gPodder 2.13 in Extras-Testing (and in Extras for Diablo)

A new version of gPodder, a podcast downloader for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 has been released. The new release is already available in Extras for Maemo 4 (i.e. N800 and N810), and is currently in Extras-Testing for Maemo 5 (please test and vote!). You can read the official announcement on the gPodder blog, or go directly to the detailed ChangeLog. This release fixes some issues reported by our users, improves the episode list on Maemo 5 and adds the often-requested "Download only when on Wi-Fi" feature:

This release does not yet contain the QML UI, as it is not ready and/or feature-complete yet, and the QML development happens on another branch ("tres" in the Git repo) that contains more under-the-hood changes that cleans up the gPodder codebase. The QML UI will be released "when it's done" :)

Community SSU features to look forward to

I've been writing some patches for hildon-desktop (the window manager on Maemo 5). For some of the more useful ones, I've reworked them to be configurable via transitions.ini (and disabled by default), so they can be merged into the Community SSU. Most of these patches try to improve the user experience and look and feel of the Maemo 5 UI, but tastes differ, so you can choose which one to enable:

• Blurless desaturation: With this feature enabled, the background of dialogs, menus, the launcher and the switcher won't get all blurry - instead, they keep their sharpness, but are darkened and desaturated. (thread with screenshots)
  
• Bigger task switcher: I think this is one of my earliest patches, now cleaned up to be configurable with different settings. You can choose between the Maemo 5 default layout, the single-column "big" task switcher and the two-column task switcher. I've left the horizontal task switcher out of this, as it wasn't working that well in some situations. (thread with screenshots)
  
• Rotation around the Z axis: This one makes the screen rotation look much more natural, just like on the MeeGo Handset UX. Instead of rotating around the X and Y axis, this makes the transitions from/to portrait mode rotate around the Z axis. (demo video)
  
• Forced auto-rotation for all apps: By default, hildon-desktop obeys the preferences of application windows and whether or not they support portrait mode. With this option enabled, hildon-desktop ignores those preferences and instead assumes every application can be auto-rotated. There's no support for the home screen, launcher or switcher, as these things are more complicated to support in portrait mode. (demo video)
  

Assuming that MohammadAG will merge these patches into the Community SSU version of hildon-desktop (a few of these have already been merged), you will get to enjoy those features in a future update. Please note that all those features are disabled by default, and need to be enabled explicitly in transitions.ini. For some of these options, a restart (of the device or hildon-desktop) is required.

In other news, the Community SSU version of H-A-M (that's the Application Manager in Maemo 5) now supports portrait mode, and this might also be merged at some point (it already works with the "Forced auto-rotation" patch, there are just some graphical glitches in the main screen that are fixed by the patch). Anybody up for some HTML hacking to make Maps portrait-aware? Should be easy to do, but I won't work on that one. Contributions welcome :)

gPodder/QML status (with screenshot and video)

Ohai February. The winter term is over; time for some gPodder QML hacking. This means that gPodder gets a new UI, and the structure of the application and the usual workflows also change a bit, based on the experiences with gPodder on Maemo 5. One of the most important changes will be that content will be played inside gPodder, as this provides even more control over playback and resuming than what the MAFW integration with the Maemo Media Player can provide.

Most of this has been done in the last two days. Thanks to Python, PySide and QML, I'm able to reuse the gPodder codebase (feed parsing, downloading, etc..) and just slap a lightweight QML UI on top of it.

Andrew Zhilin (aka wazd) has helped a lot with the design and the artwork, but see for yourself (this is a screenshot, not a mock-up):

And here is a video of the current performance on a N900:

Feedback, as always, welcome :)