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-   Maemo 5 / Fremantle (https://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=40)
-   -   Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=27242)

kanishou 2009-03-05 18:22
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
There are some issues with colours on scratchbox, it should look better on a device. E.g. the turquoise you see, is actually lime green...

Closing dialogs by tapping outside their area (which is dimmed) provides by far the biggest possible click target. Putting a visible X somewhere would only distract from that, and it takes just a few seconds to learn, then it feels completely natural. I bet you also learned that you can close menus on your desktop by clicking somewhere else. :)

lcuk: The X in the background is getting dimmed like the rest of the inactive background, and tapping anywhere on that space will only close the dialog of course.

SD69 2009-03-05 18:25
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 269152)
The Diablo "UI" was already ported to Fremantle (please see the pre-alpha SDKs and Mer).
What would be really nice is if you could easily multitask between diablo apps and fremantle apps on top of Mer on a N8x0. sweet! :D

lcuk 2009-03-05 18:27
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
kanishou,

does the dialog close when you press escape?

pelago 2009-03-05 18:39
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lcuk (Post 269192)
kanishou,

does the dialog close when you press escape?
I'm not kanishou of course, but I hope so. But then, do we know for sure that the new hardware will have Esc buttons?

Clicking outside of dialogs to make them close may take a little getting used to, but I'm coming around to the idea. As long as it's consistent in the UI then it should be relatively learnable. Other than Canola, are there other UIs that cancel dialogs like that?

qole 2009-03-05 18:53
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lcuk (Post 269192)
does the dialog close when you press escape?
I noticed that the Mer dialogs (based, I guess, on the first SDK?) don't have any visible way to close them either, and pressing the Esc key on my N800 closes them just fine.

ragnar 2009-03-05 19:01
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Master of Gizmo (Post 269150)
Y
I indeed like their basic idea of cleaning of the dialog boxes to make more space for content. Perhaps they just need some hints.

E.g. the "where's my close button" problem can easily be solved by adding some small "X"-Shaped icon to the dialog title bar. Most users are familiar with the meaning of an (X) icon in the upper right corner of their dialogs title bar. I think i'll file a bug report to suggest just this ...
Yes, thanks, but I think those are already planned... There are visual hints related to dimming (and i think even an icon in the upper right corner), they're probably not yet implemented to the alpha.

We naturally did do user testing with this new dialog style, and there wasn't any major problems in regards to closing.

benny1967 2009-03-05 19:11
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 269209)
We naturally did do user testing with this new dialog style, and there wasn't any major problems in regards to closing.
you probably wanted to say "...and they showed a vast improvement in usability in regards to closing."
nokia wouldn't change things if users had only minor problems with the new way, would they?

;)

ragnar 2009-03-05 19:15
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by benny1967 (Post 269211)
you probably wanted to say "...and they showed a vast improvement in usability in regards to closing."
nokia wouldn't change things if users had only minor problems with the new way, would they?;)
Well no, it's not a "vast improvement in usability". I think it's a nice improvement over the previous style that requires you to aim and hit a small target. Tapping outside is a large-to-huge target. Also it frees up space and clears up the screen. There will be a visual effect making this target even clearer.

Perhaps at some other day I might have more humour for comments like this, but today I kind of don't get the positive side of complaining over everything.

benny1967 2009-03-05 19:57
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 269213)
Well no, it's not a "vast improvement in usability". I think it's a nice improvement over the previous style that requires you to aim and hit a small target.
vast or nice, it's what i meant: your original comment made it sound like yes, it was a problem in the UI testing, but only a minor one so nobody cared. now your saying that it's an improvement, and my guess was that this is what you wanted to express in the first place.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 269213)
Perhaps at some other day I might have more humour for comments like this, but today I kind of don't get the positive side of complaining over everything.
sorry if my bitterness shines through here too much. i tried to hide it because i know there's a lot of people who are proud of what they released. (and they are right, i can tell there's a lot of us who like it.)

i still hope that in the end, on the actual hardware, with proper theming and with the missing pieces added, i will get used to it.

lemmyslender 2009-03-05 20:07
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
From all I have read, this is supposed to be a very open project. As such there was a pre-Aipha, and the current Alpha release, and eventually a Beta release.

I don't think anyone is complaining, only offering as I would expect (not complaints) constructive criticism and a variety of opinions as a result of these releases.

I have made changes to my own programs that I felt improved them only to find out that the majority of endusers didn't understand or "get" the changes. This resulted in reversing some of these to avoid headaches and complaints from the endusers. Sure they would have eventually gotten used to them, but at what cost?

Perhaps if Nokia were a little more forthcoming with details, some of the questions/criticisms/complaints would be headed off. On the other hand, I'm sure that there would be a whole crop of other issues.

qole 2009-03-05 20:12
Re: Alpha SDK Filechooser
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qgil (Post 268555)
But Maemo 5 is a bit more than a filechooser, isn't it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by qole (Post 268606)
Yes, it's a 3D, clutter-based, OpenGL-enhanced filechooser. :) :D ;)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stskeeps (Post 268616)
Is it? It runs fine under Mer..
Yes, yes it does. Although I think the OK button could be a bit bigger.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3610/...c982721b_o.png

Stskeeps 2009-03-05 20:37
Re: Alpha SDK Filechooser
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qole (Post 269229)
Yes, yes it does. Although I think the OK button could be a bit bigger.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3610/...c982721b_o.png
That's not hildon-fm. That's GNOME's file chooser (or GTK, i forget.)

Master of Gizmo 2009-03-05 20:39
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by kanishou (Post 269189)
There are some issues with colours on scratchbox, it should look better on a device. E.g. the turquoise you see, is actually lime green...
Ok, so it looks like red and blue are exchanged. You can adjust that e.g. with imagemagick using this:


convert in.png -channel RGB -separate sepimage.png
convert sepimage-2.png sepimage-1.png sepimage-0.png -channel RGB -combine out.png
rm sepimage-?.png


When applying that script to my two screenshots they look like this:

http://www.harbaum.org/osm2go-freemantle-recolor.png

and this:

http://www.harbaum.org/dialog-freemantle-recolor.png

benny1967 2009-03-05 21:05
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pelago (Post 269127)
Are the new devices going to be finger-only, i.e. not come with a stylus? I ask because http://maemo.org/development/sdks/ma...lpha_overview/ says that the stylus keyboard has been removed, and the window/app close button is much larger than before.
i think i remember reading somewhere that yes, i'll need to buy a stylus as an extra 3rd party accessory. can't remember/find the source, though, which makes this info pretty unreliable.

i was disappointed at first about the removal of the stylus keyboard: a lot of things just dont work well with the thumb keyboard: chatting, x-terminal, frequent use of numbers,...

i guess it just doesn't matter, though, as long as there's a hardware keyboard. i own an N800, so i couldn't live without the stylus variant, but i hope N810-owners will confirm that hardware keys are even better.

qole 2009-03-05 21:21
Re: Alpha SDK Filechooser
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stskeeps (Post 269232)
That's not hildon-fm. That's GNOME's file chooser (or GTK, i forget.)
Are you sure? It doesn't look like any Gnome/GTK file chooser I've ever seen before. And that giant OK button on the right looks just like the Fremantle UI screenshots we've seen...

Maybe it's some weird bastardization of GTK / Hildon due to the fact that this is OpenOffice with GTK compatibility, and I'm running this in a chroot, but most of the other aspects of the Liberty theme look right.

benny1967 2009-03-05 21:28
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
qole, i thought you threw this in as a joke, but: it looks pretty much like the file chooser i have on my gnome desktop. really. except that the OK-button is completely out of place (and proportion), which makes the actual files list too narrow.

qole 2009-03-05 21:31
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
So it is a weird bastard child of Gnome/GTK, Diablo and Fremantle. Sweet. :D

Can someone post a screenshot of what the Mer filechooser is supposed to look like?

yerga 2009-03-05 22:02
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qole (Post 269245)
So it is a weird bastard child of Gnome/GTK, Diablo and Fremantle. Sweet. :D

Can someone post a screenshot of what the Mer filechooser is supposed to look like?
AFAIK, there isnt "Mer filechooser". There is the Gtk filechooser (your screenshot) or the new Hildon filechooser (the mentioned video).

And AFAIK, Hildon filechooser isnt 3D and clutter based (because of this, it's running in Mer without problems). The new Hildon desktop it's clutter based.

tso 2009-03-05 22:15
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
there was a video somewhere showing a file selector that basically looked like a tree view combining dirs and files...

i suspect the the file manager will be somewhat similar...

qole 2009-03-05 22:18
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Let me rephrase, then; I would like to see what the new Hildon filechooser in Mer looks like. From my picture, we can assume that some of the elements of the new Fremantle theme (like that big OK button, and the removal of the cancel button) have been pushed up to the GTK level, so all GTK dialogs will display these features.

EDIT: Ok, I watched the video. Now I know.

EDIT2: Is it a bug that the new OK button size and placement breaks the GTK file chooser dialog? Should I report it?

Benson 2009-03-05 22:50
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by benny1967 (Post 269211)
you probably wanted to say "...and they showed a vast improvement in usability in regards to closing."
nokia wouldn't change things if users had only minor problems with the new way, would they?
Of course they would, that's what they hired UI designers to do.


:p

lcuk 2009-03-05 23:08
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Master of Gizmo (Post 269233)
gizmo, those screenshots look cool! (*much better than the originals now the colors are "right)

I played with clutter over christmas and it obviously runs better directly on the laptop itself without worrying about emulation and scratchbox etc

what i want to know though is it possible to take an application designed for clutter on normal x86 and recompile it for maemo/fremantle, or would I need lots of special fremantle specific porting afterwards? (much like the x11 hildonizing)

I'm eager to make a start and the teasing of these screenshots is making me want to try more.

qgil 2009-03-06 06:40
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Master of Gizmo (Post 269082)
But two of the old closed source packages are missing: gpsbt and tablet-browser-interface. Are there already documents explaining what do use as a replacement?
tablet-browser-interface will be in the beta. The alpha doesn't include any browser related packages.

gpsbt is dropped, http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roa...tion_framework updated.

qwerty12 2009-03-06 07:18
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Pictures of a HildonFileChooser from the Alpha. Doesn't look pretty much different from yerga's video.

Creating a folder:
http://qwerty12.maemobox.org/freeman...eatefolder.png

Opening a file:
http://qwerty12.maemobox.org/freemantle/openfile.png

Saving a file:
http://qwerty12.maemobox.org/freemantle/savefile.png

Choosing the location:
http://qwerty12.maemobox.org/freeman...selocation.png

I'm sure you all know this but I'll possibly repeat this for consistency, although the dark theme doesn't do well to show it, there isn't a need (functionality wise) for a cancel button because the X in the top right corner acts as one for whatever dialog you have open.

Oh yeah, as demonstrated in Yerga's video, teh chooser haz kineticz

Quote:
Originally Posted by qole (Post 269260)
Is it a bug that the new OK button size and placement breaks the GTK file chooser dialog? Should I report it?
http://qwerty12.maemobox.org/freemantle/gtk.png

^ - doesn't look terribly broken to me (and it's not one of the smaller gtk dialogs :)). I can still cancel with the X. Only problem I have there, at least in scratchbox, I can't resize the bookmarks. Apart from that, usable - just not ideal. (Although Maemo programs should be using the HildonFileChooserDialog anyway ;))

Master of Gizmo 2009-03-06 07:34
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lcuk (Post 269276)
what i want to know though is it possible to take an application designed for clutter on normal x86 and recompile it for maemo/fremantle
This (color corrected) screenshot is from the gtk-clutter-test application that is included with clutter-gtk. In order to run this i had to:
  • port and package clutter-gtk (since it's not part of fremantle which is rather odd since these are the gtk bindings for clutter)
  • hildonize the gtk part of the test app
  • no changes in the clutter part were required

The entire process took less than half an hour. But there are artifacts around the bitmaps and the frame rate is very low. So, yes, you can run clutter via scratchbox, but it's not very useful yet (at least on my machine, but perhaps i am just suffering from the performance problems you also experience).

http://www.harbaum.org/clutter-gtk-fremantle.png

pelago 2009-03-06 12:15
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by benny1967 (Post 269238)
i guess it just doesn't matter, though, as long as there's a hardware keyboard. i own an N800, so i couldn't live without the stylus variant, but i hope N810-owners will confirm that hardware keys are even better.
I have an N810 and use the hardware keyboard most of the time. However, I do revert to the stylus keyboard when doing lots of number data entry (e.g. in gnumeric), as it is annoying entering numbers with the hardware keyboard, due to having to use Fn. An additional row on the hardware keyboard would be very welcome.

tso 2009-03-06 13:04
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
as i do not own a n810 i have to ask, can you not double press fn to lock the key function?

pycage 2009-03-06 13:09
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tso (Post 269388)
as i do not own a n810 i have to ask, can you not double press fn to lock the key function?
Yes, you can. But if you have to enter a mix of number and letters, this isn't good either.

richie 2009-03-06 13:11
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tso (Post 269388)
as i do not own a n810 i have to ask, can you not double press fn to lock the key function?
Yes you can.

pelago 2009-03-06 13:43
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tso (Post 269388)
as i do not own a n810 i have to ask, can you not double press fn to lock the key function?
As others have said, yes you can, but in Gnumeric (which was my example) you have to do this separately for each cell. So for that specific use case, the stylus keyboard is easier.

allnameswereout 2009-03-06 20:03
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lcuk (Post 269151)
as a user I would expect the presence of a big fat X in the top right to also act as a close button for a dialog.
The user might have to adapt, but different symbols on same location might be confusing.

I would find a big square with a line (sortof like an arrow) to a small square a logic way to imagine this.

Some things the user decides and quickly wants to get that done. UI consistency is then very useful for workflow. There is also no relearning afterwards.

Another way to close applications could be from a task manager, instead by default only minimizing applications.

Quote:
Personally I prefer giving people a clear way to (cancel/close/dismiss/do nothing) on actual dialogs, that way there is none of this. (at the same time I am even more guilty because I can make screens with no ui at all :p)
On a longer timescale users want to use symbols for such, that much I know. It might take them a bit longer to adapt to, but eventually they'll get used to it and love it.

This is the kind of UI consistency a good HIG aims for.

I think a black UI with little as much light colour is better for battery than other way around?

eiffel 2009-03-06 20:43
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by allnameswereout (Post 269491)
I think a black UI with little as much light colour is better for battery than other way around?
A dark background would help battery life on an OLED display, but not on a backlit display as used in the N800 and N810.

Regards,
Roger

yerga 2009-03-06 21:05
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
1 Attachment(s)
The application menu can store until 15 items in the same screen (see the screenshot), if you have more than 15 items you can see the other items scrolling (kinetically) until the rows below.

Also, there is a new property in the .desktop files: X-Maemo-Prestarted. It seems to allow applications be pre-started (logically as the name indicates). I didn't can to do it work in scratchbox though.

lcuk 2009-03-06 21:10
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
yerga,
that looks fantastic!

the only thing out of place is the back icon, why isnt it in the top left?

The prestarted application flag sounds good - :D lets hope its not abused too much :p

yerga 2009-03-06 21:20
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
The prestarted application flag sounds good - :D lets hope its not abused too much :p
Hopefully not. Though the hildon-desktop (who manage this) checks the used memory and acts in consequence.
A comment from the source code:
Code:
/* Prestarting depends on the env var HILDON_DESKTOP_APPS_PRESTART and the
 * amount of /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_free_pages up to
 * /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_notify_low_pages.
 * not set|false|no - Never prestart apps.
 * yes|auto|0 - Prestart if there are more free pages than stated in
 * /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_notify_low_pages.
 * number - Prestart if there are more than this number of free pages.
 */

mikkov 2009-03-06 21:35
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lcuk (Post 269500)
the only thing out of place is the back icon, why isnt it in the top left?
Because cancel/back/close function is always in the top right

lcuk 2009-03-06 21:39
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
sometimes I want to close my browser without having to go back 4 pages.

think about that with dialogs.

benny1967 2009-03-06 21:44
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by yerga (Post 269498)
The application menu can store until 15 items in the same screen (see the screenshot), if you have more than 15 items you can see the other items scrolling (kinetically) until the rows below.
is there i way to organize applications systematically (like the well-established menu/submenu-structure) so you don't have to scroll planlessly through an unsorted list? having 50+ items in the menu and no way to group them would be quite a challenge. are the blue "example"-entries folders?

qole 2009-03-06 22:19
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
A fun tip for playing with the new UI on your existing tablet:

Install x11vnc on your Scratchbox machine; then, after the Xephyr :2 -screen 800x480x16 ... & line, do the following:

Code:
x11vnc -display :2 -nopw
Note the port that is being shared, and use VNC viewer on the tablet to go there (of course, start up your Scratchbox UI first). (eg 192.168.0.4:5901) Then just fullscreen the display. It's kinda scary -- it looks like you're running the new UI right on your tablet. It lets you try out the applications using your fingers. The kinetic scrolling isn't great (finger swipes don't translate well, I guess), but it works well enough for testing and you can tap on all of the buttons with your finger and get an idea for how big things will be on a portable screen.

In other news, I couldn't just untar the maemo5 armel rootstrap into a partition on my tablet and then chroot into it; I get an "illegal instruction" error (or something).

I also see why the GTK dialog box should be OK in Fremantle; the dialog boxes span the entire width of the screen. The problem occurs when taking the Fremantle-GTK dialog boxes and trying to sqeeze them into Diablo-sized dialogs. This is what was happening to me...

lcuk 2009-03-06 22:34
Re: Maemo 5 Alpha SDK released
 
qole, you just gained a whole new bottle of absinthe at the next summit!


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