Mittwoch, 16. Februar 2011

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 :)

11 Kommentare:

Manrique Lopez hat gesagt…

Great work!

Is there any plan for adding any GUI for enabling/configuring these parameters?

Jaffa hat gesagt…

If someone wrote a control panel plugin for them, I'm sure we'd include it in the CSSU.

If someone wanted to contribute to the CSSU in the meantime, they could document the new features and how to enable them on a new page under http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_SSU

Unknown hat gesagt…

Dude! That is awesome . I just found your blog....
...you did a great job! thank you!
can't wait to see all your patches in the cssu!

And I really really hope you can bring more look and feel related patches in the future.

Unknown hat gesagt…

how and where can i enable this features of update,i dont now what transitions ,where to enable ,how,
please help

Tom Chiverton hat gesagt…

Instructions for configuring (no GUI yet) : http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_SSU/Features

Unknown hat gesagt…

Can't wait can't wait can't wait!! :) Good job!

Admin hat gesagt…

can the task manager and app menu be on potrait too?

Unknown hat gesagt…

Can we look forward to features on the N900 that are available on the N8? See:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXUdrSpRkZ4
Bug Report: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11950

Please note the ability to use portrait mode desktop and the ability to lock the phone to portrait mode unless the slider keyboard is open.

Admin hat gesagt…

how i activate forced auto rotation and rotation on the z axis any patch yet?

Keule hat gesagt…

No patch needed: you can activate forced auto rotation in CSSU Freatures -> changev in Rotations -> Application from Auto (default) to forced -done! Be aware that some applications do not like it e.g. "Alomost reak IT calculator" becomes unusable!!!

thp hat gesagt…

Keule: This posting is a bit more than a year old now, and the patches that I describe here have since been integrated in the Community SSU and its build of hildon-desktop ;)