Freitag, 26. November 2010

Maemo 5 app UIs: {The,A} big picture

Sooner or later it will be necessary to create a QML UI for gPodder if it is to integrate nicely with devices on which Qt is the "native" toolkit for third party apps. At the moment, the reusable UI elements that can be used with QML (Qt Components) have not yet been officially released (the Git repository is available on Gitorious, though), and there are no UI style guidelines for Harmattan out (yet?). I'm also not able to locate UI style guidelines for QML apps on Symbian^3, and there are only a few small sample QML apps out right now.

Let's look at what we have on Maemo 5 right now. Here's a simplified overview of the current Maemo 5 UI of gPodder:

You can also check out the full-size image (~ 3.5 MB).

The UI follows the Maemo 5 Style Guide where it makes sense and tries to come up with better solutions where the Style Guide does not have a definitive answer. I'd like to hear your opinion about the current UX of gPodder and how these concepts can be translated into a QML app that integrates nicely with "future" UIs (Harmattan, S^3). The new-style episode list that can be seen in this picture will be made available with the next release that will be out Really Soon Now™.

2 Kommentare:

Finch hat gesagt…

What are Qt components? Components made in Qt Quick? Anyway, gPodder UI looks very cool and nice. I have no objection.

Ville hat gesagt…

You mostly have lists (which are much easier with QML, compared to QWidgets or Gtk), and buttons/combo boxes. Not too hard to do in QML, even if you need to deal with non-platform style until Qt Quick Components are widespread.

There is also a community component implementation around that you may be able to use in the meantime:

https://projects.forum.nokia.com/colibri

You should be alright (and gpodder UI will end up much faster ;-). Can you clarify what view is problematic in your idea? Perhaps this would better be discussed in qt-qml mailing list?