In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

Hi, we are organizing an international workshop UX meets Code. We want to invite the right developers and you (yes, you) can help selecting them.

In your opinion what are the great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love? The workshop is divided in 3 days/topics: concepting, usability and graphics. We are looking for projects that are excellent in certain aspects but could still offer a better user experience to real N900 users.

Please post in this thread your candidates to be invited following these basics rules:

• Post the Downloads URL of the app at http://maemo.org/downloads/Maemo5/ if it's in Maemo 5 Extras already.
• Or post the Packages URL if it's still in Fremantle extras-testing or extras-devel. You can use the search at http://maemo.org/packages/ to find the app.
• Yes, we can also consider OS2008 apps as long as they are available at http://maemo.org/downloads/OS2008/ and the developers are working in the Maemo 5 version.
• And yes, we are open to suggestions of Linux desktop ports as long as the main developers have a clear interest in Maemo.

Please post only URLs (mandatory) and a brief comment about your reasons for the recommendation (1-2 sentences, optional). This is not a thread to get into discussions about usability of certain apps. If you want to discuss something further about certain app just post your comment elsewhere and link it from here.

Your advice will influence our decisions inviting developers and selecting the 9 projects getting a slot in the workshop's agenda. Please be fast since we want to close the schedule and invite most participants this week.

Thank you!

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

I'd recommend Rapier; even though its being updated for maemo 5, there's not much being done with it in terms of the UI or UX.

URL: http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/rapier
Reasons: not too many applications of this type across platforms; the response to having this available has already been loudly expressed; and the developer is pretty much working in a maintenance mode with the application.

Exceptions: There is another effort underway to create a similar application, written in Qt. This request to simply to update the UX of the current application where possible (smoothing out the rough edges), while making it easier for the authoring developer to handle any other support issues that might come with this application.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

8 thanks and only one post (without URL but this is still a minor problem)? I was expecting more feedback sooner. Maybe I'm too optimistic / impatient. :)

Or maybe this should be in the General / Maemo 5 / N900 forum?

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

weren't some recommendation already been made in another thread?

should we re-recommend here as well ?

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

Well I can mention one application which I have used and discussed before. It needs major UI work to be useful for finger touch UI and normal people (non-techies), but I don't want to merely name an application without substantial arguments and examples.

Problem is: 1) I haven't run it past months 2) I cannot run the application right now 3) It is a competitor to a Nokia application 4) It is not yet ported to Fremantle.

I am willing to spend an evening using the application and provide several examples, but need some kind of way running it. What do you suggest? Can someone provide me temporary remote access to a N8x0?

Otherwise, I will have a look through the SDK available applications. In the core I have seen various aspects warranting, from my point of view, a bug report.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

anyway here are my recommendation:

GPXView

and

OSM2Go

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

* Xournal

* FBReader

* KMplayer or other Mplayer frontend

* Mauku - The UI is almost there, but needs some UX love.

I recommend these apps mainly because I use them or believe that they will have a big user base.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

Care to share with us the app name ? :)

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

I'd be very happy to see
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/maemo-mapper/
on Fremantle, and iirc work is ongoing.

back in 810 time, It was adopted to use maps and traffic data from local .ru service, which does not really compete with Nokia Maps. Now, even with gpxview and ovi maps, mapper is missing..

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

Does anyone know if someone is working on a Maemo 5 version? fbReader is the main reason I still lug my n810 around in addition to the my n900.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

I'd be very very happy to see Hatari :) I don't have an N900 or older tablet and I can't test it for now.

URL : http://koti.mbnet.fi/tammat/hatari/index.shtml

Hatari thread : http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=27059

@++
JC

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

My list of applications is the following (similar to others in the thread):

• Mauku: I think here there are things to improve yet. For example, the configuration dialogs aren't very comfortable to use (at least for me). I needed some attemps to add my credentials the first time I used it.

• OSM2Go: While it has been improved in the last versions, it still lacks some more UX/UI love, specially in some dialogs and menus with hundreds of small items.

• FBReader: Read ebooks is one of the main use-cases for a bunch of people. FBReader is a good application, and IMHO it needs at least to be more in accord with the Maemo 5 UI. But well, it was a Fremantle start and it seems that they didn't take advantage of that opportunity.

• Recorder: I think that many people is going to ask for an application that allows record audio. This is the one, it needs a better UI that the actual and better graphics too.

• MyPaint: It isn't in any Fremantle repositories yet, but it does run perfectly in the N900 (with a bit of installing magic). It would need much UX love to be nice in Fremantle, but it would be a killer app. qwerty12 is the last maintainer so qwerty12 goes to Barcelona!

Please, that the authors don't think I'm criticizing the work or something similar. If I recommend these applications here is because I like them and I want these applications to be even better.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

In the thread at the Design forum the feedback was mostly from other developers. I'm trying to get feedback from users, even if still not N900 users.

There is no need to go through a UX evaluation in order to post a recommendation here. Gut feelings based on your preferences or most used Maemo apps are just enough.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

My vote goes as well to Recorder. It is number 13 in most downloaded apps for OS2008 http://maemo.org/downloads/product/O...aemo-recorder/ . It just needs a new simple UI and it would be perfect.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

I would like that vncviewer gets some more UI love. I know the author is still improving the Fremantle UI, but maybe he could get some help.
Especially I would like it to have some OpenGL accelerated zooming and panning in an intuitive way.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

I would like to see the leafpad text editor (or other "classic" command-line GUI text editor) updated to use Fremantle goodies, such as a pannable area, etc.

I would also like to see the XChat IRC client made as Fremantle Friendly as possible.

I've been told that the osso X-Terminal is open source and so the community is responsible for fixing the UI, so I suggest that one as well.

I would love to see Evince or another full-featured PDF reader showing up with full Fremantle trappings. PyQtReader (or other full featured image reader) should be ported too.

The VLC media player desperately needs some attention.

(I also agree with most of the suggestions above, especially Maemo Mapper and VNC Viewer)

Just a note that your first post was at 1am on the West Coast of America. Some patience is always required when dealing with people from all over the globe :)

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

Maemo Mapper. Last time I used it, it was cluttered with technical terms a newbie would not understand, and the artwork could use a lot of love... but this long ago, I prefer to be more specific...

Exactly, except VNC is dog slow over GPRS.

qgil I suggest you contact KDE developers. There are several UI specialists in the KDE team. People like Stormy Peters and Celeste Lyn Paul. Maybe they are interested in joining. Even KDE developers may be interested too. I know one who'd like to get in touch with Nokia for writing a driver for SU-33W DVB-H... but obviously KDE developers with Qt background are valuable.

• qtnx -> The perfect remote desktop / terminal services for *NIX/X11. Qt4 application for remote access using SSH + X11/NX. NX allows various compression settings, and is usable over GPRS (similar performance as RDP; scales much better than VNC).
  
  UI interface is not optimized for touchscreen, and neither is the remote desktop. They do not take advantage of the touchscreen since they are 1:1 ports from *NIX/Qt desktop. For an example of an application which does this well see LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone. (Comment also applies to next entry.)
  
• pyrdesktop/rdesktop-cli -> We need a Qt4 frontend, these exist already in KDE. It'd also need touch finger UI.
  
• ??? -> Abstraction layer GUI for VPNs: provide one, using current libraries, which Just Works like the effort of Network Manager.
  
• Kupfer > 'GNOME Do/Quicksilver for Maemo'. Brainstorm entry. Needs slight work, for example it does not explain one needs to type text when it has started up, and needs Tracker backends ofcourse! I think its KDE/Qt app.

Re: In your opinion: great Maemo 5 apps needing some UX love
 

Sorry for offtopic, but I have ported leafpad to Fremantle UI a couple of months ago. Today I decided to finish it and it will be soon at extras-devel.