Handful-

Excellent work. This continues to be a leading UI framework for the Maemo platform.

In watching the video, I had some thought about the menu UI. Using the grids is a great enhancement to the previous methods of interface. However, once you are in a sub-menu (2nd level), the UI goes back to "arrow" interface mode again--the icons on the left and right of the screen go to the next and previous sub-menu (2nd level). This is certainly better than simple arrows, since it give the user information about which menu will display next.
But...I wonder if you can make it even better. Instead of two icons (left and right), can you make a smaller grid or maybe a column of the icons from the top-level menu? I can imagine a few ways this could work:
1) "Parting the Red sea" method: The top-level menu icons get shrunk and split to two columns on the left and right of the screen, with the sub-menu displayed at full size in the middle.
2) One-side/"dock" method: The top-level menu icons get shrunk and positioned on one side (or along the bottom, like a dock)
This technique would allow the user to get directly to the menu they wish, rather than (potentially) having to click the left/right icons multiple times.

Another idea would be to have a "home" type button on all menu screens, which would jump the user back to the top-level menu, instead of having to press "Back" multiple times. (Yes, this idea is similar to the iPhone "home" button, but it would a UI-button rather than a hardware button)

I must admit that I do not yet own a N800/N810 (though my birthday is coming, so I think that will change! ), so I do not know if these ideas are practical given the small constraints. Obviously, the more icons in a given menu, the smaller the shrunken versions would have to be in the lower-level menu. But it seemed like most menus would have a maximum of 6 icons in the grid, judging from your prototypes.

Hi Slip : (thanks for the suggestion )

I will try to explain the whys and answer some of the points =)

1. Actually you can always hit "back" on any submenu to go to first part.
2. You also can hit home (in the hardware menu - the menu button does this work)
3. you can also hold the back button (hardware or software)

***the only problem that appears here is that in the N810 nokia placed the menu button on the keyboard ( ) and I really don't wanna mess with the maemo home button. So I really don't know what to do with it.

And I need to agree not only with you but with something clear : a home button is something global, and should be hardware. why? imagine you.. needing to reserve a good space ( touchable, easy, and with no danger around) to home in EVERY screen.
yes, we did that and it sucket a lot on first one. Thats why there's no visible home.


About the "arrow mode back" It's actually just a short cut, if you by mistake touched the wrong ball (it will be side ways) you can just touch the correct one without needing to touch back. So we do not intend to make people actually cross the whole interface using it. it's more like
"spreading wings" menu but still gives you access to the neighborhood items =)

If this becomes a failure : / we can remove it with no problem


how the whole thing works :

We wanted flexibility, if not for canola for the menu component it self. So theres 1 menu with 2 levels righ? The main menu and sub menu.

The main menu can scale up to 12 items. the inner menu can scale up to 10 items. This would give us a whooping 120 item ready menu. WE ARE NOT GOING TO USE IT. but this flexibility is really nice to have (if we need to reuse the component in any other of all our projects)

So, the ideas is to have like page with sub pages, and you just need to hit back if you don't want that.

You approach, yes great indeed but will not scale too much for more items, and worst if you reduce to anything smaller than 50px square is already a error magneto. We want precision in most of the screens, so after a lot of testing we found the best relation between size x successful hits.

So take a look in the seconf video to see a 12 icon screen =) but

as you said :

This is exactly the point : you can go home, and then choose a category (main menu) and your application. We could have killed the second level menu and placed list but we felt that the 2 level could be better this time, and provide a cleaner entry point.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not =) but you will be able to use it and make your decision! I hope you like it, and I can guarantee : we did so much menus this time... =) but we really don't want to collide with any screen now and in the future, so this approach seems nowadays quite nice for our problems.

I will try to find some of the sketches of the menus like you said (I think the dock version we did) but not the "Parting RED sea" good naming on that =)

Thanks for the suggestion, I think we are really happy to see you guys contributing before the thing comes out (actually it was almost made on top of feedback).

BR

As requested by Gustavo (lol) Just to make sure that I don't promise here something that will not be delivery on december =)

Canola will be the simple version (with the old version + configuration inside canola) that's it! everything else is a pluy! eheheheh

That's it Gustavo : p

AD2P Support and AVRCP Support Please...

Andre did yesterday a quick test hack to integrate the iphone like keyboard with the new ecore input method framework of EFL into Canola 2.0, check it out here:
http://andrunko.blogspot.com/2007/11...on-canola.html

Wow. I so want that keyboard.

Ah, nice! N800 owners would like that keyboard!

So is there 3d acceleration on the n800/n810 and will it be ever used??

No, thanks. Rather the original.

Why is that?