Notices

And it does... I'll make a better sketch what I'm thinking about.

Here we go: http://derek.a.coleman.googlepages.com/toolbar.png

- You'd have the ability to scroll left or right using the arrows or d-pad.
- Tapping a block or the select key on the d-pad would launch the app. [I didn't include a selected item indicator, but the middle block could obviously serve as the selected item when using the d-pad to navigate.]
- Pressing up on the d-pad would bring up more info about/for the app [description, settings, etc.]
- Pressing down would kill the info pop-up.

Well, there's my idea of how it could work. I guess it just comes down to a standard way to handle launching the apps and more importantly, how the user would add their favorite apps to the tool bar. Let me know what you all think.

Interesting concept. It could even be made very generic, and working out-of-the-box after installation, without the user having to configure anything.

Imagine that your "pads" can also represent sub-menus : you dive into one by tapping its pad or with the select key, and the sub-menu's items replace the current ones in the pads. You get back to the previous level with the escape key, or maybe a special item that always gets added to a submenu's first pad. At any level, app icons are always displayed in pads before submenus.

See where this goes ? Now you don't have to write one line of code for a user interface to configure your launcher applet. It just has to parse the existing directory structure and .desktop files that make up the normal menu, and display that in a different way.

Then a user can start the Navigator applet from the Configuration Panel, and move all his favourite apps to the menu root ; then the launcher applet will display those favourites first, while still giving access to the other submenus and their items with a little more side scrolling... What do you think ?

Here's a more detailed view: http://derek.a.coleman.googlepages.com/toolbar-2.png

And another view showing what one might see when the info window is displayed: http://derek.a.coleman.googlepages.com/toolbar-4.png
- Notice the arrow in the lower right might provide more info/settings depending on the app or how much additional info the applet creator wants to present.

Maybe it could synchronize with the current theme somehow, and if it's possible, you could add bookmarks to the bar as well.

I'm with you on the sub-menus idea, and more advanced sub-menus should be as simple to make as an HTML page. I think it would work, I just don't have much experience in creating an app from scratch. Anyone want to help make this thing a reality?

something like this would be great...


but.. it does exist.. I have it in my ubuntu install... so it's part of gnome.. (gnome app launcher?)... which can be customized to look prety much like osx app launcher...
(notice that the selected icon is enlarged...)

but what we're starting to notice is that the nokia770 would be much more user friendly if everything in it could have a UI similar to canola...
a simple, fluid and good looking interface.. with large good looking icons...
somehow a hybrid between the desktop, and a cellphone...

Heh, yeah. Might be a little processor intensive for that much animation going on and all those icons. Still need some help getting things rolling to build the app though. Anyone want to jump in with me to develop this thing, or do I have to learn everything from scratch?

got a glitch i think i found. i was trying to recalculate a route and deleted a waypoint on the route that was downloaded. then i redownloaded the route and now i get no waypoints at all, on any route that i do download. any ideas other than reflashing?

[QUThis has happened before; it is probably not you, so if you want to reflash, go ahead but not on account of mapper.

In the past, gnuite's 8080 port to turn g?maps into gpx fiiles for maemomapper has either quit working, or began issuing routes without directons. It did this to me last Saturday, and half way through my journey, flite started babbling jibberish- quite funny...

However I cannot say whether gnuite will get yours and my post seeing how this thread has morphed into a fascinating gui brainstorm discussion...

Previously, gnuite was able to fix the problem.....

Yeah, sorry, I think my internet access went down for a short period on Saturday. My apologies for the inconvenience. Is everything working all right now?

Well I just bought a GPSlim 240 and installed Maemo Mapper but the Announce feature doesn't seem to work for me. I was able to download a route and download the maps along the route but once I got into my car and set off along the route I didn't get any notifications of when to turn or when a turn was coming up. I made sure I had flite installed and enabled everything in the settings. Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong? Is there anything I'm missing? Thanks in advance for the help.