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- - Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=26084)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 256643)

How far this D-Pad debate can go before a new device is launched with/without it together with the corresponding UI?

Until the more stubborn among us run out of steam. Or ragnar gives up. :D

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Do you realize that no matter who 'wins' here, device products are designed by other teams taking into account many other considerations?

You are pushing the debate as a yes/no for all devices to come, while ragnar is basically saying that the Maemo platform needs to be prepared to support a UI without a hardware D-Pad. Then the device programs willing to use Maemo can decide. As they could decide to have lock screen key or not, camera button or not and etc.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjgadsby (Post 256591)

Pot shots as the proud folks who won't touch an N810 for fear of contracting inferior D-pad location cooties though?. That's good, clean fun.

I'm not too proud to touch an N810.

I always wash my hands, afterwards, though.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Thanks, Texrat, for pushing ragnar on this. Nothing in your NDA says you can't bark at the heels of those in the know to get them to justify themselves ;-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 256446)

...That assumes that there is a focus element on screen. Look at the iPhone UI, for instance. There is no focus element there. For a proper touch UI, you shouldn't have a focus element.... Another style is to have no focus on lists and menus: first click always selects whatever you click. But you can't really mix these styles together very well... If you have no focus, then you cannot do UI's like that, but must set the commands differently... It makes good sense for HW keys, but not really for touch screens.

The more you try to stick on to hard key based navigation, the less you can optimize for touch UI's. It's really that simple, fortunately or unfortunately.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 256558)

ragnar, you're working awfully hard to argue against something that many users highly desire. Why?

It is fairly obvious to me; the new Maemo5 device is going to follow in Apple's glorious footsteps and it will be a nokiaTouch; it isn't going to have any way to set "focus" on an element.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 256648)

Do you realize that no matter who 'wins' here, device products are designed by other teams taking into account many other considerations? ... ragnar is basically saying that the Maemo platform needs to be prepared to support a UI without a hardware D-Pad. Then the device programs willing to use Maemo can decide. As they could decide to have lock screen key or not, camera button or not and etc.

Quim is, as always, doing his best to smooth-over and de-emphasize here; but I think he's basically agreeing with me here :)

I'm with Naranek here, however. The new processor is going to have the power to run OpenOffice well, so I hope they don't mangle the UI so badly that OOo can't even be used.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naranek (Post 256540)

I think that this would be a great way to create the UI because it would at the same time allow for
-great touch UI built by Nokia AND
-continued easy porting of open source software

I fear that if the focus elements are removed from UI, it will make porting applications that rely on them difficult. Of course I'm not a developer so this might not actually be a problem.

All I can say is -- if you're taking away my HW keys because the iPhone doesn't have them, you'd better throw in an accelerometer instead!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 256640)

But how far does naysaying get a product? How far does a "can't do" attitude go?

Seems to be working for Nokia so far ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texrat (Post 256640)

...so far all I've seen are protests of how difficult something might be. I'll be swayed by data and sound logic, but not by impassioned opinion-- at least not in a case where functionality is being removed.

Hear, hear!

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 256588)

Data of what?

I think you answered the question yourself:

Quote:

A more meaningful test is to give two devices to users, let's take one with a d-pad and one without a d-pad and designed for touch, and then do comparative analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of these alternatives and the things that the users prefer in them.

Has something like this been done?

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

It has been fun to watch this fight over the D-pad... :p Personally I do not use it much, but it is very helful when need to edit few characters in the middle of long text field, say a file path.

Instead of D-pad I'd like to see a general purpose "Function keys" around the display, similar to what you see at ATM or gas pump. The keys can be freely programmable by the application. App can place a small icon next to the button to show the current function, and one function can be the "D-pad" in certain circumstances.

One of the best example which miss programmable hardware keys is media (MP3) player. If there was a reasonable amount of HW keys available you can use the tablet as MP3 player never watching it and/or taking it out of pocket! Very useful feature, in my opinion. To bring this feature further there should be separate lock mode for display and buttons: If you use the tablet as MP3 player you want to lock the screen from not reacting touches, but want to keep buttons operational to user input.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 255601)

Maybe I'm wrong, here. Maybe I'd be perfectly happy on the 1 GB plan, and I'd never go over that limit. Anyone have some real-world numbers for me?

N810 sucked 110 MB last month through my phone with daily light web browsing and email.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 256653)

All I can say is -- if you're taking away my HW keys because the iPhone doesn't have them, you'd better throw in an accelerometer instead!

Pay attention much? ;)

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Wow, nice grab GeneralAntilles! :) It also sounds like the long rumored n900 will be definitely worth waiting for. :D Assuming of course I had patience to spare. ;) I'm crawling out of my shorts right now in anticipation.

BTW, on a side note, if they take away all the hardware keys (which I wouldn't mind really, just so long as there's some easy way to reset the tablet should it barf up it's digital guts like the n810 is fond to do periodically) how will navigation and other things be done? Will everything be on screen? And how big is the screen rumored to be, now that I think about it. hehe.

Re: Where is Nokia - no announcement no product - still in hibernation

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 256648)

I realize that teams who decide to use Maemo will have to use Maemo as it is provided to them. I understood Ragnar to previously say that the OS could not support two UI paradigms. We are not concerned in this discussion with things like a lock screen key or a camera button. We are concerned with removing UI related HW keys.