Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Not a scroll wheel for me; either a 1-d capacitive touch sensor (think touchpad, but 1d; or think iPod touch wheel, but unwound) or a group of buttons; say, wouldn't 4 buttons in a diamond over there be pretty dandy, either as alternate cursor keys (in a web browser, the d-pad could select links, and the 4-keys could scroll), or as auxiliary function buttons to perform... auxiliary functions, like jump, fire, etc.; wouldn't that be innovative?

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Yeah, I could go for a pressure calibration feature too. Although I'm not quite sure how that'd work honestly.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Oooh.. that's a thought.. an iPod style touch scroll sensor on the right side or something. Just anything but having to block the screen with my big stoopid human finger or having to aim with the stylus and repeatedly wering out the right side of the my screen protector just to scroll things. :) Plus--less wear and tear than a scroll WHEEL. I can dig that.

Even better still is your suggestion of a 4-way diamond. I mean.. how much you wanna bet Firefox on the Pandora will make use of those joypads for that.. and it will be a WHOLE lot better than constantly touching the screen and a whole lot more ergonomic, given you just hold the dive and use your thumbs on either side the whole time.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Long clicks, schmong clicks... I'm just surprised that no one's interested in two clicks. (I've seen it in movies anyway.)

-T.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

two clicks is about 1.24 miles.

and... um... schmong clicks? You're not getting into that silly game, now too?

(just using 'em up)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I swear you look like Quentin Tarantino in that avatar pic.

That alone should cost you points.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Maybe he IS Quentin Tarantino - they have at least a first letter common :D

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Then I want my money back for Grindhouse.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Neither styling widgets nor adding transparency will help you getting an existing desktop application to the tablet. It should be done with as little changes as possible, that's the whole point.

Also, neither styling widgets nor adding transparency will make for a better user experience (in general; I admit there are exceptions). Consistency is one of the most important points in user interfaces, and not using stock widgets but styling your own instead brings inconsistency. (When I say "consistency", I mean consistency not only within an application, but throughout the whole platform and, even more, across platforms. The user knows certain concepts from the desktop, and its a good thing to try to reproduce these in phones, tablets, PDAs or any other computer-like devices. Nobody wants to learn how to operate a new device from scratch.)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Grindhouse was fantastic!

You aren't a fan of the coked-out dialog are you? See, for me, that's the best part. ;)

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

That's only some of the points and we already have that available (relatively easy portage of desktop applications to Maemo), but desktop applications waste space and are not touchscreen friendly. I was not talking about porting. I'm talking about the freedom and the ability to develop a new interface without delving in X and starting from scratch or running to Enlightment libraries for help (bloating your app in the way). The GUI frameworks should at least allow you to get out of their chosen consistency, not getting in your way.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

i guess the big problem with scrolling using the dpad is that there is no way to speed up or slow down the scroll depending on what one is doing. that is, scrolling to read or scrolling to get to some other part of the page/text.

meh, what i would do was put a optical mouse pad, like what rayon have been using on their everun. or maybe a small touchpad specifically for scrolling. that way one can scroll in all directions rather then just up or down.

ok, i guess one could also use a trackball or whatever its called.

but then im ok with using the screen to move things around. only that sometimes the pages are so dense with links that finding a place to make contact for dragging is problematic.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I think those advocating changes in the UI are hoping these updates to the UI would take place at a system level and not just on a per application basis - ie, our tablets implementation of Hildon gets revamped so therefore all applications making use of Hildon would be updated. See the first post's reference to Matchbox. This in turn shouldn't add any extra time to the process of Hildonizing existing desktop apps for use on the tablets.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Are you referring to kinetic scrolling? I think someone was playing around with that.

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...etic+scrolling

The comments were that the current implementation of javascript for MicroB was too slow to handle this, but I think I read somewhere the next version is supposed to have vastly improved javascript speeds so this actually might be a workable solution.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

It blocks development, for one.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

https://stage.maemo.org/viewcvs.cgi/...maemo&view=log

I think this is it?

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

That's a log, I've already linked to everything here:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...58&postcount=3

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Oops, sorry, didn't see your post, thanks!

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

not exactly, as imo kinetic scrolling is downright silly.

but what im talking about is a 1:1 between what your doing and what happens on the screen.

this you see with both the mouse, and with the scrollwheel.

move the mouse faster and the pointer on screen moves faster. scroll faster and the page scrolls by faster.

with a dpad you have a set speed. one that often will be to fast if your scrolling while reading, but to slow if your jumping downwards in the page.

the main problem is have with kinetic scrolling is that it takes two taps to do anything. ones you have flicked a page into motion you have to tap to stop it, and then tap again to do anything. if not you risk unwanted triggering on the page.

also, the line between when you trigger the kinetic scroll, and when you dont is imo almost random. right now i have the habit of removing the stylus or finger from the screen as part of the movement. but with kinetic scrolling i have to make sure that what im scrolling is at rest, or i risk sending it zooming of and i have to stop it, and go back up again to find where i was at.

the feedback between physical action and visual effect is very important to me, i guess. as long as i cant feel any mass to what im moving, kinetic scrolling will be a mess for me.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

We can never agree on the "best" user interface, that was clear to me a long time ago already.

Discussing user interfaces and consistency issues is good.

Discussing what's the "best" way and "how it should be" is _useless_.

There is only one answer to that: Bring in the same flexibility as there's on the (X11) desktop: The GUI should either be as configurable as the KDE window manager or e.g. FVWM, or the Hildon stuff should be opened/loosened up enough so that it's easy to replace the actual window manager. Thus, the long-click folks will get their thing, the context-menu folks likewise, ditto fat vs. small menus and icons. And so on.

User choice is the only thing that works for the desktop, it will be the only thing that works for the NIT.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I beg to differ here... Kinetic scrolling is highly useful (and usable) in apps like Canola, Mauku, etc... I wish microB had it too. If kinetic scrolling was the only improvement in the next OS, I would be ecstatic. Unfortunately, I don't think it's even in the plan.

-T.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Yeah, I've been told I look like QT before. If only he was known for his good looks and not for his writing. :(

Just to gasp speak on topic for a moment here....

I really think the whole idea of Hildonization is absurd. Why should we have to modify the interface of each and every app to run on the tablet? There should be a way to "skin" or "theme" the interface of every single GTK app completely and utterly, so that it runs as a tablet app on a tablet and it runs as desktop app on a desktop. And, for that matter, it will run as a media-box app on my remote-controlled media box (usable from the remote control). If the tablet environment has kinetic scrolling, all of the apps that use the toolkit will automatically get kinetic scrolling. If the user finds that annoying, they can turn it off system-wide. One dropdown box will make the entire system "finger friendly" or "stylus friendly" or "keyboard friendly" or "joystick friendly". All GTK apps should just automatically invoke the pop-up keyboard, if that's what you like using....

What am I doing?! Must get off topic again!

I thought "Grindhouse" sucked, but for different reasons than most people did. It was painfully pretentious, and I got sick of the broad winks they kept giving the audience.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

While I like the idea I believe it to be near impossible. You are talking about a completely seamless integration for all apps to inter-cooperate... which means that everything from your Tablet, to your Laptop, to your TV, Microwave and VCR would all be based on one specific environment.. and then all apps written for that code-base. Apple and Windows do this.. they have 1 interface/kernel and then everything they release works great with itself (well; Apple is good as working with itself.. microsoft is well.. microsoft) - but none of them hardly cooperate at all with anything NOT made by them.

It takes away the options of say.. KDE vs Gnome. Or.. Gnome would have to support all calls that KDE apps might make and vice versa to get a complete seamless environment working. And the sheer amount of coding this would require is monumental...

Still; good idea though. Hopefully someone much smarter than me figures it out soon.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I was specifically talking about apps that use the GTK toolkit, not every single Linux app. Most of the core Gnome stuff uses this now. Why can't the GTK apps be auto-hildonized, I'd like to know?! Why is theming so shallow, so skin-deep?

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Yeah this is true.. the "hildonizing" code should have been written in a way that a normal app that was written for normal GTK would make the same function/library calls and would just receive the different "hildonized" environment...

but I think (haven't ported anything myself yet) some calls are missing in the Hildonized GTK.. meaning they needed to add some form of seamless 0 return or something to the missing functions so that the app doesn't completely die out.. but it may not work at it's 100%.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Qole, I think part of the problem auto-hildonizing would be restricting all GTK programs to a small set of features. For example, Hildon applications can only have one menu, while GTK applications can have as many menus as they want. Hildon applications, while able to have more than one toolbar, would look pretty silly with 8 toolbars stacked along the bottom - not to mention there would be very little usable real estate.

That is not to say that some things could not be auto-hildonized, like hildon input method. I have no idea why all editable text areas do not have this automatically, other than the fact that code would have to be moved into GTK.

I am by no means an expert on this, but I can see why Hildon is a layer on top of GTK. Having small-screen support built into GTK would be another option, but would certainly be much more complicated and I think many applications (Xournal, Abiword, Gnumeric, etc) would not be quite as nice as their Hildonized counterparts.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I think the one-menu limit of Hildon is a problem with the current Hildon spec. There needs to be a way to shoe-horn full functionality into a small form-factor. Toolbars also need to be more configurable; the whole toolbar-across-the-top (or bottom) concept makes some problematic assumptions about the screen size. I like the way gThumb auto-hides the toolbar in fullscreen mode (it can be recovered by tapping the top of the screen); I've found that this works well on the tablet...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

But discussion is always good. :) At any rate, I agree that EVERY feature is a good feature so long as it's optional so I can turn it off or choose another.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Then you aren't paying very close attention. ;) It's popped up in one or two commit logs (can't be bothered to dig them up, I know MicroB had one), and I've had several Nokia engineers mention it directly. Kinetic scrolling is likely to be a big part of Fremantle.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I'm not sure if it's been answered elsewhere, but will Fremantle suddenly arrive magically and flash over the Intarwebs... or will we be using the same ol' SHUT'R DOWN, WE'ER FLASHING THE WHOLE THING! method of the past?

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Well, there are going to be alpha and beta releases (maybe only of the SDK, I'm not clear on the details, but it will be clarified at the Summit). Presumably they'll be using SSU to push the final release, but there's no telling for sure.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

lol. The way you guys are ranting, you almost sound like you're discussing politics. ;) And if we wanted to take it a step further, we could call the two groups the Stylus Party and the Thumb Party. ;) :D

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

and i would say that kinetic scrolling is the worst part of mauku, with the need to go into the long tap to open a twitter link a distant second (i find myself triggering doubletap because i put to light a pressure on the screen).

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I was partly joking... but to be honest I tried to enjoy it for the campy genre piece it was, but it was a bit too surreal. And I kept coming up with better ideas for the story as I watched, which ain't good :p

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Oh yes, you think it's annoying when you bump your home applets out of position now? Wait until they rocket across the screen and deform other applets upon collision.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

ok, what methods are available for interacting with a list item?

Scroll action
Select action
Context Functions


slide
tap
double tap
tap and hold
tap and wiggle
tap [CONTEXT MENU APPEARS] tap choice
tap, then use ui elements away from the list item to control actions

finger
double finger
shocker


any more?

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Ooo, physics! Nice suggestion, Steve.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

liqbase has a physics mode which does similar :D

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Like this one maybe? :)
http://moblin.org/repos/users/pippin...008-06-25.html

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Hammer? :)