Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

Someone already specifically said that the task switcher wasn't present.

What I keep thinking (with no evidence to back it up) is about the way Android does notifications. You have the standard info bar at the top of the screen, that pretty much every phone UI has. But with android, you can drag it down like a "pull down" sort screen. When you have notifications in the status bar, these become list entries in this now visible window, so you know the details behind the status icons.

You could also do something similar for a task switcher. Dragging down the status bar could give you a list of running applications that you could switch to, kill, etc.

But that's just what keeps going through my head when they talk about a new way to do task switching.

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

That'd probably be the only way you couldn't tell easily how small the screen is compared to the n800. For example, my cousin's iPhone screen size looks similar to my tablet (especially when I'm not fullscreened and you can see how icons eat up space). But if he launches Youtube (an app that doesn't up the entire screen) or I go into full screen I can clearly see the difference in screen size. But for iPhone apps that use the entire screen there's no noticable difference (at least that one can easily see).

The problem with a 3.5 inch screen is that if the UI is still going be like Diablo (with the icons on the side and icons at the top) then a 3.5 screen will easily show the smaller real estate compared to the n800. But if the UI hides way like the iPhone then the smaller screen size won't be an issue.

Obviously since the device isn't finished yet you can't answer this question. But one problem with the n800 and n810 is the recessed screen (how the frame/case of the device is on top of the screen kinda). Which makes it hard to hit things like the X button in the upper right hand corner with fingers. I wonder if the next device will fix this. It also makes scrollsbars tough to use at times (even with a wider scrollbar theme).

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

It can be answered :) If you take a look at the Fremantle screenshots and vidcasts you will see that there is now a single status bar on top (a bit more prominent than the current one) and no sidebar.

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

I guess where you also see the difference is web broswing.

The N800/810 provides a nice web browsing experince because at the given resolution and screen size you can still hold the device at comfortable reading distance. And contrary to other web enabled, mobile devices like the iPhone you don't need much zooming in/out or horizontal scrolling when surfing the web.

Can sombody who got his hands on the Development Device comment on the web browsing experience? Were websites still easily readable when using the default font size / 100% zoom?

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

Ah that won't be as bad then. Though I'd still prefer a hideaway option. Not sure if the iPhone has a status bar stuck on the top permenantly (haven't played with his iPhone in a while).

Though I meant the unanswered question for the following question. Whether the screen is still recessed behind faceplates and what not.

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

we were looking at a different browser, and when I went to liqbase.net I could read everything fine without messing with anything and it loaded quickly etc.
(liqbase is such a simple site with no complex stuff and baseline html)

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

...and video playback.

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

From my point of view this is (at least) being addressed in the SDK; the hildon stuff (gtk/Qt touch enhancements) is adding finger-scrolling to use the entire window as a scroll surface.
The xterm switched from finger-scroll to text-select; gtk has a pannablearea widget and I wrote an extension to Qt to make ordinary scrollareas gain fingerability.

Additionally there's a lot of real-estate gained by making the scrollbars indicators rather than functional bars.

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

Readability of the default fonts in the web browser is one of those seemingly simple questions that isn't all that simple to answer. I will start by saying that is one of the places where fonts were a bit small for my taste, but I'm not sure it's that big of a deal. For one thing it looks like the font being used was different than the current one. I'm thinking it might just be a placeholder. It also seemed like fennec was attempting to do some fancy "fit page to screen" thing which seemed to be shrinking images/fonts at different points. Also, keep in mind that if the screen DPI is set correctly by the X Server a 12pt font will be exactly the same size on your desktop, laptop, N800 and N900. That being said, I'm hoping there are plenty of options for selecting font sizes. :)

-John

Re: Some hands on time with Nokia's Maemo 5 Development Device
 

Here's a bit of a weird question:

If I understand correctly the N900 is bezel free (hoorah). Were there any indications that the resistive input ended at the edges of the screen, or indications that it extended beyond the edges?

The pre uses off screen touchability for task selection. If this is the case with this device interesting things with touch-input could be accomplished.


YARR!
}:^)~
Moun Cappita'