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Yet Another GUI Project
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Scope
The purpose is to provide a fully functional mobile GUI for power users that is both efficient and moderately easy to learn. Previous GUI:s have often been either too featureless or offered poor usability if advanced features are present.
To succeed, this project needs to provide:
- An overall vision and UI guidelines
- A set of QML widgets
- A task switcher and desktop
- Important core user interfaces like SMS, email, media player, etc.
- Good documentation for developers writing other applications
The above will ideally all run on a vanilla MeeGo image, avoiding the need to code more than a new GUI for most applications.
Getting involved
In order to move faster, teams should work in parallel on the different applications, after the widgets have reached a reasonable state. Feel free to add your name to non-management teams and even volunteer new apps to the list, but introduce yourself to the main organizers if you're new.
- Project management and UI design
- Jens Wiik, firstname dot lastname ät kolumbus.fi
- Jerry Jalava, firstname . lastname ät iki.fi
- QML Widget developers
- Gokul. S. Kartha, everyourgokul ät the google-run mail service
- Naveen Verma, ernaveenverma ät the google-run mail service
- Graphics designers
- Packaging team
- Sushma Goutam, write2sushma ät the google-run mail service
- Application developers (vanilla MeeGo applications will be used at first, and replaced one by one)
- Address book
- SMS
- Media player
- Naveen Verma, ernaveenverma ät the google-run mail service
- File manager
- Terminal
- Web browser
- Photo gallery
- Task switcher
- Desktop
- Calendar
Preliminary UI Concept
Desktop
AMOLED displays allow devices to display information on standby screens without wasting huge amounts of energy. Symbian^3 displays a clock, for example. We will not stop there. Our desktop widgets have two modes: normal, and standby. This allows the user to customize the look of the standby screen without having to access a separate configuration interface.
Desktop widgets should register a wakeup interval with the desktop manager for standby mode. Available intervals are kept simple: 1, 5, 10, 30, 60 minutes. In practice only the clock should need the smallest interval (widgets for SMS etc. will be woken up when the event occurs). All widgets registered for a certain interval are woken up at the same time so that the CPU can sleep for as long as possible.
We do not, however, deny CPU time to normal apps while in standby mode.
In standby mode, pressing and holding the display will brighten the normal widgets without unlocking the phone.
Mobile devices have limited screen space, and having menu bars visible all the time wastes a lot of it. Our applications are always in fullscreen mode, and the menu bar of the current application is instead visible in the task switcher. Combining the two reduces the amount of modes that are necessary.
Returning to the application is done by pressing in an empty area. Maemo 5 returns to the desktop when this is done, but in our case the desktop becomes just another window.
The task switcher is activated either through a hardware button or by a touch gesture. There are no hints when in fullscreen mode - they waste space and this action is so frequent it should be memorized.
List view: multiple selection and secondary actions
Many mobile applications do not include support for multiple selection even though they could greatly benefit from it. This probably has two main causes: checkboxes waste space and look ugly.
We can do better. All list views will support multiple selection by default wherever it makes sense. It is both attractive and unobtrusive if done right: by having a separate background stripe that triggers the selection action.
Even better, the same interface can be used to provide secondary actions - something which is often extremely annoying in touch interfaces. When even a one item selection is made, a bar of buttons slides out from somewhere with the actions that can be performed.
The demo pic is using Maemo 5 - ignore the rest of the UI.
Buttons
When buttons are used in applications with scrolling content, they tend to waste a lot of screen space. Our transparent buttons, labeled with a minimal font size and fading borders, let users see almost 100% of the content.
Pressing inside the bordered area activates the button like any other. Drags can be started from outside and end inside a button without focus shifting to the button.
In the example picture, a browser has chosen to provide immediately accesible back and forward functions, and use the rest of the buttons for tabs.
Only 5 buttons are available in both landscape and portrait mode. In portrait, 5 is still relatively easy to use. When overflow occurs, one button changes into a menu. Applications should avoid using more than 5 buttons.
Text editing
All multiline text boxes run in Vi emulation mode by default, starting up in insert mode. This allows the novice to continue as usual, while the power user can quickly access advanced functionality that would be impossible to include in any kind of menu system.
Licensing
All contributions must be licensed under the third version of the GPL in order to prevent Tivoization. Additionally, contributors grant the project's leaders the right to change the license on libraries and widgets to LGPLv3 should they so decide. (Why not choose LGPL immediately? Read this.)