablets..

But as it's known I'm an avid Debian user on these tablets because it has (almost) completely replaced my laptop for me. Including compiling and software development. I go home; plug in a USB cable and immediate have a mouse, keyboard and external HDD to work on. I go to work; disconnect my USB cable and take my computer to work with me. It's really that simple.

The iPhone doesn't come close.. and because I use debian I need the stylus; Gnome/KDE3/XFCE/Enlightenment is not Finger Friendly at all; KDE4 could be because of the new Menu they use (as mentioned above) but I don't particularly like it.

If it were at all possible I'd want the multi-point touchscreen AND a stylus =-(.. but when I have to pick between the two I go stylus.. it's more functional - Games aren't what I bought the tablet for.. (even though I trumped all when I showed them Doom :D)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Yes it's Windows, but even so, the pad is too sensitive regardless. It should not, IMO, be registering my thumb's proximity as a click.

And *I* use the trackpad. I hate the nub, with a passion. I can never control it with any finesse. Maybe it's the artist in me... but I prefer moving my finger across a surface as opposed to trying to manipulate a tiny joystick that sends my cursor flying wildly across the screen...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

It was just an example people could visualize, that's all. Again, the essential point was starting from scratch. ;)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

heh, thats why i avoid those things. i keep triggering the click when all i want to do is lift the finger of for a moment to move it back to the center of the pad or there about...

maybe i should look into the settings a bit more, i dont know. but mostly i dont use them myself, its other peoples computers i have to deal with them on...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Someone mentioned long clicks.

I'm tired of long clicks. Tired, tired, tired.

Someone also mentioned long clicks and compared with Palm (no long clicks). YES! The Palm approach works and is never tiresome.