Pandora Desktop Environment Prototype Try 2 (screenshots And Videos)

[OrR]

Pandora users shouldn't really need to open more than 4-5 programs at any one time anyway (including the desktop).

Hmm...

Desktop
Game/Emulator
Browser
Email Program
Instant Messenger
BitTorrent Client
Music (& more) Player

Those are the basics... This is the reason we got 256 MB!
I agree that a simple task switching button is a good idea. However, bringing up an overlay list of running applications to choose the one you want to switch to (or kill) also has to be an option for people that love multitasking. Is the Menu button reserved for functionality like this? If so, what it does could be configurable (bring up app list or switch to next app in list). If not, we have to use button combinations and might as well have one for each function.
As an example of what works well, think of the old Xbox 360 dashboard slide in menus.

 

[mali]

@Tripmonkey_uk

I have to disagree. I like the Maemo hildon solution. It's a good compromise(if you want an appealing menu and usability) IMO

The dpad can be used for controlling drop-down menus, too.

As I understand it, this is completely fullscreen?

I'd rather have the bar while running an app/game too if I want to(which is user-changable, anyway)

Edit:
I will multitask the hell out of Pandora :lol:

 

[Trip]

Each to their own I guess

The Pandora community has always been split into three camps; those who mainly want a UMPC device, those who want to a powerful portable computer and those who mainly want a gaming device with the possibility to also use it for other stuff

Although the Pandora can be used for all these options, threads about the GUI seem to show the differences in the way that people perceive the Pandora more than any other type of conversation.

@OrR-
I don't see BitTorrent Client as a must have program on a handheld device.. useful yes (now and again) but by no means necessary

 

[mali]

Ok, I agree
I'm sitting somewhere in the middle with strong tendencies to the UMPC part

 

[cb88]

@Tripmonkey_uk I never said I wanted a full desktop UI... and I don't like ubuntu.

What I did say was I think a UI based on EFL would be good.. especially given they have a bit of work ahead of them to get matchbox working or so I assumed

and as OrR pointed out there is illume which is used on the neo freerunner which has an even smaller screen than the pandora

 

[Trip]

Ok, I agree
I'm sitting somewhere in the middle with strong tendencies to the UMPC part

Well I'm sitting somewhere in the middle with strong tendencies to the gaming part :lol:

 

[OrR]

The thing is connected to the internet most of the time and has the power to run full resolution divx movies so why not also use it to download them? I also see BitTorrent as a good option for big homebrew and indie games. Of course, ED would probably happily pay the bandwith bill as long as it doesn't get out of hand but why burden him with it? And to get into more shady areas, using public or cracked WLAN is probably the most safe way to get and spread the really sensitive and problematic data in modern surveillance states like China or Germany... Oh yeah, I'd also like to run a Freenet node on my Pandora. B)

 

[mali]

Ok, I agree
I'm sitting somewhere in the middle with strong tendencies to the UMPC part

Well I'm sitting somewhere in the middle with strong tendencies to the gaming part :lol:

 

[Svartalf]

@Svartalf no not really played a game once on an n800 but that is it... it was running on top of hildeon anyway might not be fair to compare

Hildon's sort of mobile GNOME. Matchbox is the WM/Launcher for the same, developed by OpenedHand (The people behind Poky Linux and PimLico...who Intel just bought for doing their UI work on Moblin...).

QUOTE

that would explain why PXML would be easy with matchbox but not why it would be hard for gmenu... really it is just writing a parser to set the variables for the window or display various infomation about a package is it not? perhaps a CLI util that can parse and return the info from the PXML would make it easier?



Don't know about that yet. We'll get to it shortly.

QUOTE

I beg to differ enlightenment is for embedded use... it was strongly considered for for the freerunner iirc also what about mamona >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hipg7ov4w-I...feature=related Site: http://dev.openbossa.org/trac/mamona/wiki/FAQ



It's capable of embedded use, but unfortunately, there's not been much tweakage that I've seen towards making an honestly usable thing WITH it. It's one thing to be thin, it's another altogether to be able to be used in the way you'd use a handheld. e17's not QUITE there from the last times I've tinkered with it (which was about 6-ish months ago.). It's not that I'm telling you "no" (I think it would be great...) but while you could get it "running" in a month or so, the things you'd need to tinker with to make it truly usable may take as much as 6 or more months (seriously...you've got to account for _EVERYTHING_...it'll take at least that long for every nook and cranny that causes issues in usage to rattle out and be fixed...)

QUOTE

mamona is an openembedded distro... so there should't be any porting needed to get the desktop version of e17 running



That's not quite the point I was getting to. Embedded and handheld are slightly differing things with differing UI's. Mamona would work well for a set-top box. But that's not the same as a handheld. The UI rules and usability is...very different.

QUOTE

I took a minute looked up the matchbox site since it has been awhile .. I tried out matchbox in xnest on Debian and wasn't impressed... I guess a good part of that is Debian's lacking initial configuration of it and my lack of knowlege on how to configure it



Heh... Most of the baseline UI's for handhelds are primitive and painful until you get it all worked up. It's not as clunky as his demos make it seem- it's capable of a lot of spit polish in a short time (designed for handhelds helps there...) as the other examples show.

QUOTE

If matchbox must be used perhaps some of the efforts of poky linux could be reused http://pokylinux.org/about/


Considering that Poky's a spin-off of Angstrom and all we need do is cherry-pick Maemo's and Poky's good UI ideas and couple them with the needed spin for a gaming-centric MID...

 

[PandoraSuechtig]

The Pandora community has always been split into three camps; those who mainly want a UMPC device, those who want to a powerful portable computer and those who mainly want a gaming device with the possibility to also use it for other stuff

i qualify for all three of them, but i can live with a step by step solution, where first of all the simple app starting works (emu, some apps) and later on the full UMPC power comes up with software updates...

about multitasking: no need to have the media player running in background, but maybe irc, icq, voip-app. they would most probably run all the time and connect whenever a connection is available. same for the browser to avoid restarting (i'm always having so many tabs open...). any other app (emu, media player) i guess i would start when required. if a game can kill the gui, what's the gain if some big browser or other app is still running and eating up ram?? but still, 256mb of ram? irc, icq, voip-app, n64-emu and gui running and still some free mem. this is a hell of a umpc :blink:

 

[mazza558]

Bear in mind with this interface that this is a mobile device, and so buttons and text need to be much bigger, preferably.

 

[Tor]

As I recall, the Nokia (e.g., N800) had a dedicated button for switching between full-screen and windowing. I thought that was a pretty smart feature.

The Nokia ItT hw button to toggle full-screen is very useful indeed. I use it all the time - an on-screen toggle would have been very tedious.

I have to disagree here. Nokia have tried to do too much with their desktop and menu systems and the whole thing is a complete pain to use. The dedicated full screen button does make this better, but it's still too much hassle for such a small device. [...]


I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're disagreeing with.. Todd stated that the Nokia has a full-screen button, and I added that it is useful. Then you say that the '.. full screen button does make this better,'.

So, we agree that the full-screen button makes things better, not worse, right?

 

[cb88]

problem is some apps are really bloated like Pidgin... see debian stem FAQ http://debian.cante.net/stem/faq/

anyone know of a lightweight IM Gui with support as good as pidgin?

I know there is a new one planed for fedora and also e17 has one in the works which should be fairly light if it works (have no idea never tried it)

 

[TaG]

Great to see this sort of stuff being discussed. Much of what I was going to say/ask has been said.

I think the idea of default being full screen is worth thinking about, given the screen size.
I also like that the basics can be minimal and then added to or got back to, and folders are easily understood by all.
Decent size buttons for fingertip selection and a dropdown task switcher would be nice.

I know of one candidate I'd like to see if we can persuade to do some sweet icons etc.

 

[Trip]

As I recall, the Nokia (e.g., N800) had a dedicated button for switching between full-screen and windowing. I thought that was a pretty smart feature.

The Nokia ItT hw button to toggle full-screen is very useful indeed. I use it all the time - an on-screen toggle would have been very tedious.

I have to disagree here. Nokia have tried to do too much with their desktop and menu systems and the whole thing is a complete pain to use. The dedicated full screen button does make this better, but it's still too much hassle for such a small device. [...]


I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're disagreeing with.. Todd stated that the Nokia has a full-screen button, and I added that it is useful. Then you say that the '.. full screen button does make this better,'.

So, we agree that the full-screen button makes things better, not worse, right?

Sorry Tor and Todd, wrong choice of words on my part.
Yeah I agree that the button does make things better, but It can also be un-necessary on a device this size with careful design of the GUI.

problem is some apps are really bloated like Pidgin... see debian stem FAQ http://debian.cante.net/stem/faq/

anyone know of a lightweight IM Gui with support as good as pidgin?

I know there is a new one planed for fedora and also e17 has one in the works which should be fairly light if it works (have no idea never tried it)


I searched for an alternative Pidgin frontend the other day and came up empty unfortunately
It's a shame as the normal frontend is rubbish for devices such as this and I don't see why a full screen version with contact list down the side and message windows in the middle hasn't been made yet.
God I wish I could code <_<

 

[Yamara]

I like the flexibility that it looks like matchbox will offer. However, one thing I liked about gmenu (and managers I've used on Palm devices) is the display of major categories on the side/top, and contents below. This allows you to change categories quickly and scan what's in them, and change to another without having to go back to a different screen. This is more of a handheld style of file browsing.

A similar instant-gratification method with a different look is the Windows explorer window. Here's a sample. While there's some eye-candy and such cluttering it, something like this layout would be pretty flexible. People could show or hide the sections they want (like favorites, or the tree view, or the icon/folder view). The right side could show large or small icons, as preferred by the user. (I realize this is a lot of info crammed on a larger screen, but I think the basic concept could still carry over with larger icons and text.)

I poked around for screenshots of matchbox, and didn't find any showing this. (I would have provided a Linux equivalent, but I mostly browse files there in shell/terminal. ) I personally love having a tree-view, and know people like to have options.

For the graphics, I know it's skinnable. It'd be nice to have a prettier default skin, as I bet many will assume the device sucks just because the folder icons are plain manilla. I'm sure many of us will change it, but the screenshots that pop up on the web will probably feature the default. First impressions are important, and people can be quick to judge. If needed, I'm willing to help in this regard, either by tracking down a good existing set, or try and make something, or helping someone else.

 

[cb88]

cat /dev/brains/RMS > /dev/brains/Tripmonkey_uk

now go forth and use emacs C-x M-c M-butterfly

 

[dentrado]

QUOTE

mamona is an openembedded distro... so there should't be any porting needed to get the desktop version of e17 running

That's not quite the point I was getting to. Embedded and handheld are slightly differing things with differing UI's. Mamona would work well for a set-top box. But that's not the same as a handheld. The UI rules and usability is...very different.


But mamona is for handhelds

from their homepage:
"The main goal of the Mamona Project is to offer a completely open source alternative/experimental Platform for Maemo"

Maemo is for hanhelds right?

cat /dev/brains/RMS > /dev/brains/Tripmonkey_uk

now go forth and use emacs C-x M-c M-butterfly

:lol:

 

[Trip]

cat /dev/brains/RMS > /dev/brains/Tripmonkey_uk

Didn't work bud, try using the less command with it. Might take a while to soak in

 

[wesbrown18]

For the graphics, I know it's skinnable. It'd be nice to have a prettier default skin, as I bet many will assume the device sucks just because the folder icons are plain manilla. I'm sure many of us will change it, but the screenshots that pop up on the web will probably feature the default. First impressions are important, and people can be quick to judge. If needed, I'm willing to help in this regard, either by tracking down a good existing set, or try and make something, or helping someone else.

Yep. See below.

QUOTE

Better icons, colors and themes (anyone want to volunteer? just install matchbox, use xrandr to set your XServer to the right resolution and have a go at it)



Hell. Here's my .xsession:

CODE
xrandr --size 720x450
matchbox-window-manager -theme Pandora &
sleep 1
matchbox-panel --titlebar -c \#B8C8C4 &
istanbul &
matchbox-desktop


And here's the 'Pandora' theme, which is a modified 'Industrial' theme.

Pandora Theme Dotfiles

Directions:

1. Install matchbox-window-manager, matchbox-desktop, and matchbox-panel.
2. Create a test account.
3. Untar the above archive in the test account.
4. Have fun.
5. Share screenshots when you have something.

Don't do this in your main account. You will break your shit!