Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Kate has posted a PDF of the her latest Maemo 5 Presentation on her company blog. Are there new RX-51/N900 tidbits hidden within? Perhaps. Will every strained minutia of this pdf be painstakingly scrutinised by a N900-starved community? Absolutely!

You can find the blog by clicking here.

You can find the presentation by clicking here.

Discuss!


YARR!
}:^)~

libCorrupt.so

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

I don't really see anything new for Maemo 5 (although it is a nice overview for people who haven't been following closely). Hardware wise, I guess it confirms that there's a stand (although we knew that from the code already).

So, no, not much new of interest.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

There's one thing of interest, that's likely known by those following the progress of Maemo 5 closely: It's the aweful main menu. This seems to be a perfect replica of what is on the tablets currently and can be represented much better.

Canola-style menus

In their current form, the main application menu and sub-menus are small, difficult to navigate with the finger, and (IMO) ugly. They are much better suited for a mouse. Canola's settings menu on the other hand is perfect for a mobile device and offers the SAME functionality in a much sleeker and more usable way. The Canola-style menus are large, finger friendly, attractive, can comfortably hold MANY sub menus, and are extremely intuitive. Moreover, based on the compatibility of function, it shouldn't be too hard to mimic this behaviour with Hildon Menus.

While there has been progress on usability, it seems that much of the usability is still being designed by developers! I think this task would be better suited by people that specialize in UIs and artists.

Of course, I'm at this point appealing to the more design-centered individuals on the forum. What do you think? Think you have what it takes to improve the current UI? It may be a bit late, but perhaps if we outline and vote on some ideas, make a wiki-page, we may be able to influence the usability of the upcoming tablet!


YARR!
}:^)~

captn.corrupt.DBus

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

File chooser - you can see only three items at a time. Maybe the thumb usability of it is high, but it is not very usable...

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

The file chooser should occupy the full screen, IMHO.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

page 27 - the tablet has a hardware menu button.

could this be a d-pad?

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Look at your tablet. Do you see the difference between the menu button and the d-pad? =)

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

i was happy to read in plain english about the menu button. i was worried they'd drop this usefull feature in the current thumb frenzy.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

how do you purchase the maemo 5?

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Its mostly free :D

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

And how could you cancel it? :P

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

I think the file chooser, can learn a lot from the way Canola structures its menus:

Screenshot:
http://openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/..._textfield.png
Video: (pay attention to menu)
http://openbossa.indt.org.br/canola/...a_settings.mp4

For those that haven't used Canola, this is how it works:
1) You click to open the menu, and one 'card' slides out.
2) If you click an item on that card, another card slides over the first. It doesn't cover it completely, but leaves the left most edge exposed.
3) To exit out of the current card, just click the screen outside of the card and it slides away.
4) If the menu has more items than screen, you can slide the options on the card via inertial scrolling.

This system should work well for:
1) FILE CHOOSERS
2) MAIN PROGRAM MENUS
3) POP-UP DIALOGS

Not only is it hyper functional, but finger-friendly, and extremely good looking all at the same time (with or without the animation).


YARR!
}:^)~

Clapt'n

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

In this case, it could be cancelled with an exit button on the chooser itself.

Of course, I would prefer a Canola-style file-chooser.


YARR!
}:^)~

PyCorrupt

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

I was thinkin' that was one of the points to the Canola exercise in the first place... To help Nokia develop a finger friendly way to navigate a small touch screened, robust operating system without the need for a keyboard.

Right now Maemo is "Internet in your pocket". I'm now thinkin' its future will pro'ly be "Internet on the back of a car/airplane seat, on the wall just inside the doorway where a light switch used to be, at mega multi-station kiosks in travel terminals, on the outside wall next to the door of a main street business, etc". :)

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

It certainly seems that way, and I think I recall reading something similar. Interestingly enough, if you look at the new Fremantle application launcher, it looks more than a little similar to the Canola style launcher, so it seems that the project has influence! Of course, there are a few things that are still lacking from the fremantle demo, but it's still early...

I really like the canola interface, though there is one thing that gripes me about it: Selecting music with the inertial scrolling lists. I would rather that each song in the list had a 'play' button, OR there was a safe area that I could scroll with my finger without worrying about selecting songs. As it currently stands right now, if I have a song playing, and I'm scrolling through the list, sometimes my scroll is registered as a click, and I select a song I didn't want to play.

If this type of functionality was to be reproduced in the new Maemo UI, I would hope that it would be fixed to prevent false selections (which can be highly annoying, and time wasting). A simple selection button for each item on the list or a safe-finger-scrolling-area would work.

This is a VERY interesting idea, that can open up an entirely new market! Wow, what great insight. You are my new hero!


YARR!
}:^)~

Gran Capitarino

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Kate Alhoa's makes it clear that the screen on the new devices is going to be 800x480 for sure.

The stylus keyboard is gone! Finger-touch and physical keyboard only.

GPS, vibration and accelerometer are included. We assumed this from the SDK, but these things weren't mentioned at last year's Maemo summit.

I found it interesting that QT applications will not just be compatible across S60/Maemo/PC but also Windows Mobile! No mention of Android or iPhone, but as Kate stresses they're not interested in low-resolution displays.

Regards,
Roger

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

question: does the hardware escape button cancel these dialogs?

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Who told you you are going to have that escape button in RX-51? :)

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

o_O
you are right of course
I saw in kates excellent overview that there is a hardware menu button.
It seems odd to keep one of those but remove the arguably more important escape key :P
but lets not get into another d-pad issue.
kates summary goes over a lot of things and answers quite a number of questions I have been building about the overall lay of the land.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

This is one of the wonderful benefits of a cross-platform UI like QT with many language bindings, an API for every OS feature a program could want, and written in a ubiquitous language (C++, I believe). This should greatly ease development for this platform, because you can develop natively regardless of your OS development environment -- assuming you exclusively use the QT API or your own portable libs (using OS specific libs in your app will obviously break compatibility). Put another way, it makes porting an app VERY simple task (a re-compile).

For example, Ms. Alhola's computer is a Macbook Pro (I think) from the shot on her blog. It doesn't appear to be slowing her down either!

I think QTs original goal was similar to Java's, only in a more natively-compiled way rather than a byte-language interpreted way. Write an app in QT, and you can compile and run it anywhere. Nokia was smart in championing the technology for Maemo. As it stands, it's probably the best example of a full featured OS independent layer for application development. Of the contenders, there is java -- criticised for a slow and bulky GUI. While there are many languages/libs that are cross-platform, these two provide a full cross-platform environment (GUI, network, FS, etc) for application devel.


YARR!
}:^)~

Multi-touch Corrupt

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

never been sure i liked the canola interface. to much sparkle for to little flame imo.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

The Dpad is dead. Long live the Dpad.

Oh wait! This just in:

The Stylus is dead. Long live the Stylus.

Palm and Nokia have finally figured out what Apple has been trying to tell them from their Newton experience. Sheep sh*t. And no, don't bother telling the guys and girls over at Pandora, 'cause I might need one.

FTW

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't that one of the big appeals that Maemo and the tablets have always had; the only difference was anything that was GNOME/GTK, instead of now anything that's QT, so I don't really see how this a "Game changing" development or is going to make native app building any better or worse in theory... I haven't used both extensively, but the impression I get is that QT is much more mature and broad than GTK, but that really doesn't change the fact that both provide the idea of "you can develop natively regardless of your IS devel environment and port anywhere else with a re-compile"; after all, a huge chunk of the apps we have on the tablets right now are simply native Linux apps that have been recompiled for ARM using the Maemo SDK...
That aside, I'm still very much looking forward to the next device and software, and I'm sure there are lots of great changes that are happening, but I don't see your point of QT suddenly changing everything in terms of development... maybe in the long term, but based on the way Nokia treats things I can still imagine lots of odd and unexpected roadblocks to be crossed before we really start to see any major benefits to development processes; I'd argue that things like a well rounded Python package have had a MUCH larger impact on the availability of apps and features than anything else at the moment (and I'm not a big Python fan, but the point remains)

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

the great thing about a good finger friendly interface is that it is extremely usable with a stylus as well :)

Finger friendly though is a lot more than just making UI elements bigger.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

as i like to say:

finger > stylus > mouse

anything that can be done with a finger can be done with a stylus or mouse, but the other way is not always working.

just look at all the webpages and stuff that have mouseover events. how do you trigger stuff like that with a stylus or finger?!

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Zoom first? :)

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Well, graphics tablets respond to differing levels of pressure (to change the weight of the line, for example). So light touch=mouseover, firm pressure=click.

I'm pretty sure the current NIT screen is also pressure sensitive.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

like i didnt have enough trouble getting it to register a continual pressure when dragging things around as it is (i keep getting double or even triple-taps when i drag or do long-taps).

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

yes, the are pressure sensitive and that also makes them too sensitive.

you could not reproduce a hover by looking only at a certain precise maximum pressure limit.

mouse over is impractical in every way shape and form.
we have a warping pointer that simply reappears only when needed.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Oh, so the burden's on me now to figure out where to store the stylus. Great. Should I just stash it with the now-most-likely-extinct half-screen keyboard? :) I put serious miles on my n800 before I bought an n810, only to find out that I was still right about what's wrong with it. But maybe now is as good a time as any to give my impressions in relation to each other:

What's Better about the n810:

• screen (it's perfect)
• screen touch sensitivity (artful)
• stand and its gradations (right on)
• fullscreen button placement (they did their homework)
• +/- button placement (good enough for my remapping of page-up and page-down)
• stylus (smaller, lighter)
• speaker quality and placement (genius)
• don't quote me on this because I don't know if they're the same or different, but the WiFi chip seems way more robust

Except for the looseness I'm now experiencing between the keyboard and the screen, the n810 is an exceptional refinement of the n800. Truly, truly excellent. I'm happily surprised.

What's Worse about the n810:

• It has an anchor/keyboard I rarely drop or use
• The dpad would suck no matter where you put it. The perimeter-button feel is all wrong.
• As if the dpad wasn't enough, why the f*ck did the menu key have to go inside?
• Density. The n810 is smaller and heavier than the n800. Thus, it's more dense. This causes more fatigue and I'll stop there...

Things I didn't mention 'cause they're of little concern or difference to me at the moment:

• SD slots (a 4GB partition is still unused on my 8GB micro)
• camera (along with their drivers, they both suck)
• USB jack (whatever, hope I don't lose the cable)
• light sensor (cool, but maybe could use a better algorithm)
• battery (thinner is sometimes better?)

Anyway, besides the obvious processor improvement, it seems that Nokia is running away from me and into the arms of the trendy. My kid doesn't even finger paint any more, why the f*ck should I?

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

I've been saying this all along :)
I could not do half the stuff I do with my stylus using just my finger.
I like easy to use things but certainly precision has its extremely well deserved place.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Yes, I imagine this would mess you up pretty good. Are we confused or is this really where things are going? Or both? Do people in Finland have pointy, oilless fingers. If so, can someone send me a picture. Maybe I'd be willing to sacrifice my right, middle finger to have these characteristics; it usually only gets me in to trouble anyway.

<Megaphone>Hey Nokia, it's a beautiful 800x480 screen. It's a bit more precise than my oily, corn-fed fingers can handle.</Megaphone>

<Dr. Eevil>Throw me a frickin' bone here, people.</Dr. Eevil>

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

I also seem to be in the minority when it comes to stylus use, I much prefer using the stylus to browse the web, text links are ALWAYS easier to hit with a stylus, plus the art programs on maemo are pretty fun. There is simply times when the accuracy of a stylus is good. I do like finger usage for some purposes and I definitely like a big hardware keyboard like on the N810.
The great thing about the N810 is its versatility which sets it apart from devices like the iphone and I hope that is still pushed as a good thing as the platform matures. The pencil and paper paradigm is still a very useful idea, something like liqbase proves this.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Yeah, I've decided I have to somehow replace the default stylus text input and fix my screen real estate usage. Does anyone here use two styli simultaneously? I didn't think so. So why then are we using a virtual typewriter keyboard? And don't get me started on the space hogging space bar; I'm also guessing no one here has opposable styli. This relic takes up 1/3 of the screen. Just give me something customizable that's keypad/dictionary-based in the bottom-right corner. But regardless, the last thing I need is a fullscreen thumb keyboard.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

What a load of ****.

Have a stylus-driven option and a finger-driven option.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Well, you could try QwikScript. Somewhat steep learning curve, but it does take up less real estate.

(I don't agree on your anti-Qwerty rant -- for me, it's where I expect the keys to be, regardless of its inherent faults -- but I'm as unhappy as you about the plan to sacrifice the stylus keyboard and have just that awful screen-obliterating thumb keyboard.)

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Thanks, I'll take a look. What I was alluding to was a T9++ type thing. No learning curve.

Yes, I didn't mean to leap away from qwerty like that. I'm right handed and I'm coming in to tap from the bottom right corner, so imagine a kind of right angle qwerty with f and g close to the bottom right. I like landscape mode and I like to code on the tablet. So, one nice unobstructed column from top to bottom would help with visibility. Having a keyboard pop up and down is a pain in the ***.

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

Agreed.

Most of this wont matter as voice recognition becomes smarter and smaller. :D

What has alway gone against the use of a stylus for me is the need of a second thing in order to accomplish the first thing... Now where did that dang stylus go, LoL.

That concept is as archaic as the need for a can or bottle opener in order to enjoy a six pack of your favorite ice cold beverage on a warm summer day :)

If in fact there will be no more mini keyboard, this sounds like one could easily be the first major, user developed add-on.

The N800 didn't become truly useful for me until I discovered user developed alternatives to the task navigators like Upir's Command Navigator and then fiferboy's Personal Menu. These and Personal Launcher have definitely made life easier.

It is also when I discovered that the NIT's value to me wasn't so much as a data input device as it was a data monitoring device. One that could be easily switched between many different sources.

Edit: Sorry daperl I started my post before your response was posted. ... and it took me that dang long on a dang full sized keyboard :eek: :D

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

There's two parts to UI usability: input and output. For me output usability (eg how much you can see without having to scroll etc) peaked at Bora and has been going downhill since. I put up with it because the underlying system keeps getting better, but really, why all this hostility towards the stylus? I have opposable thumbs and know how to use them!

Re: Kate Alhola's Maemo Presentation
 

The whole usability thing would deserve a thread of it's own (yet again), Kate Alhola's Maemo presentation doesn't deserve to get overlooked by all ths stylus vs. finger noise. ;)

Having said that and knowing nobody will care, anyway:
Thanks, lma, for the nice phrasing of "input and output usability". I believe you put into words what many of us feel but couldn't easily express.

I had a discussion recently after the Maemo/Android/Openmoko-presentation I gave; I talked to someone who once owned an iPhone and sold it because of its touchscreen-only UI in favor of some S60 device I can't remember.

We didn't agree on much, but we did agree on the point that the whole concept of a touchscreen as an input device for mobile use is wrong. Mobile use would require haptic feedback and one-finger-use, something a D-pad and a small numeric keyboard with T9 can provide very well, but touchscreens and full QUERTY-keyboards can't.
We both thought of the touchscreen as an ersatz mouse, something you build into a device for situations when a mouse would be adequate, but isn't feasible. A compromise we have to use because we lack a better technology. Also, we found that the use cases that make you want to use a pointing device (mouse/keypad/touchscreen) rather than a plain D-pad are not mobile use cases. You don't surf, chat, work on a spreadsheet while you walk. You may answer a call or maybe even type a short text message. But everything else you do while you sit and have the device in front of you, on a table, on your lap, whereever. So the N8x0 isn't a mobile device in terms of mobile use. It's a mobile device in terms of "carry around, then use when you're no longer moving".

Given this, I think we needn't expect a(ny) touch screen UI to be generally suitable for mobile use (one finger, large UI elements), we should be brave and make the most of it in terms of input and output usability... and therefore use... a stylus. (The one and only valid point against the stylus is that it's not ideal for mobile use.)