an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

Hi guys, i m not Able to code but i have had an idea, maybe stupid but maybe not and i would share it with you all, especially with developers. I Like the idea of live tile of Windows Phone, i Like the os infact, but what i really want is an european open System, so sailfish is my favourite. I think that live tile or widget allow User to see what is going up with a single glance. So i suppose that it would be possible to convert the real multitasking instance on home in a live tile..so i suppose it has only to be an app wich keep going on ( easy For Sailfish) and some times update to show to you news or something else. The cover of the app it would be the real app to open ( maybe in automatic way like with situation) and then let going on behind..obiviusly with adapted text in Order to show information to User.

What do you think about it?

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

Yeah, unfortunately, at least for Sailfish the idea of widgets (aka "live tiles" on WP) is remarkably unpopular for some reason. :( I brought this up a while back on TJC, but got shot down pretty hard...

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

No one has expressed that better than this guy:

https://together.jolla.com/question/...#post-id-84716

Interestingky, when Jolla copies some really bad things from Android/iOS (e.g. having to create an account to access the appstore), that is suddenly OK and you get shot down for pointing that out.

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

Isn't a cover displaying 'live' information better than the limitations of 'live tiles' in WP? In WP you _need_ to have a server which the apps connect to every 30min (or more, this is the minimum) to fetch the new things to display, most of live covers display live in SFOS, just check network monitor app (sadly doesn't work from glance view, but cover of terminal does update live even in that). Why do we need central server where you have to update the data every half an hour? When you can fetch the data live? Isn't it better???

(the only problem is people probably don't expect their app in 'minimized' state to still chug bandwidth and use processor a lot, which realtime tiles do, no problem with displaying graphics in covers - just check the czech weather app Medard, no problem with having couple of entries rolled around as network monitor shows you can update it, so what's missing?)

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

For me, the issue is not in the details of how the minimized app is implemented (and yeah, I can imagine that WP does some crazy stuff), but more the simple existence of a flexible way to display multiple tasks on a single screen. There are some tasks that simply don't need to take up the whole screen to work; for these, it can be extremely convenient to park them all together in a single display.

In Sailfish, you cannot design an app to work with less than the full size of the screen. Instead, you get the chance to create an additional "cover" for the app, which may take up 1/4 or 1/9 of the screen, and may have one or two switches for I/O. Neither the user nor the designer can control the size or placement of these covers, and the user must keep the full-screen version of the app running at all times in order to maintain the existence of the cover. This just seems incredibly awkward if you actually wish to use the miniaturized interface for any serious work...

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

Patches? You can put whatever you want there, the multitask screen works for this like network switcher, which doesn't have full screen window at all and is only a widget for turning 2g-3g-4g.
You can't expect jolla to abandon multitask view, patch it if you wish and see a good function for it, but it breaks the whole idea. Patch out the multitask view with weather on top, news in middle and you lose what makes the phone great, multitasking,this part is essential in the UI, but noone stops you from having a patch that kills half of it by extra widgets (already happened in the events view, multi-view is already patchable to force 2x2/3x3 and endless scroll mode (removing limit) so doable). Then add extra application task manager which everyone will go to to actually switch between apps.

Are you sure? Gave you two examples of covers that update live, while being in low-usage state at the time.

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

MeeCast also has a "widget" that updates (almost) in real time. But a real widget does more than just passively display some information. A real widget offers full interaction. Not zero like the "widgets" you mention. No two actions like Jolla's covers. Full interaction. I hear there is a media control widget that offers more than two actions but I also hear it uses some unsupported patching and does not work for some users.

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

Noone stops you from having widget that has buttons. You can patch out the whole area as you wish (weather widget in events is now even Jolla supported, try entering your state, x button appears (just open junk twitter account for that), there is interaction, make it n900 or android like as you wish, don't expect jolla to help you with that as it is totally opposite their concept though)

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

??? You can't "put" anything there; you run apps, and their covers just magically show up somewhere in there without your intervention.

Yes, sure, you can "patch" the system to work differently than this; but that's kind of beside the point. :)

And I don't. I'm just saying that the current multitask view is too limiting; not everything fits cleanly into the "fullscreen + cover" UI idiom. (And of course, there are always dozens of low-level programs running on any Linux machine, which are not given any mention at all in the Sailfish "multitask view". So this is already not a true view of everything running on the device. I don't see why Jolla couldn't keep the existing app mechanism for full-screen apps, and add another for widget-like apps.)

Sure, Jolla apps do (and should!) minimize their activity as much as possible while only showing their cover. But you can't really create an app that is just a cover. (And yeah, the cover UI is so limiting, there really isn't any point to doing something like that anyway...)

Re: an idea for new app- widget or live tile like for Sailfish and meego
 

https://openrepos.net/content/penguin/radio-switcher

This app IS only a cover, you swipe left or right between 3 options and click on it to allow swipe-kill. Yes you can!

(edit: yes WE can?)