What Should Pandora's Gui Be?


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ashadocat

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with the Pandora release so imminent I think we should probably "decide" what kind of gui to use. there has been talk of creating an in house gui or of using maemo.

Do we really think that we can make a better gui then the people who have spent as much time working on there's as we have working on the pandora?

(by we I do not necessarily mean me, I mean the devs and forum members)
 
Hiroe said:
Do we really think that we can make a better gui then the people who have spent as much time working on there's as we have working on the pandora?
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well of course we do not want one that is as eye-candy as Windows 95, but I think that would be up to the people that are on the Dev teams for the custom linux for it. If it will have GTK on it, we could always use those themes, or the previous and have a custom theme pre-installed.
 
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The decision was made pretty much from the beginning that the pre-installed UI would be a simple, GMenu2X-like launcher. Nobody has come forward and claimed to be working on it specifically, but they could just be keeping quiet until they have something substantial to show.
 
Chip said:
The decision was made pretty much from the beginning that the pre-installed UI would be a simple, GMenu2X-like launcher. Nobody has come forward and claimed to be working on it specifically, but they could just be keeping quiet until they have something substantial to show.


That didn't really seem to be too final, as we had a whole thread on Chad's coverflow-style GUI.
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PlopperZ said:
Chip said:
The decision was made pretty much from the beginning that the pre-installed UI would be a simple, GMenu2X-like launcher. Nobody has come forward and claimed to be working on it specifically, but they could just be keeping quiet until they have something substantial to show.


That didn't really seem to be too final, as we had a whole thread on Chad's coverflow-style GUI.


Chad's launcher falls into the category of "GMenu2X-like". I wouldn't necessarily expect some of the flashy transitions and effects mentioned in the thread, but the basic layout is not much more complex than GMenu2X.

We've all put in our suggestions, now somebody will (hopefully) take them into account when they make the UI.
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Chip said:
We've all put in our suggestions, now somebody will (hopefully) take them into account when they make the UI.
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why should someone make a ui when a great one already exists and is just a port away?
 
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Hiroe said:
Chip said:
We've all put in our suggestions, now somebody will (hopefully) take them into account when they make the UI.
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why should someone make a ui when a great one already exists and is just a port away?


Mostly because Maemo is designed around a strictly touchscreen interface and is not nearly as efficient as a scratch-built UI would be. To get it optimized for the Pandora would be just as much work as doing something the right way from the ground up.

Who knows, maybe they will use Maemo as a starting point and make it work the way we need it to. Either way, it won't be a straight port.


EDIT: Spelling
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Chip said:
Mostly because Maemo is designed around a strictly touchscreen interface and is not nearly as efficient as a scratch-guilt UI would be. To get it optimized for the Pandora would be just as much work as doing something the right way from the ground up.

Who knows, maybe they will use Maemo as a starting point and make it work the way we need it to. Either way, it won't be a straight port.
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Even as a touch-based UI, Maemo isn't that great and riddled with clumsy design choices. I really hope it won't be offered as anything but a -- very -- optional choice.
 
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we nou this gui it will have simple and advanced menu system
DJWillis said:
Did people miss the hints of simple and advanced menu systems?

There is a lot to be said for keeping a simple unitask launcher but people are quite right that running a full mini Linux distro on the thing is also very appealing.

So what about a basic unitask launcher with an advanced mode that can be launched on demand (think X server with some form of PDA skin)?

Nothing to stop users setting the advanced mode to be the boot default and some use of runlevels and maybe some clever environment flags should make it easy for apps to find out what state the device is in when they run. Remember that a lot of stuff that really bangs the hardware is going to want to chuck out X and any of it's friends before it eats the system for lunch ;).

As of now I am messing with GNOME (mobile platform) sat ontop of X, Matchbox, GTK+ and the Sato GUI from Poky Linux at the moment, I quite like it :D. The other thing I am messing with is Clutter. I am starting to really like it (I think that it can be used to create some really tasty GUI's with OpenGL ES and webkit tied to Clutter is very nice ;). If anybody has used the Cluttler Toolkit before give me a shout.

Anyway, that is just what I am messing with 'for the hell of it', don't expect to see any of that directly in the device setup and assume anything I say is potentially a complete pile of c**p :D
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it seem some people are to demanding have Maemo on the pandora

DJWillis said:
Note: The above post/rant may be tainted by the email I just got telling me that it 'better f**ing run Maemo out the box of the Pandora will suck' (not from netbsd or anybody who seems to post here as far as I can tell)
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Personally I'm hoping that they take the Gmenu2x software and just make a new user interface to lay on top of it.
Ryo's working on the touch screen support (for the F200 GP2X's) anyway and it's already got support for quite a few different translations, as well as some absolutely fantastic advanced features.
A new finger friendly interface would be nice though and a bit more flash to wow the users :)

I've had my Nokia N800 for about 6 months and to tell you the truth I'm not that impressed. They're off to a good start but need to put in a lot more work on the interface itself.
 
We could have a yam/sweet-potato based interface, getting the best of both worlds (carrot and potato).
 
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