Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Well, you could specify that it's a free layout per orientation, but the same contents for each of the pages. So that if your weather is on the first page, it is there on both orientations: it could just be in a different position in portrait and in landscape.

And yes, I agree and I think we all agree that ... I hope that it doesn't feel that we would be disputing that there wouldn't be uses to portrait mode, that it wouldn't be a good feature to have. One hand usage etc. are all fair and true. So no need to convince anyone that it wouldn't be useful. It would be useful.

... Remember, this is not step 5. ;)

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

I can see ragnar's points, and I think what he proposes would be fine. The instructions for enabling portrait mode for community members should be clear enough for non-developers to follow (like myself) with a boldfaced note that some features will not be as smooth as in landscape mode (or some features may be downright broken).

I *do* think, however, that we *can* find solutions to those problems and eventually push it as an update for "normal" users. It just might take a little time.

I disagree with johnkzin that an unfinished portrait mode should be enabled by default for "normal" users. Apple, with their iPhones/iPod Touch devices, follows the logic that giving "normal" users access to only *fully* developed features makes for a better "experience" overall. I know the people in this forum are quite different than the iPhone/iPod Touch market, but believe me, most of the people owning those device love them a lot. Why else would they pay ridiculous fees to mobile contractors to keep the devices?

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Here are three scenarios:
1. A contact widget with the photo of the contact and his status. - you could just rotate that 90 degrees, no problem here.
2. A widget that spans the whole width in landscape like mauku - shrink it to fit the size in portrait mode, it's still useful because you could see if there is a new message, but if you want to read it you'll have to do that in landscape
3. Long widgets that don't have text in them - like OMWeather it could reorient itself automatically with five icons in a row or in a colon.

You could give rotation posibility to the widgets and leave it to the developers how they'd look like in portrait and landscape modes. They could transform in something different. Like for example the twitter widget could display the whole tweet in landscape mode or just the number of new tweets in portrait mode.

I also like the idea to be able to place the widgets in different positions in landscape/portrait modes. No need for a new wallpaper imho.

In the Dashboard the apps that have portrait mode could reorient themselves automatically.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

I've been thinking about the widgets on desktop problem myself over the days since I saw the first videos, and in my mind have come to similar solutions as ragnar and elimoon8. That is, the user could move widgets to separate positions on portrait and landscape mode, and those positions would be remembered once set.

I propose that resizable widgets should allow the user to resize them separately in the two orientations (so if I resized it in one orientation, it would not affect the other orientation). That way you could have a one-line very wide widget in landscape mode that the user could chose to resize to a less wide two-line widget in portrait.

There might be a problem with non-resizable widgets which are wider in landscape mode than 480px. Maybe it should be a style guideline that no widget can force a minimum width greater than 480px.

I would suggest by default when you first rotate, individual widgets rotate around a point that makes sense, probably their mid-point, rather than falling to the bottom of the screen or similar. Maybe the widgets could also auto-resize so that at least all four corners are reachable to allow resizing. That would create a good first estimation, but then the user could tweak their position and size to suit the new orientation. Just to repeat to make clear, the positions and sizes would be remembered per widget separately for portrait and landscape. There could be some fancy transition eye candy if desired between the two states, so that the eye doesn't lose sight of the widget one is interested in when rotating.

As ragnar says, it's probably best to keep widgets on the same page in both orientations. Otherwise you might be looking at, say, a scrolling RSS widget, change orientation then find it disappears because it's not present on that page in the other orientation. For the same reason, I don't think the user should be allowed to hide widgets in one orientation vs the other, even if they cannot find an optimum position for the widget in both orientations, as that would later cause confusion, I'm sure.

Regarding the desktop wallpaper, I think by default just use the same wallpaper, but allow the user to use different wallpapers for the two orientations if they wish. That way, if they had text on a wallpaper (which would normally appear sideways on the other orientation), the user could choose different wallpaper that made sense in the other orientation.

In my mind, I think I would prefer to still swipe left and right to reach different pages in portrait mode (rather than up and down as suggested above), although without actually trying with a device I'm not 100% sure.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Falling to the bottom of the screen sounds like a chore.

Would it be hard to simply rotate the icons and text, without rotating the widgets? So there's no need of widget resize\replacement\movements. They all stay where they are, except the text and icons are rotated 90'.

This can be used as temporary measure until the rest of the system is ready to adopt more portrait-friendly usecases.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

for me would be enough if Nokia added to portrait mode even only sms(read, write)...and calculator.. but hey, anything extra is welcome as long as it works

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

maybe a part of reply inhere :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhrGxyVfEZ0

I think it's interesting to see it

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

I like the touch focus and the virtual fish :D And that are some fast typing thumbs ;)

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

lol... Virtual fish? Where the frak did that come from?

}:^D~

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Elimoon8, Ragnar, Your ideas for the widget rotate are simply great and awesome.

I realy like thath.

For the background, rather than using a default 3200x480 ((800x4)x480), why not use a 3200x800 ((800x4)x800?

And for widgets too wide, we could make like for software: 2 UI

Right, remains there any problem finding a solution?