Appstore Look

[WizardStan]

The Pandora browser does not have any of that shit at the top - even my PC one does not, I have it all on two tiny lines. I really HATE programs which steal screen real estate for no good reason.

The Pandora one has a minimal top with address bar and icons on one row. No title bar, no bookmarks etc.

no bookmarks? i hope they are added with ease.

Click view->toolbars->bookmarks.
On smaller screens I remove the navigation bar, as well. There's a Firefox add on that will auto-hide the menu and navigation bar, but I've never bothered installing it. It may be worthwhile for the Pandora.

 

[chole]

The Pandora browser does not have any of that shit at the top - even my PC one does not, I have it all on two tiny lines. I really HATE programs which steal screen real estate for no good reason.

The Pandora one has a minimal top with address bar and icons on one row. No title bar, no bookmarks etc.

I've been playing with Arora (and Konqueror, but that's a bit less pertinent here, I guess) to get an idea of the available area involved. right now, it has just one row with a few buttons, and I just disabled the title bar and realized that there is no way to close the app. Do you have a close button on that bar in addition to the usual icons and soforth?

BTW, people -- even more casual users -- are going to want to customize their copy of Firefox, and this could cause the browser to become inoperable in some cases. Has anybody considered the option of having a *different* minimalist browser dedicated specifically to the app store so that it always looks the same (so the designer of apps.openpandora.org doesn't have to guess about how wide to make the site, because the user won't be reskinning the browser itself) and can be used to (for example) redownload the regular web browser if it gets borked?

 

[grasshoppir]

design it for the pandora screen but make the css-layout fluid at full width?

 

[ashbygeek]

BTW, people -- even more casual users -- are going to want to customize their copy of Firefox, and this could cause the browser to become inoperable in some cases. Has anybody considered the option of having a *different* minimalist browser dedicated specifically to the app store so that it always looks the same (so the designer of apps.openpandora.org doesn't have to guess about how wide to make the site, because the user won't be reskinning the browser itself) and can be used to (for example) redownload the regular web browser if it gets borked?

or if we want it to be that consistent, somebody could always start work on an actual application run from the Pandora for downloading other applications.

 

[shill]

heres the main page for mine. iphoney finger friendly, hopefully sub pages etc will be updated later today.

This is the way to go! Nice huge buttons so you don't have to get the stylus out every time you simply want to download a game.

I agree. I like this even more than my own

 

[(naw)mcx]

heres the main page for mine. iphoney finger friendly, hopefully sub pages etc will be updated later today.

This is the way to go! Nice huge buttons so you don't have to get the stylus out every time you simply want to download a game.

I agree. I like this even more than my own

+1!

 

[Vorporeal]

It's flashy and pretty, but how do you expect to scroll through 2350 applications with that interface?

 

[darien]

If you guys think about Steam, it's basically a tabbed app where the purchase tab is nothing more than a browser window that shows the online web store. I don't think we should be too focused on making an app when a browser can handle the caching of icons and such updates. I mean it won't be hard down the line to integrate it into an app in the same way that steam does.

 

[Yoyobuae]

The Pandora browser does not have any of that shit at the top - even my PC one does not, I have it all on two tiny lines. I really HATE programs which steal screen real estate for no good reason.

The Pandora one has a minimal top with address bar and icons on one row. No title bar, no bookmarks etc.

:wub: Vimperator

 

[WizardStan]

BTW, people -- even more casual users -- are going to want to customize their copy of Firefox, and this could cause the browser to become inoperable in some cases. Has anybody considered the option of having a *different* minimalist browser dedicated specifically to the app store so that it always looks the same (so the designer of apps.openpandora.org doesn't have to guess about how wide to make the site, because the user won't be reskinning the browser itself) and can be used to (for example) redownload the regular web browser if it gets borked?

It doesn't have to be a different browser, just give a different profile. Every Pandora can ship with a Firefox "appstore" profile; just start it with "/usr/bin/firefox -no-remote -P appstore". Remove all the undesired extras, like the bookmark and navigation toolbars and most plugins from the profile, maybe disable tabs, make the appstore the homepage (duh), and make it read only so they can't go and change it. There may even be a way to lock it from going anywhere BUT the appstore host. I wonder if there's a way to remove the menu bar as well, and change the title bar to read "AppStore" instead of "Mozilla Firefox". If done right, the end user might not even realize they're using a web browser.

 

[chole]

BTW, people -- even more casual users -- are going to want to customize their copy of Firefox, and this could cause the browser to become inoperable in some cases. Has anybody considered the option of having a *different* minimalist browser dedicated specifically to the app store so that it always looks the same (so the designer of apps.openpandora.org doesn't have to guess about how wide to make the site, because the user won't be reskinning the browser itself) and can be used to (for example) redownload the regular web browser if it gets borked?

or if we want it to be that consistent, somebody could always start work on an actual application run from the Pandora for downloading other applications.

Haha, absolutely true. But in this particular case, the people putting together the app store only have about two months to get it fully operational, so to be prepared in time they'll have to start out with the browser+website route (there isn't an API for an app to be built upon, afaik, for instance). Afterwards, we get to crack our knuckles and blow away the second batchers with a fancy package manager (that can also do the shopping cart thing).

 

[conso]

why not just press F11 and go into fullscreen mode?

 

[Trevsweb]

It's flashy and pretty, but how do you expect to scroll through 2350 applications with that interface?

well its hard in all respects those 2350 apps are going to be displayed one way or another. either the use of catagorisation or pagnation can help but really your going to end up with that problem with all the designs.
if people have a touch screen why would they want to do anything else other than touch it... stylus' help text selection but big buttons make selection alot better than hit or miss with styli. just think weve learned alot from the way the iphone functions.

 

[chole]

BTW, people -- even more casual users -- are going to want to customize their copy of Firefox, and this could cause the browser to become inoperable in some cases. Has anybody considered the option of having a *different* minimalist browser dedicated specifically to the app store so that it always looks the same (so the designer of apps.openpandora.org doesn't have to guess about how wide to make the site, because the user won't be reskinning the browser itself) and can be used to (for example) redownload the regular web browser if it gets borked?

It doesn't have to be a different browser, just give a different profile. Every Pandora can ship with a Firefox "appstore" profile; just start it with "/usr/bin/firefox -no-remote -P appstore". Remove all the undesired extras, like the bookmark and navigation toolbars and most plugins from the profile, maybe disable tabs, make the appstore the homepage (duh), and make it read only so they can't go and change it. There may even be a way to lock it from going anywhere BUT the appstore host. I wonder if there's a way to remove the menu bar as well, and change the title bar to read "AppStore" instead of "Mozilla Firefox". If done right, the end user might not even realize they're using a web browser.

Wow, you're right. That worked really well.

The "Restart Firefox" icon kind of sucks, but that's what it looks like if the wm is fullscreen and no titlebar. I've put in the minimum amount of stuff to make the browser workable for the app store. Heck, even the back and forward buttons could go if we really wanted to nix them (but I like 'em).

And with a titlebar (not what you'd see on the pandora, as I'm a bit nontraditional with my title bars). Oh, and this is obviously using the famous "Openpandora AppStore" browser.

 

[gruso]

That's pretty awesome.

 

[quartercast]

heres the main page for mine. iphoney finger friendly, hopefully sub pages etc will be updated later today.

This is perfect!

 

[darien]

Here's a put together css/html demo of the template I put up earlier.

If anyone wants to take a go and add some widgets, modify it, or make it better, etc... here are the site files. Also, it goes without saying, go ahead and reuse any elements in there if you want to totally revamp the whole thing. I just want to make sure we all get the best possible design.

Thanks everyone for the comments earlier, I feel validated by them.

 

[dflemstr]

I could see myself creating a QML frontend that looks like something like that, but I don't think that it's a good idea nor entirely possible to create something useful in HTML that looks like that. It looks good, yes, but how does that layout work with long lists of applications + previews etc?

 

[(naw)mcx]

Here's a put together css/html demo of the template I put up earlier.

If anyone wants to take a go and add some widgets, modify it, or make it better, etc... here are the site files. Also, it goes without saying, go ahead and reuse any elements in there if you want to totally revamp the whole thing. I just want to make sure we all get the best possible design.

Thanks everyone for the comments earlier, I feel validated by them.

that looks really nice, that might be the kinda thing I'd like to use.

 

[shill]

Here's a put together css/html demo of the template I put up earlier.

If anyone wants to take a go and add some widgets, modify it, or make it better, etc... here are the site files. Also, it goes without saying, go ahead and reuse any elements in there if you want to totally revamp the whole thing. I just want to make sure we all get the best possible design.

Thanks everyone for the comments earlier, I feel validated by them.

that looks really nice, that might be the kinda thing I'd like to use.

the left side navbar seems very small :-/ otherwise, I'd agree that this is well made and good looking.