Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

This is very exciting news.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

I am a bit late to this thread (and I haven't read it all yet), so apologies if the below has already been covered, but just wanted to add my thoughts on the idea of a portrait desktop.


If there is going to be a Portrait desktop, I suspect the best way to implement it would NOT be to rotate the existing landscape desktop (given all the problems you have highlighted above), but rather to have a completely separate Portrait Desktop - ie a 5th Desktop that the user can configure with its own Portrait Wallpaper and set of widgets, located as the user wants in Portrait mode.

This desktop would only be visible when the device is held in Portrait Orientation.

Perhaps we would then need a 6th, 7th & 8th desktop so we could have 4 Panoramic Portrait desktops.

If the user is looking at the "5th" Portrait Desktop and then switches to holding the device Landscape, then the desktop switches to the last used Landscape Desktop.


EDIT: Ok, so I have now read the entire thread and it seems that Elimoon8 hit on the same idea (see here), so my post is another vote for a separate set of Portrait Desktops as the solution to how do your rotate the landscape desktop and deal with the freely placed widgets.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

I'm curious that why are people so enthusiastic about having the home screen in portrait. Perhaps someone can elighten me, as I would mostly just want the apps to work in portrait (e.g. media player, email, messaging, pdf reader, file manager, browser,...) and keep home as it is (especially when we get the input methods up and running there).
Continuing on that logic, dashboard does make sense to support rotation if apps support it.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

because the widgets are designed for convenience, so we can get info at a glance without launching an app, and one-handed/portriat lends itself to convenience more than landscape. I suggest reading the various reasons in the many threads about it. Just my answering your question could be the beginning of fireworks. It has been a polarizing topic to say the least.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

A fair question. A good reason is to consider using the device in portrait mode and starting up a new app, or looking at the widgets as chris mentioned.

If in the chat program in portrait, for example, and you want to start up a tune in the background, it would be nice not to have to tilt the device to do this, and again to resume chatting in portrait. Consider commuting via the subway during rush-hour, and this becomes an almost required feature!

A quick glance to see a widget while in portrait would also be more convenient than having to tilt the device twice to perform this action. For example, if you're surfing maemo.com and would like to glance at your twitter feeds widget, it can all be done without tilting the device and comfortably with one hand.

I think adding portrait mode is about convenience and improving the user experience. While it's not necessary, it would make the device more usable in certain situations.

}:^)~

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Because a device like the N900, that handles multi-tasking so well, it is going to be painful to switch and navigate between apps without the desktop supporting it too.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Portrait mode: I missed that first time around Day 1. That takes care of one concern.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

As I said, switcher / dashboard and launcher I can understand that they need to support portrait for this exact case, but home is still something I don't fully get why to do that. The 5th home is a bad idea in the sense that then users would complain that why cannot the usual widgets be accessd from there. And full rotation means that the background images won't really work too well for non-abstract images if they get rotated, and if they dont get rotated, but instead supporting 3200x800 images, well that would not work either too well for obvious reasons.

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

Ok,

so Maemo 6 will have full portrait mode, but Maemo 5 (N900) will not?

Then I will not buy the N900, but I may consider a Maemo 6 device when in the market..

Re: Portrait mode use cases
 

To be honest, if the E71 were running Linux and as open and had a development community, I would have bought an E71. It's a lot cheaper after all, and it's got a good enough screen and keyboard and connectivity for most things, including xterm ;-)

But it's not. For me the real reason for buying an N900 is the Linux, the community, and the ability to write my own apps for personal use.

All this talk of no portrait mode is disappointing. At the least, a web browser is more usable in portrait mode for many things like long articles and things that resemble lists - such as forums like this one! (If you have good enough eyesight to set the text very small, anyway).

But not disappointing enough to put me off buying one. How hard can it be to hack the browser, or for that matter, the framebuffer, into a preferred shape :-)