Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Thoughts? Not so much. Facts, yes.

The Newton was created and perfected in the Great Interregnum of the Nineties, when His Holiness the Jobbes was ousted from the inner halls of Apple.

The first thing Jobs did when he came back was to nix the Newton, claiming people needed keyboards. There was no clear economical reason to axe the Newton project (Newtons had finally evolved into a near-perfect state, Apple had spun off the project into a separate company, but Jobs pulled everything back into Apple, just to can it).

I have it on good authority that Jobbo is a petty, vindictive egomaniac who, even more than Billy Gate$, needs to be King of the World to be able to get off.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Back on the UI subject... I'm gonna propose something radical.

Given the tablets' understanding of sensitivity, maybe it would be beneficial to not just separate click actions by time (short vs long press), but by sensitivity. By that I mean a light touch (in the capacity of a PC mouse's hover function) which pops up explanations of icons, and/or options, whereas a heavy press acts as a click. Yes, I know right button is simulated in some cases by a long press, but it's not fully utilized and I'm wondering if this alternative approach might be better...

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Sounds workable in theory (but not for me, though!). One caveat: the Itablet's sensitivity appears to be very narrow-banded; that is to say: there is not much between the lightest and the heaviest registration. Maybe this can be adapted (a logarithmic formula of some sorts?) but if not, it's going to be one b*tch of a UI.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Aye up chaps!

First of all, glad to see the thread is alive.

One thing I noticed in a couple of posts was that people said "oh, let's write this down and suggest it to Nokia". If I get to say anything about this, it is: never mind Nokia. The community (we as in whoever is interested) can do it. If it becomes something good Nokia will notice it. Who'd want to wait for Nokia to notice a draft anyway (even if the draft is full of facts).

TBHWY, we could start anytime now. Another user (sorry, can't quote names) said something along these lines: follow PB approach an open the sucker. We, I'm all for this.

Inside these beasts there is a Linux distro. They are fully customisable, aren't they? Can we ditch Hildon et al? Most certainly. There are millions of lightweight window managers, etc. out there that are free (as in speech) same for eye candy and all. It should be doable. What we programmers really need then is just someone with a decent sense of UI interaction and a good artist.

Cheers chaps,

U

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

And here I am xD
Just kidding :) Well, your, radical point of view is right, but I've suggested slightly different thing. To point Maemo team the improvements of current interface, instead of creating whole new one. Improvements, that can be easily done without detonating whole building. Right now I don't have very critical points in current hildon interface, that I can't use at all or use with some shaman moves. It's all getting better and better and better with each release and titanic work is visible. But you can't see ALL of aspects of interface that you're creating. Remember, that Maemo is created by Maemo team, not fricking whole Nokia. iPhone's OS is created by hundreds of specialists;. and even it has faulties and crappy moments. So, I think Community can replace some of specialists and make concepts of really handy interfaces, using CURRENT environment. Something like that.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

I've had Palms for a long time - started with a visor, then a Sony Clie, then a T3. I like them, bit dated, but they work. I got a keyboard for the T3, never used it, wife used it for her M505, then M515, she's sad it doesn't work on her TX.

I have a Zaurus 3100, I love it, the clamshell + touchscreen, it's a great linux hackers tool. Have used Cacko, Angstrom/GPE. With Cacko I used both touch screen and keyboard, with Angstrom I mostly used the keyboard because GPE just didn't really work that well! When I tried a Zaurus 6000 I found its small keyboard to be frustrating and a nuisance! For both zauruses, the keyboard was essential because the UIs weren't well designed!

The N800, for me, actually works quite well, it has quite a lot of quirks but you get used to them quickly. The screen layout wastes a lot of valuable pixels, the on-screen menus and the menu button are particularly odd. Some control panel apps are not too well thought out - the network one is particularly bad. However, you can pick up a tablet and quickly make it do stuff, you're not fighting it too much. I don't think it's broken badly, it needs cleaning up, rationalising. Hildon might not be the best, but at least things get a global style.

For nearly three months mid 2007 I used macbookpro with OSX, I liked it, but I found the enforced styles too much, irritating! I didn't like the dock, wanted a trivial start menu, didn't like the animations even though I turned off everythign I could. I now have a Toshiba running linux and a very simple KDE theme (though I did try compiz fusion just to see what the fuss was about, hated it after 5 minutes).

OK, my point? A good UI doesn't get in the way of what you want to do! After the fun of the "bling" in OSX and Vista and KDE, if you're focusses on tasks, you want something that's simple, plain, rational/consistent and tidy!

I came to this thread wondering if I could remove part of the hildon interface to simplify it - save some screen real estate. Didn't mean to rant for so long, sorry.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Amen (to teh first paragraph).
For those of us not as familiar with Linux, the second paragraph is something that I echo in a sense. If there was someone (some program or tutorial) that would lead us to being able to understanding the UI underpinnings so that we can exercise our UI-wants then it would be great.

At the same time, there are some general things that do need to be done that some kind of study/document/attention-getting-document that whomever's in charge can look at (and we know they are looking at it) and really consider and work towards implementing - I know this is being done in reference to this and other threads, but wanted to put it out there.

That all being said, I would hope that the next tablet does hit better than a home run in this area. I personally think its ready for the kind of impact that people would respond very favorably to it, but offputting UI/UX items will make it fall hard and fast.

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

interesting article on designing a ui for the small screen
http://www.taptu.com/blog/2008/01/08...-from-scratch/

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Designing a website UI and designing OS UI is whole different things. And I haven't found there any unic info bout mobile UI prototyping or anything else)

Re: Custom GUI / Shell Replacement for ITTs?
 

Doesn't have to be that way, though. The convergence of both has been going on for years. There's almost no noticeable difference now to casual users between an advanced internet environment and a local net environment.