iPod user interface audio player
 

How hard would it be to create something along these lines?
http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...to=110&cat=503

Simple. I was thinking of trying it myself: detecting the direction of movement on the rotational part of the screen is fairly straight forward etc.

You could also hook it into a video player and make it the true full-size video, touchscreen iPod that Apple fans have been crying out for: certainly a way of getting the 770 some sales from the fanboys ;-)

Unfortunately, I'm not going to get time to even start it :-(

Well. The ipod has a scroll wheel as the control mechanism because it has no touch screen.

Putting a representation of the physical scroll wheel on a touch screen is a very silly idea, really. You could just use the space to present extra information.

Except the scroll wheel is a wonderful UI (despite the flaws about the rest of the iPod): it gives the user the ability to move through lists efficiently, at varying speeds, in both directions.

For large lists on MP3 players it's definitely the best UI I've tried (and better than the bump up/down buttons on my Archos Gmini which speed up the longer you hold them down, but there's no way of slowing down when you recognise you're getting close)

Cheers,

Andrew

Actually, I think that an all touch screen tablet would be the logical next step. Of course we would like to keep the power button, zoom toggle, and full screen button, but a little extra space would be welcome over the hardware navigation buttons. I have been hoping for an all touch screen mobile device for a very long time, and Nokia is the first to come close.

I think it's about time all these hardware buttons start being emulated through software. The 770 a good transition to this sort of tablet, and I'm hoping Nokia will put a variety of tablet hardware options out there in the next generation of devices.

We have a touch-screen people, there is no reason to waste screen real estate emulating a clunky wheel. An audio player that supported touch-screen gestures would work just as well without loss of precious space.

OK, what gesture would allow the user to scroll through an indeterminately long list at varying speeds, allowing them to slow down when approaching the desired item - possibly quickly reversing if overshooting?

A touchscreen just means the controls can appear/disappear at will; be semi-transparent over video etc :-)

Also, it's worth writing a player like this for no other reason than marketing: a media player which simulates the experience of the nebulous touchscreen iPod would get more press than a touchscreen-optimised media player for the Nokia 770.

I personally find the wheel clunky. Yes it is cute but if you look at it closely it involves constant user hand movement to move through a list.

A better method would be to have a gesture that has no scroll at the center of the screen, and exponential scroll as one moves to the bottom or top of the screen. Much less effort than constantly drawing circles.

Tap the center of the screen, then move your finger/stylus up and down to speed up/slow down vertical nagivation of lists. Reversing the scroll direction is as simple as moving the stylus in the opposite direction past the center of gravity.

The point of gestures is that the controls are never visible. The entire screen is always used for the UI. The 4 'ipod' control buttons could be hotspotted to the 4 corners of the application window.

As for it being a cool marketing gimmick, have the ipod clones not taught us anything? Every clone gets bad press and only gives Apple more fuel for their 'original' product. The first comment one would get from the apple fanboy blogs would be that the 770 unfortunately doesn't have enough flash to compete with any ipod and is just an expensive shuffle.

Innovate, don't imitate. :)

Aflegg: Yes, the scroll wheel is great, if you are forced to go through one item at a time and you have only varying flavours of forward and backward available. But with a touch screen neither of these conditions are valid: you could do even better than the endless zig-zag-zig-zag motion of scrolling a virtual wheel. Much better.

For instance: You could do an alpha slider element (displaying A-Z) on a screen edge to move roughly and then pan a bit to move the page, then tap on the desired item directly. Much faster and more convenient. Or something else. There are tons of options that are far more better than emulating a scroll whell on screen.

"Reversing when overshooting" - that problem arises simply because you are moving an focus with an external scroll wheel. It would be a really disastrous idea to force the user to think "Now, I would need to move my finger about 4 cm or 270 degrees to move the on-screen focus 5 items down". With a touch screen: just tap to move the focus where you want it to go. :)

Now, I'm not saying that as a gesture the scroll rotate wouldn't be useful in some instances, but it's really not the best gesture out there for moving the content even on a rough scale, much less on selecting a precise item.

Finally, I think it would be quite poor marketing to just rip off the ipod interface, especially in a way that is not optimal to a touch screen device. The device has the potential to do better than the ipod, not just to copy it poorly.

Write something like that and Apple will sue your arses, like they did with pPod on pocketpc: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/ipod/...pod-187596.php

And don't think they will leave you alone because you aren't charging money either...

Freeware could escape their reach...
 

Once it is written and on the web there is no stopping it--but the author had best stay anonymous.

What some are missing on this thread is the opportunity to design a new interface using the touchscreen. Who says it has to be a wheel? What might be better (given the sizeable screen of the 770) would be some sort of 3D browser that displayed music by genre. As you moved towards rock, the rock listings would whiz by, just like thumbing the wheel. You would "fly" through your collection and radio buttons would allow you to reorder the 3D browser display.

Apple would call you for licensing rights...

I guess you may be right, but... try guiding me towards a copy of Ppod anywhere... scarce at best. Of course that was a commercial product, and in your defense I can quite easily still locate copies of DVDDecrypter for example :) I still think the iPod is far superior though (I have both). Why make it act like a half arsed version of something when you can buy the real McCoy anyway?

Besides, the pressure from the 'scroll wheel' action probably would just aggrivate the crack of doom on most 770's :p