Weird request, now that we have this great Nokias 770 and N800 with their awsome screens in hi-res and landscape mode, but thats the way it goes:

Is there a program or utility to rotate the screen display of the N800 ?

I am looking for something to be able to view the screen in portrait mode as it may be more appropriate for the application we are currently developing and working with. This is because the application's use is far more comfortable if holding the Nokias for viewing in portrait mode (i.e. "vertical). This is a warehouse management application in case you are wondering.

Thanks in advance for your help and comments.

Not currently possible in the firmware - it's been discussed in the development newsgroup many times (along with 180 degree rotation so the 770/N800 can better suit lefties). The Nokia responses so far have been to say "not enough push" and to also suggest that lefties are better off with a device designed for right handers (you gotta love Nokia replies like that - someone should compile a list of Nokia-isms in future!)

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...rs/13249#13249

I think 180 degree rotation is on the list of things to be done but has a very low priority. 90 degree rotation may be an issue as apparently some apps are hardcoded to expect a 800x480 display.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...rs/18363#18363

Doesn't FBReader display books in portrait mode (my memory is hazy) - if so, perhaps you can achieve what you are looking for at the application level? Not sure if menus will work properly though - they'll probably only work in "Landscape" mode.

Yes, FBReader has an option to rotate screen. It does that by selection that option on the : FBReader -> View -> Rotate Screen menu of the application itself.

What I'd like is to do exactly the same thing, but on a "control panel" level kind of thing. Or, at least at the browser level since our application actually is web based.

Maybe someone familiar with the FBReader code can provide us with some comments on how it is done there.

As always, thanks

I think the portrait display is a cool feature, especially when you see some of the similar hand-held device can do it by just rotating the device. I wish we can play a video clip/view a picture/read e-book/.... in both portrait mode and landscape mode easily.

James Chao

I think these "similar devices" had a little more high quality
pre-production industrial design work on them ...

Hah!

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WinCE handheld devices have a "rotate screen" utility, either included or hacked. It's true that some of the apps don't like it, but that's an app problem, not a system problem. Nokia would only have to fix the desktop and a few of the key system applications (like File Manager) to provide a working rotate function.

The UI design work to support portrait mode universally wouldn't exactly be trivial. Most view contents are designed so that they have the 720-800 pixel width available for them, they would not scale elegantly to 400-480 pixels, at all. I would even call it a rather massive effort to do universally. And when thinking about the N810 having the keyboard where the keyboard is, typing anything would have to rotate back to landscape mode. And since there is no sensor to detect this, the switching would need to be done manually all the time...

Design decisions like these make it difficult to compete with Apple I think. Users will expect such a feature in a UI.

Not that I'm a programmer or anything, but if the program will be web and browser based why not code it to be vertically oriented. When held "normal" the text would be written top to bottom with a 90 degree rotation. Why would the whole underlying OS need to be rotated and not just the program?