[Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Most of you have seen this on XpressMusic devices running Symbian S60V5, and I have to admit, it's cool to have a way to quickly access some apps.

Well, there's an always-on proximity sensor on the N900 (yes, it's always on, whether in use, or not), so why not put it to use ;)

http://i56.tinypic.com/1547v9x.jpg

It's activated by holding the proximity sensor for 1.2s, and of course, this is configurable, just edit /home/user/.config/MohammadAG/mediabar (hey, it's not my fault QSettings uses "Organisation names" as the config directory :p)

(V0.3) Hold the mediaplayer icon to show mediaplayer controls:
http://i56.tinypic.com/2mqqlwp.jpg

Might be more of a proof of concept for now, as the icons can't be changed, for now. Patches of course welcome :)

Thanks to Venemo for getting Qt Mobility code in it, however, I have went back to using proximityd and made Qt Mobility code available for non Maemo 5 devices, the reason for this is because QtM Sensors uses 7-17% of the CPU and keeps it at 500MHz, eating battery life.
Anyway, this should be very light on the battery, as the proximity is always active.

Thanks to nicolai for the Qt MAFW wrapper (that's also being used in the FOSS mediaplayer).

Package name is MediaBar (mediabar for apt-get)
Source on gitorious: http://gitorious.org/mediabar/mediabar

Due to the nature of an unpatched hildon-desktop, this will not work in the Task manager and the task launcher and hildon-desktop will just capture the click itself.

Enjoy :)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

This is something I was really missing (I had a Nokia 5800XM, great phone :cool:), thank you!

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

if nokia had someone like you.....

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

how do I change shortcuts?

also we need more communication apps, we had enough customisation on the phone already!

but anyways thanks. but please ppl concentrate on applications for communication and connecting to people and friends better

and thats what N900 lacks of!

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

I already mentioned that it's v0.1 and the icons are all hardocded, it's open source though, you can easily change the icons and compile it.

As for communication, although we might not be talking about the same thing, we have something in mind for the coming months.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

People will scratch an itch. Perhaps you could make them aware of an itch they didn't know they had by describing something (in a different thread) concrete and achievable which meets these "communiction and connecting" requirements you have.

Since it's a phone, has IM/SMS & email, I don't have much problem contacting anyone in the world who I want to speak to ;-)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Now that's not fair - dangling the bait then pulling it away!:cool:

Let the speculum begin! (sorry, speculation)

Look forward to trying this out later - thanks once again.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Way (way!) too early to start talking about it :p

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

This is really cool, thanks! :)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Oh and I forgot to mention something, there's a Qt class in there that sends a signal when the screen's locked and has a boolean that returns true if the screen's locked, might be useful for other Qt devs out there (since this isn't available from Qt Mobility for some reason...)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

the coolest thing to have here would be controls for the media player and maybe even some album art!.. just sayin'. hahah :P still, awesomely useful cheers!

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Was thinking of a hold mediaplayer icon to display controls tbh :)
Still looking at ways to implement it though.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

isn't it possible an equalizer in media player?? it lacks more bass

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

What does this have to do with the mediaplayer, did you even read the first post? :s

And since I'm posting, I guess I'll post this too :P
http://i53.tinypic.com/set6on.jpg

Sending to repos soon.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

i posted it here because i thaught only you can do this. :)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

It's not really related to the post though, maybe when the first release of the open source mediaplayer is out, I'll have a requests page ;)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

nice and useful application.
thanks for your hard work i really appreciate what you're doing for this community

edit:
one suggestion:
i know its kind of hard to trigger by accident but if i do it would be cool if it behaves like the rest of the ui and closes when i click somewhere else. Or would it be possible to add an auto-hide option? so when it opens and in 2 seconds nothing is selected it closes automatically?

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

hmm. i cant seem to get it to work.

i installed via apt-get install mediabar.


it installed fine, but when i cover my sensor, nothing happens.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Luv the media control idea! This a fantastic bit of work on your part. I would just like to say " Thanks for everything you have done so far"

On a side note tho, I had a wee look and its not hard to change the icons ;) Thanks again for this! Its just great

Kind regards Qosmio

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Oh I forgot about the borders on those buttons, there's alphathemefix for hildon-theme-alpha so it gets rid of the borders, but that's it :/
You could edit the png for the theme in /etc/hildon/theme/images to get rid of the borders around the buttons, they kinda ruin the look and aren't really needed :p

Build failed *submits again*

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

I was just looking into that... Thanks again. I do have one question tho! If I reboot/ turn off to change the battery It stops working? also I had to remove "ShortCutd" to get yours to work! any idea?

Kind regards Qosmio

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Hmm, do you have proximity features enabled in shortcutd? (I don't, only got the cam key enabled in it, and it works fine).

There's an upstart script that runs at each start up and should actually load it after a reboot, if not, do start mediabar in a root shell.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

http://i53.tinypic.com/292l6di.png

It all worked perfectly for me, and I've got Shortcutd installed?

Another weird thing is I thought the icons were hardcoded, but it's picking the theme icons? Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining!!

Thanks again MohammadAG, and thank you Q for the shout!

Kind Regards,
D4rKlar

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Yep, I use icons from /usr/share/icons.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

great work !!! :):cool:

MohammadAG please build a download manager for maemo :D

maemo dont have it :(

axel is very bad and in xterm :(

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

It work's really well, but would it be possible for the phone vibrate when the menu appears?

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Fantastic work MohammedAG it is people like you who make this such a great device.

I just wonder if you could make the bar so that the user can select their own apps like the homescreen dockbar? As personnally I would prefer the FM Radio over the Images option as an example. Could you also have a Phone option then you would always be just one click away from the phone keypad?

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Wouldn't that be an annoyance to some? :) (re vibra)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Just the usual keyboard '' click'' would be sufficent?

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

MohammadAG - We salute you. Thanks, this is another great little addition, which really adds to the phone.

Being able to customize the shortcuts would be the cherry on the cake.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Maybe at least make it a option, it would be nice to get some feedback when you "press" the proximity censor like in ShortcutD.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Viewing the browser in portrait causes a slight problem as you can then only view the first two apps. I am not sure if this is possible but it would be better if it didn't show when portrait was selected?

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

I'm not sure how you even got it showing in the browser, it never shows up for me (I'm assuming it's because the browser's window is non-composited in full screen mode).
Rotating to portrait doesn't re-align it, but opening it in portrait mode does, I'll fix that soon ;)

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

If you just hit any of the icons at the bottom of the browser it appears, I wasn't trying to break it. However it is so good i assume you want it to be perfect!

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Meh, is this guy for real.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

This is so cool. It's working in every application I have tested so far. Even the browser is working for me:)

I have found one little bug. When I open the mediabar in a fullscreen application there is a black border unter it

Thanks!:D

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

Is that a poor attempt at a joke? In your original post, the one Jaffa was replying to, you're expressing dismay (read: complaining) in this program's announce thread that MohammadAG's written an application which you have no use for. Not only is that incredibly rude ("Hi, thanks for inviting me to your lovely home. Food's kinda bollocks, isn't it?") but, as Jaffa pointed out, MohammadAG wrote it because he wanted it. He's doing the community a service by releasing it for all and I'm sure the 50 users who've thanked his post agree.

Take his approach and compare it to yours (Oh, BTW, if this forum was a mailing list, your practice of making posts that come one after the other instantly would be heavily looked down upon) when it comes to wanting an itch satisfied.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

This is really cool. Nice one!

I've not installed yet, will give it a try once it's had a few of the bugs ironed out.
I do have one suggestion for you, if you are to make the shortcuts configurable, maybe it could be implemented in a similar way to quick launch's settings.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

It doesn't work for me. I think that it conflicts with Livefocus which is opened also via this sensor. I'll uninstall livefocus and give it another try.

edit:
Livefocus works so I've uninstaled it and rebootd the device but still it doesn't work. Shortcut also has proximity disabled. I'm out of ideas for now.

Re: [Announce] Media bar for Maemo 5 (XpressMusic-esque)
 

yes, they are for real! Meh