Notices

Canola2 really needs maemoscrobbler support.

Hyping up was not a good idea.I tried the app and the usability seems ok at a first glance. At least better than UKMP and Kagu. I don't like the visual design though. The icons are too small and it all seems a bit vague/bland. Also I don't like the fulscreen-by-default behaviour. An app should blend in with the OS in my opinion.

One of the thoughts I've had is that you have to thumb all the way backwards through all the steps you took to exit the app.

Of course that prevents accidentally closing it too.

This is something I find irksome too, having to back up to the first screen. This is the same in Kagu as well.

Maybe there should be a way to implement this without an accidental close button either. Me wants the best of both waorlds I guess

Hello

"Canola2 really needs maemoscrobbler support."
This is on our list. Actually we are "polishing" the plugin support and this is one of the requirements ( to signal when music starts, ends, 10 sec played etc)

"ne of the thoughts I've had is that you have to thumb all the way backwards through all the steps you took to exit the app.
"
You can actually hold back a little bit and go straight to home. We were going to place a home button on all the screens, but we decided to go with a hard button (menu) and the hold back options for that. The problem came when the n810 was announced : the menu button is hidden on the keyboard slide. Damn, this caught me.


"I don't like the visual design though. The icons are too small and it all seems a bit vague/bland. "

Well, this would lead us in design discussion =) but not a problem, it's impossible to match everyone's expectations. I think a theme could solve this. But I really don't think the icons are that small, also don't think at all the look vague oor bland, they have pretty clear meaning and strong features (color x illustration) to build on. The grey theme has more shapes and can go better to those who like a gestalt approach of contours and shapes, but I really disagree with the vague and bland. Apart of all of that (size) is there because we are looking forward do extensibility not the opposite.

"Also I don't like the fulscreen-by-default behaviour. An app should blend in with the OS in my opinion."

I get your point, and actually is the same I have been listening from ZeroJay and Others, and now that I understand why that, I can only say :
blend with OS? sorry, this is the default media player. 20px white board around the application area? borders? no thanks.

That's exactly why we built canola on a different design to give users a media center like experience. Like you have when you start your windows media center or your front-row. It's really not supposed to blend with windows's regular toolkit or even cocoas.

So I think this clarifies a little bit more.

In my vision we have the following:
1) we are aware of a lot of issues and working hard to fix them. most will be fixed and we also plan more features to improve the overall experience.
2) we are also aware of what we cannot do: While canola2 was tested with the option to be minimized, 75% os all the screens were ok, but quite awkward, this is not our goal. We will also not try to reach everyone, because this is just impossible. We will keep trying to simplify things, support what we can support and the most important: keep listening to those who want to share their opinions and improve the software.

Everyone: I don't care how many posts Suryavanshi has, everyone is entitled to their opinion and I personally don't care much for elitism / whose genitalia is longer.

Suryavanshi: I think you're a zealot based on your comments but I'll let most of that go. I've been running Ubuntu for a year now and part of that is because of the restricted closed source driver for my Nvidia card and my DLink WiFi card. Otherwise I'd be sitting at a command prompt offline.

I think you picked an interesting project to lose your marbles over. Since Canola was first announced here Marcelo & team have been the nicest most helpful hardworking people I've ever seen here. (Sorry to the rest of you ingrates ). I personally don't care whether it's opensource or not; not everybody wants to turn their project into a democracy chock full of people with more opinions than answers. If you have privacy concerns, then you can simply opt not to run it.

I don't know if a Gantt chart would satisfy you, but I've been keeping one eye on the Canola project since before v1 was released and these guys are doing a LOT given the deadlines they have. As Marcelo said, these aren't self imposed, a fact which might have escaped you.

As far as the design itself, there are a lot of plain Jane media players available for the 770. This one was supposed to spice things up. If I'm listening to music at my desk I use the built in media player. If I'm in a car or in transit, I'll use Canola. Depends on what I feel like. The "hype" wasn't because of the INdT team, it was from users who have a different opinion than you; they like it. A lot. Canola might just be the Ron Paul of the tablet world to them.

I hope I've taken a somewhat different approach in the above and rather than attack you, merely offered my opinions (and hopefully shot down lots of yours.)

The hell it isn't Canola's fault! THEY made the decision to use a Nokia-operated repository without TESTING it first. Or at least checking the URL spelling!
THEY made the decision to NOT use their own repository. I know they have/had at least one in the past. It worked well enough for some of their experimental non-Canola stuff.
I'm sick of folks not manning up and accepting the blame for fcuking something up!
Nokia and Canola both get EQUAL blame, period.

"... The hell it isn't Canola's fault! THEY made the decision to use a Nokia-operated repository without TESTING it first. Or at least checking the URL spelling!
THEY made the decision to NOT use their own repository. I know they have/had at least one in the past. It worked well enough for some of their experimental non-Canola stuff.
I'm sick of folks not manning up and accepting the blame for fcuking something up!
Nokia and Canola both get EQUAL blame, period."

Hei iball, we did get the blame, we said again (and I even made a joke about our bad karma) the thing that I wanted to explain was:

1. The team itself new about it, we tested a lot but we did find out the problem (actually in the last couple of hours) you right about that
But....
2. It's is not us that choose where it will go. Managers decided that for the first time canola was going to tableteer (almost like a certified app) and it was demanded that it should be on official repositories.

We (employees) warned but we don dictate the rules. therefore there's a slightly difference I would make to the comment, but in the end we indeed have a slice of the blame.

Now what? Lesson learned? I made a full report, including a comparison of visits in the website x emails saying "I couldn't install" and addded a lot of you guys comments here to show them that we really missed out a lot with that move. The thing is people believed it was going to be a matter of hours to be ready again, but it wasnt.

So, following our tradition to be very open, with the report, I got what the dev team wanted, when we are ready, or even a update is ready we will have our own repository and don't even matter if the official ones are in great shape.

We saw pretty clearly, that don't matter who owns the server, if a user clicks on our website and gets a file corrupted, it's our fault. And it's bad for us not for the repository.

It sucks, but it happened again (last time was dependencies madness).

Marcelo

About the problem of exiting, and the solution that you mentioned - about holding the back button down for a longer time (2 secs) - which takes you back to home screen direct, and one more back will quit app - it actually works for me on my N810 also.

I didnt know of this "hidden" feature and this actually satisfies me pretty well. Rather than have one more button which will add clutter to the screen, this works for me.
Only if this feature is somehow well advertised - maybe a popup message when an user presses back button to inform of this long press feature, more people will discover it and use it to good effect.

I am increasingly finding the well thought out UI design of Canola very pleasing.
Great job Canola Team.

Added a comment to the bug for keyboard craziness.

There is no obvious way to 'iconize' canola2 and use other apps while playing music.
If you exit to the menu using the hardware menu key, the keyboard is disabled in all other apps.

There are other anomalies as well, but that is a killer.

So, how do you listen to Canola2 on an N810 while doing something else, like an xterm?

Thanks!