GeneralAntilles | # 141 | 2009-03-15, 01:15 | Report

konttori's working on it, but it seems likely that he'll hold off until the beta when the full UI is released (rather than surgically removing features of Theme Maker to match what's in the current alpha release).

qgil | # 142 | 2009-03-15, 07:56 | Report

What if we start a new thread concentrating on this dialog layout issues. This thread is getting wide and long.

ragnar | # 143 | 2009-03-15, 10:52 | Report

For the dialog layouts, the idea there was to get more vertical space for dialogs, while at the same time doing a change that could be done for the Fremantle scope and timeframe. Yes, horizontal space is therefore reduced, but since we're pretty much getting rid of all the split screen UI designs anyway, vertical space is more useful than horizontal space.

ColdFusion | # 144 | 2009-03-15, 13:27 | Report

How about this:


That way you save up on horizontal and vertical space, and still have a big area for the button to touch it with your thumb.

ragnar | # 145 | 2009-03-15, 15:32 | Report

Well yes, in theory ... If you would have always only one button there and wouldn't mind the geeky vertical text. But there can be 3-4 buttons in that area, and people generally prefer to read horizontally. I'm of course very much biased, but I think that the new dialogs and notes look ... much better than the old ones, on the final hardware.

benny1967 | # 146 | 2009-03-15, 15:56 | Report

... like "cancel".

anyway, the last word on the UI pobably was spoken long ago. I didn't see any encouragement or even friendly interest in this thread when improvements were discussed. - So either the final thing will be totally different and absolutely breathtaking, anyway, so that it's no use discussing this alpha-UI... or we'll have to count on Mer (or future versions of Maemo) to iron things out.

I still hope what we're seeing isn't it but something hastily put together to make a public alpha possible at all without revealing even a tiny bit of the final UI.

VDVsx | # 147 | 2009-03-15, 17:00 | Report

Short video demonstration of Maemo 5 Alpha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiNF4C1p030

The application manager doesn’t work for me, and the Fremantle extras-devel repository doesn’t list the available packages trough the web, so I only showed in the video the apps that I know that are already in the repository.

ColdFusion | # 148 | 2009-03-15, 17:57 | Report

There are 6 buttons there in the screenshot.

imho...

there can be even 2 vertical buttons on the side and it'll still be useful. And a dialog box doesn't need much more buttons, especially if "cancel" is "click outside". Also it's better to have a long vertical button where the caption fits as to have a small horizontal one where it's either abbreviated or goes outside of it's boundaries.
On my "old and deprecated" device I can use very efficiently the whole right side of the screen with my thumb. Reading a few button caption vertically won't be that bad or you can put some meaningful icons instead.

I can't understand why you want to have a tiny button (which one has to "click" with a thumb) and huge empty space that's not used for information display or anything else. If you want it so badly, stretch the button to take the whole empty space on the right.

Right now all the arguments are settled "you users are wrong, on the final device you'll be able to see the bigger picture (which is secret right now and we can't tell you, but it'll be awsome)". We're presented with an Alpha, which in the "normal world" means "we're open for suggestions, discussion and feature requests", but at this moment I don't see a lot of interest from nokia in that regard. We're only told to have "faith" that "nokia knows best".
I hope that you can see where the frustration comes in the users. And I really hope, that when the final device is in our hands you might be more inclined to listen to people's suggestions.

qgil | # 149 | 2009-03-15, 19:34 | Report

Note that the apps demoed are straight ports from Diablo or the Linux desktop, not optimized for Maemo 5. This includes Maemopad, that was included in the alpha as an example of an app that works just recompiling. Even the Application Manager has got the minimum adaptations for the new UI.

But this is the first Fremantle screencast I'm aware of. Thanks!

PS: I'm going to open a new thread right now about the dialog box UI. Give me some time.

ragnar | # 150 | 2009-03-15, 19:36 | Report

Well, aesthetically I would consider vertical text to be a disaster, especially when there would be more than one button on that area. It is not a scalable solution anyway.

You don't want to do a design where the total width of the available content area on the left would depend on the amount of buttons on the right (where each new button would make the available area slightly narrower). There can be cases where the content presentation on the left is the same for multiple dialogs, possibly with different amount of buttons on the right.

There are some limitations in how much we are able to discuss at this stage, sorry about that. Once the beta and the final product comes out, it's easier to say more. Anyways, I still believe that this here is one example of the discussion part of the alpha release.

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Last edited by ragnar; 2009-03-15 at 19:38.