One of the more interesting things I've been having issues with in designing an interface was the lack of a right mouse button, and the fact that a 'click' and a 'mousemove' are pretty much identical, thus, either we need to get rid of the 'mouse' cursor entirely and thus have a 'tap and whatever button is under the tap is being activated' style interface, or we need to emulate a mouse somehow. Obviously, the advantages of 'mouse emulation' are that you are allowed some extra freedom, such as 'tooltips' and showing information based on the position of the mouse. It's probably better, though, to go for a mouseless interface.
How do some of the existing interfaces handle the mouse, though? Do they emulate it, or not care about things such as tooltips?
As a sidenote, porting applications might not be insanely easy, since most applications might rely on a mouse being present.
Hacky softwarematic fix (doing this in the firmware of the Pandora would be very muchly so awesome): hold FN to enable mouse emulation, laptop 'touchpad' style (sweep to move cursor, tap to click), and FN+CTRL (or an easy-to-use-FN keybomco) emulates a rightclick.
One of the reasons why I wanted to design my own little interface, is that I think that currently existing interfaces will not be able to fully implement a lot of neat things you can do with a custom interface, and because I think that the Pandora would benefit from a more 'constole-styled' interface (as opposed to a 'PC-styled' interface which tags an application to a window), but one which uses some Linuxy standards at some parts to allow for existing applications to be ported over easilly. I'm probably making a fool of myself with my limited Linux knowledge, but whenever I myself am using Linux, I'm kind of amazed at all the groundworks that have been laid for little applications that do a very basic task to depend upon. I myself love all these little dials and statistics thingies I can use (droplets? docklets?) whilst using Fluxbox or Ubuntu's default window environment thingamajig (What are they called, anyways? Windowmanager? I'm never really sure wether X is the WM, or GNOME is..).
Interesting dialogs with a Pandora user, told from/by the Pandora itself:
"Oh, you want to have the weather shown somewhere on a little icon? Here you go, just configure the weather icon, okay? There. Now whenever you look at the main Interface, you'll know what the weather outside is, and will be if you hold your emulated mouse over it! Fancy staying inside, but afraid that your mother will ask you what the weather was today just to check up to see if you have even been outside today, and too bored to open the curtains? Now you know that it SNOWED today! Try doing that with a PSP or any other non-pda handheld: you'll have to open up some tool that takes ages too boot up! I'm the Pandora. I can do nifty things like this."
"Hey there, fella! Looks like you were just playing some awesomely classic Commodore 64 games on VICEDORA, the Pandora ported version of the VICE emulator, and wanted to check the time, so you went to look at the Main Pandora Interface. Well, the time is 13:37, but I think there is something else you might be interested about. Please look at the bottom of your screen. Do you see a windowlist there? Good. As you might notice, there's a yellow and calmly flashing/glowing exlamation mark next to the 'VICEDORA' text. Any idea what that means? It means that there's a software update for this excellent piece of software! If you hold your emulated mouse over the exlamation mark, you'll notice that the update contains 'EXTRA AWESOMESAUCE AND SPEED UPGRADES'. Do you want extra awesomesauce to go with Archon, one of the best Commodore 64 games ever made? Yes, you do! So, you might want to be interested in saving your state and closing VICEDORA down to update it. I'll remember you with a nicely flashing exclamation mark in the System Tray after you have closed down VICEDORA, if you want me to. Just click on the exclamation mark next to the VICEDORA text, and select 'remind me when application closed down', and I'll remind you whenever you -you guessed it- closed down VICEDORA! My name is Pandora. I can do nifty things like that!"
"Oh, gee. It looks like you're holding the SELECT key whilst having your mouse pointer on the 'Hermaphrodite' word in your document reader (whyever is it there, anyways?). Do you perhaps want a dictionary.com definition? Or would you rather know the meaning and intricate details of hermaphroditism as known by Wikipedia? If so, just tap the screen and I'll give you a little rundown of the options. Ah! You are indeed a very interesting person: you want to know information about hermaphroditism on Wikipedia! I'll show it to you, and next time you ask me to do any interestingstuffs with words, I'll place Wikipedia on the top of the list next time, since I know you value quality encyclopedic information more than anything else! Woohoo! Hey, maybe this is interesting, it seems like there is a way I can show you really basic information, the 'summary' about any given subject as seen on Wikipedia, whenever you hold select! This means that you won't have to open up your browser anymore? do you want this? You do? Awesome! I'm Pandora and doing nifty little things like this is one of my hobbies!"
...you get the idea..
