Video Capture Of Prototype Multitasking Pandora Ui

[wesbrown18]

Thought I'd show you guys what I was working on today for the Pandora project -- at the moment, I'm working on sussing out the minimal multitasking interface based on feedback from the other developers. I figured that those of us anticipating the Pandora would like to see some tangible progress.

This is using the Matchbox window manager, which has been used to great success on the Nokia line of appliances. It's minimal, it's designed for a touch screen, and it displays windows in full screen, and does not get in the way of the user.

I'm also working from the Pandora version of gmenu2x, with some further modifications by me to support multitasking.

This is a video capture of gmenu2x launching, firing up the Amiga emulator, and then while Workbench 1.3 loads, Ultima 4 is fired up. Then we check on the progress of Workbench 1.3.

Video Capture of Multitasking Gmenu2x

Caveat: This was captured on my development machine, not on the Pandora hardware itself. Actual performance may differ, but the Pandora does have a lot of oomph to it. Additionally, there are some funny frame-jump issues when xvidcap is overtaxed.

 

[gaterooze]

Very, very nice. This is going to be mighty fun...

 

[EmuGuy]

Very Cool, thanks for sharing!

 

[cosurgi]

Caveat: This was captured on my development machine, not on the Pandora hardware itself. Actual performance may differ, but the Pandora does have a lot of oomph to it. Additionally, there are some funny frame-jump issues when xvidcap is overtaxed.

What is your development machine, can you describe a bit? Is it an ARM emulator sitting on your desktop PC?

 

[wesbrown18]

Caveat: This was captured on my development machine, not on the Pandora hardware itself. Actual performance may differ, but the Pandora does have a lot of oomph to it. Additionally, there are some funny frame-jump issues when xvidcap is overtaxed.

What is your development machine, can you describe a bit? Is it an ARM emulator sitting on your desktop PC?


Dual Intel cores with 2GB of RAM and 500GB disk, running Ubuntu. This really doesn't matter for UI development, if you have the right sized resolution. I do have a Beagle Board and a Pandora dev board. Everything that I've built has compiled across cleanly to Angstrom on both platforms.

 

[mali]

Awesome, thanks for sharing

 

[BenTolputt]

Nice to see some progress on the OS front. Is this going into the official NAND or is this something "external" to that chain?

Thanks for the video - it is appreciated.

 

[wesbrown18]

Nice to see some progress on the OS front. Is this going into the official NAND or is this something "external" to that chain?

Thanks for the video - it is appreciated.

It's the 'official' solution that I'm working on, that will go into the NAND. This is essentially an early peek at what you'll see when you get your Pandora and start it up.

There may and probably will be changes in between now and then, as I receive feedback from the other core developers, and refine and progress along this path.

 

[Yod4z]

If we have multitask menu then we need some information on screen to see what is running in background and memory usage ^^

 

[Pleng]

So I'm guessing, from what I've seen in the video, it'll be a simple key/button combination which swaps between running apps (including the menu) in sequence, rather than some kind of pop-up menu?

I guess that makes sense as users are unlikely to be running more than 2 or 3 apps at the same time.

Would it be possible to add a tab to Gmenu which displays the currently running apps, to act like a task manager?

 

[wesbrown18]

So I'm guessing, from what I've seen in the video, it'll be a simple key/button combination which swaps between running apps (including the menu) in sequence, rather than some kind of pop-up menu?

I guess that makes sense as users are unlikely to be running more than 2 or 3 apps at the same time.

Would it be possible to add a tab to Gmenu which displays the currently running apps, to act like a task manager?

Yes, we will have one of these. Remember, this is an early proof of concept prototype to see if it works. Matchbox has plenty of extensibility, and Nokia implemented a pop-up menu for task switching.

We're actually moving away from embedding functionality into gmenu beyond that of as a launcher, because we want to be able to access the functionality in other environments. So, Matchbox panel applications for battery, clockspeed, etc, is what I'm thinking of.

 

[kin]

Oh yeah! Thnx for the vid!

 

[efegea]

But Matchbox doesn't run on framebuffer, or does it? I thought gmenu (simple mode) was intended to run on framebuffer and X11 was only for desktop enviroments, but I can be wrong, there is not much information about it.

It's a lot of casuality, that you made a post very very similar to what I posted yesterday on openpandora.es and gp32spain.com, showing my own gui. I also comented the xvidcap eating my cpu cicles thing :lol:

 

[Pleng]

Would it be possible to add a tab to Gmenu which displays the currently running apps, to act like a task manager?

Yes, we will have one of these. Remember, this is an early proof of concept prototype to see if it works. Matchbox has plenty of extensibility, and Nokia implemented a pop-up menu for task switching.

We're actually moving away from embedding functionality into gmenu beyond that of as a launcher, because we want to be able to access the functionality in other environments. So, Matchbox panel applications for battery, clockspeed, etc, is what I'm thinking of.


Ok sounds great. Can I make a suggestion? I don't know if this is even possible under the Linux environment, but if it is I think it would be a really helpful little feature. On the application list/task manager panel application, would it be possible to have a checkbox next to each running application to mute/unmute sound output from that app?

 

[mali]

I think it would be more logical to mute everything except the foreground app automatically and have special background-playmode for music players.

 

[TaG]

I figured that those of us anticipating the Pandora would like to see some tangible progress.

Indeed - its very nice to see progress. Thanks for taking the time to share.

 

[Olexxy]

Thanks for the vid wesbrown18, nice to see the development progress, and I like what I see wrt multitasking

But Matchbox doesn't run on framebuffer, or does it? I thought gmenu (simple mode) was intended to run on framebuffer and X11 was only for desktop enviroments, but I can be wrong, there is not much information about it.

It's a lot of casuality, that you made a post very very similar to what I posted yesterday on openpandora.es and gp32spain.com, showing my own gui. I also comented the xvidcap eating my cpu cicles thing :lol:

Link ? Would be nice to post it on official forum as well, and/or the Pandora Video Vault

 

[efegea]

Thanks for the vid wesbrown18, nice to see the development progress, and I like what I see wrt multitasking

But Matchbox doesn't run on framebuffer, or does it? I thought gmenu (simple mode) was intended to run on framebuffer and X11 was only for desktop enviroments, but I can be wrong, there is not much information about it.

It's a lot of casuality, that you made a post very very similar to what I posted yesterday on openpandora.es and gp32spain.com, showing my own gui. I also comented the xvidcap eating my cpu cicles thing :lol:

Link ? Would be nice to post it on official forum as well, and/or the Pandora Video Vault


I've opened a new thread

 

[cosurgi]

Dual Intel cores with 2GB of RAM and 500GB disk, running Ubuntu. This really doesn't matter for UI development, if you have the right sized resolution. I do have a Beagle Board and a Pandora dev board. Everything that I've built has compiled across cleanly to Angstrom on both platforms.

Are you using qemu-arm with 800x480 display configured. Or is that "vnc4server :1 -depth 24 -geometry 800x480" (running on x86), or maybe you are using something else?

Then xvidcap on top of that to record a video.

 

[Trip]

That's fantastic.

Unfortunately I'm not getting one of the first batch but I'd have still been a little gutted if this wasn't implemented on release. It's features like this that will make the Pandora really stand out against the other handhelds IMO.

Cheers for the vid