MeeGo Handset UX style guide unveiled early (and now hidden)

"Bananas and pears", that was the oddly chosen name for a wiki document on meego.com describing the "Handset UX" user interface guidelines. These groundrules for the MeeGo system, and third party applications, were uncovered by Reggie Suplido before the wiki page was deleted. However, things of interest on the Internet never stay hidden for long, so it's still available. From the introduction, In your editor’s opinion, the document seems to describe a nice mix of existing Maemo 5 features (top-left button, menus from the title) with new enrichments to improve the general flow. The principles about interaction speed and flow will be just that - principles, however hopefully redeveloping the stack from the ground up, and having complete control over Qt, will mean a much more fluid UI than has been achieved on the N900 to date.

The link below goes to the original Talk discussion thread, which now links to various mirrors, including Google Cache and Engadget.


Road to MeeGo 1.1

Quim Gil has pointed to the roadmap and timeline for release planning purposes of MeeGo 1.1, due in October. According to the document, marketing will receive the release the week commencing 14th October; with general availability (GA) the following week: 21st October.

Of course the realities of software development mean that plans are always subject to change, but it seems a weekly agile approach is being followed which fixes time and quality, but instead varies features.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • MeeGo Handset UX style guide unveiled early (and now hidden)
   • Road to MeeGo 1.1
2. Applications
   • Augmented reality on N900
3. Development
   • Nokia opening Ovi Store up to individuals rather than just VAT-registered companies?
   • MeeGo open requirements process
   • Hosting Maemo and MeeGo build systems together
   • MeeGo developer "buddy" system proposed
   • PyMaemo's guide to packaging Python applications without Scratchbox
4. Devices
   • Ultimate MeeGo Dictionary
   • PR1.2 hildon-desktop has random CPU eating bug when using menu sub-sections
   • N8x0 3D accelerator running OpenGL ES tests
5. Announcements
   • Ansel-A digital darkroom for N900
   • FastSMS: portrait, T9 SMS writing
   • rotatedaemon gives 360 degree rotation
   • ...and 4 more