Attention Anyone Who Knows How To Code

[chad78]

Specifically in Python. It has been requested that I present a working demo of this GUI, for possible use on the Pandora! But I have to have the demo so we can work out the bugs. If you are qualified and interested - or if you aren't qualified but are willing to give it a shot! - please let me know, either here or by PM or through email - chad78 - at - gmail - dawt - com

Here's some screenshots and explainations of the GUI I, and many others, have been working on. The full thread is here.


The home screen - user controlled widgets

Click for big.

The “Grid” Mode of the Apps tab

Click for big

The “Slider” Mode of the Emu tab

Click For big.

The “Grid” Mode of the Emu tab

Click for big.

The "Alt+Tab" Shot / Active App Picker

click for big.


TABS, (from left to right):
Home (described below), Applications (OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, TuxPaint, PDF Viewer, ComicBook Reader, ImageViewer, Calculator, Calendar, etc.), Web (Firefox, Email Client, Chat, SIPPhone, Feed Reader, Contacts list), Media (Mplayer, VLC, Internet Radio, Podcasts, Voice Recorder), Emus, Pandora (Native Games - Native apps that don't fit anywhere else), Prefrences (Wallpaper, network settings, power save, control panel type stuff).

CONTROLS:
Shoulder buttons change pages of icons, or change icon on slider mode. Tabs/groups are on the bottom for easy tapping. All icons are tappable (touchscreen) or selectable through the D-pad and main face button (X, A, rhombus, whatever it is). Right and left on the D-pad scroll through icons on the “Slider” view, or among the icons in "Grid" mode. The extreme right and left center of the screen, when tapped, will move to the next screen in Grid, and the next icon in Slider. Analog stick scrolls through icons as well. Main button selects. Secondary button gives info about the selected icon. A keyboard shortcut can switch among selecting the icons in the main window - the fixed icons across the top (Options, WiFi, Volume, Battery, Help) - and the tabs. The Options menu is where users select from Slider, Grid, or List. You can press buttons 2 - 9 to select a given tab, and press 1 to go to more tabs to the left, 0 to go to more tabs to the right.

HOME TAB:
(Similar to the Home of the Nokia Maemo-powered N-Series Internet tablets, Apple’s Dashboard, iGoogle.com, etc.)
Widgets are user controlled. Using the touchscreen, they can resize and move the widgets on the screen. Widgets are selected and deselected using the options menu. Widgets could include News Feeds, Weather, Internet Radio, Media player, Search box, mini-games, (tictactoe, Sudoku, etc.), maps, contacts, chat, email, etc..
The boxes become “solid” when selected. (The Search box is selected in the picture.) This draws focus to the selected item. The Pandora Logo seen the bottom right would, if you click on it, take you to the Pandora homepage (assuming you are online) - http://www.openpandora.org/
The Search box has a drop down menu, just like the Firefox search box, hence the little down arrow. The current icon - the Pandora icon - searches your Pandora - the onboard storage, as well as any flash cards or USB drives that are attached, (assuming they’ve been indexed). It would just be a name search - not a content search. So think Windows “Search” box from 98 - not Mac OS X Safari, or Google Desktop. You could select Google, Yahoo, Live, ThePirateBay, whatever search engines you install. But again, those only work while online - so it defaults to Pandora search, (maybe you can pick the default search).
The Weather automatically updates whenever you are online. I forgot to add the “Currently” info, but you get the idea. You type in the zip code (for US - postal code, city & country, etc - for other countries), and it tells you the weather.
The News Reader can be set to whatever RSS/Atom/Podcast feeds you want - again, automatically updates when online.

SLIDER MODE:
(Similar to Sony's XMB, and Apple’s CoverFlow)
On Slider, three icons are seen at a time, the selected icon is in the center. It is in full color, completely solid (100% opacity), drop shadowed, glowing, and larger than the other icons. Two other icons are visible on either side. They are 75% the size of the selected icon - the fade to greyscale as they approach the sides of the screen, and they are 75% opacity - no shadow or glow. *Note - the screenshot is representative of the last game played, or of a favorite game for that emulator. You're scrolling through emulators (systems) not individual roms (games). A couple dozen at most - not thousands. Perhaps screenshots should be replaced by shots of the systems, as pictured in the Grid mode shot.

GRID MODE:
(Similar to the traditional desktop of most user oriented operating systems)
A grid of icons that are spaced into two rows of 4 icons each, the name of the file underneath. Collected into pages that can be scrolled through by tapping the extreme sides of the center of the screen.

Please note - these are just mock-ups. so the icons used, like for the different systems, are not finished products. This is all just my suggestions (altered, of course, by people's feedback) in a visual form. I know the resolution / coloring sucks on some of the icons. It's just a mock-up. Actual icons will be better.

Thanks to everyone involved in the discussions. I think that, together, we can make this one very useful and very usable device!

 

[icurafu]

why python? Why not C and SDL, so atleast the code can be used in the Pandora.

I guess someone with a python supporting webpage wants to demo it.

Atleast a dozen good SDL devs would visit here everyday. I'm not sure about Python, you could get any hack, and it's hard to tell.

 

[Sphinxter]

"Attention Anyone Who Knows How To Script,..."

 

[icurafu]

If the OpenPandora team is really interested, I would join a team to develop it right using C++ and opengl, if it was done right. With real requirements and design phases, not just code mash.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Ooo! Make it so that there's a text box and I can type in it and press Enter and it'll get posted to my Twitter profile! Or yours! Or whoever uses it!

Also, see if you can get OpenVG working for 2D vector acceleration on the OMAP.

 

[Game_over]

You got it so where you can change the background and the icon them in python?

What are you using to come up with your interface? Pretty cool stuff if it's done right and not resource intensive.

Don't forget the Command line drop down box.

 

[ashadocat]

I thought this was supposed to be a demo? I can't code any but I could wip this up as a demo in gamemaker pretty easily. It only exports to windows exes but they can run in wine fine. (gamemaker doesn't support transparency so....)

 

[skeezix]

If you hardcode the tabs, I'll slap you

Theres also a complexity versus ease trade off. ie: In your grid mode you've already shown two different icon sizes, so it suddenly becomes difficult to manage, plus developers need to supply multiple icon sizes.. and what to do when you have two sizes mixed and match for one view? Big mess.

On the one hand.. keep it simple and direct; icons are size X, always. Grid mode is a list of them as they fit, in the given sort order.

On the other, the settings (icon sizes etc) could all be in xml files, and then yor GUI shows using those defaults; leaves it open for modders to mess with the xml at their leisure, at the risk of messing up whats given. ie: Lower code time, but open flexibility.

As to tabs .. never hardcode them. If theres an installer system, then when apps are registered as installed ,they can include a 'category default'; then your tabs are just a list of known categories, and somewhrre you map category to an icon for the tab.. easy.

Suddenly its not hardcoded, and driven based on users installed stuff == WIN.

Designing the GUI is very hard o n many levels -- ie: ease of use, ease of display in high and low light, etc etc.. but also ease of coding, ease of modding, and so forth...

jeff

 

[chad78]

I thought this was supposed to be a demo? I can't code any but I could wip this up as a demo in gamemaker pretty easily. It only exports to windows exes but they can run in wine fine. (gamemaker doesn't support transparency so....)

This is just supposed to be a demo. If you want to hard code it into C++ or whatever, that's fine. I was asked for a Python demo.

If you want to do GameMaker - feel free.

I think they just want something to look at. icurafu - if you could make something in whatever language you want, as long as it works.

Again, this is just a demo. I don't care for one language or another. Python might have just been a suggestion. The whole standards and deadlines thing comes later - they just want to see it working. I'm thinking about making a website that does it using HTML and PHP, since that's what I know. It won't have the movement I really want - but it will have something. Heck - it can be in Flash for all I care - they just want to see something work.

I tell you what, I will ask Svartalf if it matters what language it is in.

 

[Shiny]

Theres also a complexity versus ease trade off. ie: In your grid mode you've already shown two different icon sizes, so it suddenly becomes difficult to manage, plus developers need to supply multiple icon sizes.. and what to do when you have two sizes mixed and match for one view? Big mess.

Mixing different size icons in the same view is a big no-no. Just scale the nearest sized icon to fit like what Windows Explorer does. If there is no icon supplied, use a default one; Some devs are bound to be too busy to include some fancy icon.

That's problably not entirely relevant since all that's necessary at the moment is a rough simulation, but it's something to think about down the line if this gets anywhere

@Hiroe
GameMaker does indeed support transparency, but only in the registered version (called the "pro" version now, I think), along with a bunch of other nifty effects like rotation, scaling, and blending.

 

[sindbad]

why python? Why not C and SDL, so atleast the code can be used in the Pandora.

I guess someone with a python supporting webpage wants to demo it.

Atleast a dozen good SDL devs would visit here everyday. I'm not sure about Python, you could get any hack, and it's hard to tell.

Because developing in C is much slower, produces much more code and gets much harder to read by other people. And python will work on the pandora

 

[iprice]

Chad78 - if you could upload all your resources to a site (in various formats - .BMP, .JPEG, .PNG, .PSP whatever) then developers could just grab the ones they want and attempt to come up with a demo in whatever language they code in, without -

i) bugging you via email/PM
ii) openly stating that they are working on this - without the "Is it done yet?" comments

Any chance?

 

[Dingo_aus]

I second iprice's call for easy access to the image files so ppl can mess with it at their own leisure.

 

[chad78]

Compliance - My photoshop files, with layers, and some pngs as to the final result.

Additional resources include the Tango library, which is where I got post of my icons.

 

[Svartalf]

why python? Why not C and SDL, so atleast the code can be used in the Pandora.

I guess someone with a python supporting webpage wants to demo it.

The reason is that Python is one of the mainline scripting/app languages for Nokia- it's a quick and dirty way for him to hand off a version of the UI on the same general screen real-estate so we can see if we've got any sins of design present in his VERY nice looking design so far.

I'm the person that mentioned it, asked for it in Python if it existed (If you can do it in C/C++ as a mock-up in ARM for Maemo- go for it, it might even form the basis for the shell driving the UI...); but since I am busy with trying to do several things at once (some for Pandora, some for Linux (LGP), and some for keeping the roof over my head...) I'm a bit stretched to do it for him myself.

If the OpenPandora team is really interested, I would join a team to develop it right using C++ and opengl, if it was done right. With real requirements and design phases, not just code mash.

To be honest, that would rock. It was only suggested as Python to get a more fully functioning mock-up to see if we had any sins of design (Like clicking the "Start" button to shut down the computer... ) present- not that I think that there are; I think the design's very nice; but if we go with this as either the main or the alternate UI, we need to make sure we've got something armor-plated and if not, make it so.

"Clumsy" shouldn't be a word in the Pandora vocabulary when it comes to apps, UI, games, etc.

If you hardcode the tabs, I'll slap you

I'd line up with ya there. This needs to be a skinnable UI with this being one of the main skins, I think.

QUOTE

Designing the GUI is very hard o n many levels -- ie: ease of use, ease of display in high and low light, etc etc.. but also ease of coding, ease of modding, and so forth...



Which is why I suggested we actually start tinkering now with this. We've got the graphic designer on board and we've got a batch of coders in hand... Even if it's just an alternate shell, I think since the Pandora is supposed to be "Open" we ought to be taking the ball Chad's thrown out and run with it.

 

[NaN]

Does the Nokia support PyGame?

 

[Svartalf]

Does the Nokia support PyGame?

Yes. You need a special pop-up keyboard add-in to use it, but it's there as best as I remember.

 

[ashadocat]

@Hiroe
GameMaker does indeed support transparency, but only in the registered version (called the "pro" version now, I think), along with a bunch of other nifty effects like rotation, scaling, and blending.

I actually have the pro version, I didn't realize it had transparency.

 

[EvanB]

Hey I didn't know pandora would be able to run Gamemaker! If it can then I am very excited.

 

[Chip]

Hey I didn't know pandora would be able to run Gamemaker! If it can then I am very excited.

Don't get too excited. They're just talking about using gamemaker to do a mockup of the UI on the PC.