Smartphones and Tablets news.

[runawayprisoner]

She was like "very responsive" as it lagged, framerate dropped and chopped.

Kidding aside, I had the time to watch your video, @ruantec. It feels somewhat just like what Apple is doing to OSX. They introduced something called Launchpad in OSX Lion.

Embedded video time:


So Mac users have been using the same UI for a long while.

In fact, instead of click and drag, they have access to multitouch gesture, so all they have to do is swipe on the trackpad or on the mouse, and they're off to the next page. Apple will further refine that interface in Mountain Lion, which comes in a few months. I can't wait to see how it works.

Truth be told, I use Launchpad regularly. It's super easy to get to (pinch four fingers on the trackpad or tap a button on the keyboard), shows me all the applications on the computer, and allows me to arrange them in a way that's easily accessible.

[@ruantec]

Looks really nice and really like there ideas(wish MS did the same). My concept in the other hand goes even further than what i showed on that video as am building it for a touch panel. Atm am completing some more code for the concept which am going to show at work next week. My concept could help to improve the experience on x86 tablets as well as am developing it using MVVM coding pattern and using a open UI even with open source code. Since am using MVVM and bindings people with coding background will be able to improve it if they wish and write assemblies that are going to be loaded dynamicaly and even non-coders will be able to create widgets using the existant features at will, making the UI behave the way they want and positionate things the way they want.

This is the list of features almost completed that may improve the experience in powerful x86 tablets:
- Cooliris-like 3D wall
- Smooth scrolling(iPhone/iPad-like scrolling)
- Realtime battery life status
- Realtime bluetooth status
- Realtime Wifi status

As usual am very busy with my real time job hence why am writing the concept very dynamic in order to provide the open source code that people can pick up and improve as well as write plugins or widgets for it. the good news is that even non-coders will be able to create widgets or plugins just using configuration. I will provide the source of the project as well as tutorials(with pictures and explanation) in order to help those who choose to go the x86 way as i'm losing hope in Windows 8(already sent the source to some of my friends here).

I just started to write the concept using SharpDevelop and avoiding visual studio since i don't want to use my license from work to provide any compiled versions etc. As of now am still thinking what open source license am going to use.

Screenshot:

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Last edited by @ruantec; March 29th, 2012 at 21:50..

[Phil]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

She was like "very responsive" as it lagged, framerate dropped and chopped.

Kidding aside, I had the time to watch your video, @ruantec. It feels somewhat just like what Apple is doing to OSX. They introduced something called Launchpad in OSX Lion.

Embedded video time:


So Mac users have been using the same UI for a long while.

In fact, instead of click and drag, they have access to multitouch gesture, so all they have to do is swipe on the trackpad or on the mouse, and they're off to the next page. Apple will further refine that interface in Mountain Lion, which comes in a few months. I can't wait to see how it works.

Truth be told, I use Launchpad regularly. It's super easy to get to (pinch four fingers on the trackpad or tap a button on the keyboard), shows me all the applications on the computer, and allows me to arrange them in a way that's easily accessible.

I love the launch pad as well. All the apps pop up in front of you

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[runawayprisoner]

Yeah. But hey, it's like a fullscreen start menu!

And I think it should be made the case that icons in OSX are generally at a higher resolution than their Windows counterparts.

It's silly when you think about it, but... say, take Photoshop CS5 for instance. The default icon on OSX is something like... 512x512, which is insane, but it scales very nicely when you put it on the dock or something, and you don't have to look for a replacement.

Under Windows, most icons go to 48 x 48, or 64 x 64 at most, so it's really hard to get good-looking icons for docks and stuffs.

@ruantec, I think you may also want to try making a notification center of sort. The idea may seem preposterous at first, but I actually like it a lot on Android, and now I'm liking it on iOS as well. It's a good way to keep all events happening on the computer in one place. It's easily accessible, and everyone can get to it.

[@ruantec]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Yeah. But hey, it's like a fullscreen start menu!

And I think it should be made the case that icons in OSX are generally at a higher resolution than their Windows counterparts.

It's silly when you think about it, but... say, take Photoshop CS5 for instance. The default icon on OSX is something like... 512x512, which is insane, but it scales very nicely when you put it on the dock or something, and you don't have to look for a replacement.

Under Windows, most icons go to 48 x 48, or 64 x 64 at most, so it's really hard to get good-looking icons for docks and stuffs.

The icons problems in Windows isn't a Windows problem actually but a problem developers for Windows have. Windows developers create application without thinking in design nor proper design structure as they just focus in code structure which in many cases is a mess or sort of acceptable. Since Windows Vista(not sure about XP) MS added support for icons up to 512x512 using icons resource to increase performance. The icon resource is a wonderful thing as you can pack different icons size like 12x12 to 512x512. When rendering the system takes the icon size that fits better and so it doesn't load the big one if not necessary saving resources. For instance if you check my @ES releases you will notice a very nice mario icon that looks great on every dock application and if you check it even more you will notice it contains several icon sizes that serves for that porpuse.

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

@ruantec, I think you may also want to try making a notification center of sort. The idea may seem preposterous at first, but I actually like it a lot on Android, and now I'm liking it on iOS as well. It's a good way to keep all events happening on the computer in one place. It's easily accessible, and everyone can get to it.

Sounds like a nice idea... do you have links where i can check how it works and what it do??? that may help me to replicate such feature.

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[runawayprisoner]

Yeah, but not every application in Windows has a bigger 512x512 icon. 512x512 is default in OSX.

And as for the Notification Center on Mountain Lion...



Notification Center on iOS (amazingly, it gets more tweaks than Android)



Status Bar drop-down on Android:



Aside from theme, nothing spectacular, but... hey, it's Android. Nobody cares about anything but themes for it.

[@ruantec]

Dunno if i got it right but if i understand correctly the notification center is like a overlay that holds widgets that displays certain information to the user right????

I don't know if you understand what am actually doing with my concept... the thing is i'm sort of creating a dynamic UI framework where people can customize almost anything and even create such widgets the notification center seems like a layer to display those widgets and that my friend gave me an idea

My plan for today or tomorrow morning:

- Create notification center overlay that come from the upper side of the screen like shown on those videos.
- I will create some small widgets(pictures, current time, battery life, power options) and load them there.
- I will add my Cooliris-like 3D Wall container to the notification overlay so you can navigate through your notifications as you do on cooliris.
- I will show the results here.

In case i misunderstood something people correct me

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Last edited by @ruantec; March 30th, 2012 at 16:46..

[runawayprisoner]

No. The notification center is primarily a place to hold event messages.

So say, if I were to receive an email, there should be an entry in the Notification Center.
If I were to receive a text message, it should be in the Notification Center.
If I receive an IM, it should also go into the Notification Center.
If the system wants to tell me the computer needs a new antivirus, that should also go into the Notification Center.

It's a place where... if you go there, you should be able to see all that you have missed during the time that you weren't using your device.

Widgets are only there on iOS. On OSX, Notification Center isn't a widget place because there is already a Dashboard for that. And by the way, Dashboard is a whole screen (think wall) that's dedicated entirely to displaying widgets.

[Lasnap]

There can be on and off widgets on the notification bar in android. Makes it easy to get to things like screen brightness and wifi on and off. The screen brightness widget changes the screen brightness as you tap on it.

Heres a youtube video of what I mean

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Last edited by Lasnap; March 31st, 2012 at 04:07..

[@ruantec]

I just checked and now i know what the notification center is... thanks for the explanation

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Bloodshed Dev C++, Borland C++
Visual Basic 6

[runawayprisoner]

The funny thing is... iOS lacks widgets (widgets in Notification Center are not official), even though OSX has pioneered widgets since... forever.

It's like iOS is Apple's antithesis.

[@ruantec]

Yeah Apple did a great job there but it needs to get better

Widgets creation are great but to my opinion they are still not easy enough for most of the people even if they want to use a function of a framework. In other words you can't create a funcional widget without coding skills.

I personally believe Widgets should serve as presenters to display information and have some basic functionality that doesn't necessary need coding experience. Of course one should have the ability to improve it too in case the creator have coding skills hence why i am working on that in my dynamic UI concept at work... for instance this is my DateTime info widget source:

XAML:

<UserControl
	xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
	xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
	xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
	xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
	mc:Ignorable="d"
	x:Class="AES.Controls.DateTimeInfo"
	x:Name="UserControl">
	<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
		<Grid x:Name="TimerBar" Margin="0,0,0,2">
			<Label x:Name="UILabelTime_shadow" Margin="2,2,0,13" Content="{Binding CurrentTime}" Foreground="Black" FontSize="76" HorizontalAlignment="Left"/>
			<Label x:Name="UILabelTDate_shadow" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Height="80" Content="{Binding CurrentDate}" Foreground="Black" FontSize="35" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="2,0,0,-42"/>
			<Label x:Name="UILabelTime" Margin="0,0,0,15" Content="{Binding CurrentTime}" Foreground="WhiteSmoke" FontSize="76" HorizontalAlignment="Left" />
			<Label x:Name="UILabelTDate" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Height="80" Content="{Binding CurrentDate}" Foreground="WhiteSmoke" FontSize="35" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,0,0,-40" />
		</Grid>
	</Grid>
</UserControl>

Code behind:

namespace AES.Controls
{
	/// <summary>
	/// Interaction logic for DateTimeInfo.xaml
	/// </summary>
	public partial class DateTimeInfo
	{
		public DateTimeInfo()
		{
			InitializeComponent();
		}
	}
}

Except for the bindings and the 4 labels all is standard generated code by the IDE and to complete the combo there is no code behind at all except for the base constructor which is auto-generated code as well and yet this is the result:



The reason why it works is because somewhere in my framework i have the following code which doesn't have a single idea what a widget is or who is using it as it just provide the information in the framework on request and nothing else:

/// <summary>
        /// Get or Set current time variable
        /// </summary>
        private string currentTime;
        /// <summary>
        /// Get or Set current date variable
        /// </summary>
        private string currentDate;
        /// <summary>
        /// Current time binding property
        /// </summary>
        public string CurrentTime
        {
            get { return currentTime; }
            set { currentTime = value; InvokePropertyChanged("CurrentTime"); }
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Current date binding property
        /// </summary>
        public string CurrentDate
        {
            get { return currentDate; }
            set { currentDate = value; InvokePropertyChanged("CurrentDate"); }
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Base constructor
        /// </summary>
        public UILMainViewModel()
        {
            //Initialize commands
            FullscreenCommand = new DelegateCommand(Fullscreen);
            ExitCommand = new DelegateCommand(Exit);
            SettingsCommand = new DelegateCommand(Settings);
            //Add view to view model helper
            ViewModelHelper.ModelDictionary.Add(ViewModelHelper.ViewType.Main, this);
            //initialize timers
            timer = new DispatcherTimer { Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000) };
            timer.Tick += TimerTick;
            timer.Start();
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Timer tick responsible to display the time and date on the main layer
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender"></param>
        /// <param name="e"></param>
        void TimerTick(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            SetTimeAndDate();
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Set current time and date values
        /// </summary>
        private void SetTimeAndDate()
        {
            CurrentTime = DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString();
            CurrentDate = string.Format("{0}, {1} {2}", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.GetDayName(DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek), DateTime.Now.Day, GetMonthName(DateTime.Now.Month, false));
        }
        private static string GetMonthName(int month, bool abbrev)
        {
            var date = new DateTime(1900, month, 1);
            return date.ToString(abbrev ? "MMM" + "." : "MMMM");
        }

The widget creator doesn't need to bother with coding but just know that i have that functionality in my framework and use it

__________________

Current development tools:

Visual C++.net, Visual C#.net
Visual VB.net, Visual Webdeveloper.net
Bloodshed Dev C++, Borland C++
Visual Basic 6

---

Last edited by @ruantec; March 31st, 2012 at 00:05..

[runawayprisoner]

Look into GeekTool on OSX. It's a widget-making platform that allows some simple controls without coding skills. More advanced stuffs can still be done with simple scripting, though, but nothing too elaborate.

But since it's somewhat in conflict with Dashboard, it's in between in terms of support from the dev community, and Dashboard still has more widgets in general.

On iOS, we get Dreamboard, which is an HTML layout platform that replaces the Springboard, basically. It allows you to theme from the lock screen to the home screen with just HTML, CSS, and some scripting.

[Silenus]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Notification Center on iOS (amazingly, it gets more tweaks than Android)



Status Bar drop-down on Android:



Aside from theme, nothing spectacular, but... hey, it's Android. Nobody cares about anything but themes for it.

Not really.

Jaykay Mod.


Lidroid 14 toggle mod.

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[runawayprisoner]

Yeah, but you gotta admit, those mods don't work with all phones. Most of them only work with Galaxy S phones, but Galaxy S phones already come default with those toggles as far as I know.

Meanwhile, there's a lot more than just system toggles available for iPhone. There are media controls, task manager, RAM usage visualizer, app switcher, Siri toggles, camera switch, etc...

[Lasnap]

Those toggles are standard in Cyanogen Mod so quite a number of phones have access to them besides the galaxy s phones RAP

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[imlost]

Originally Posted by Lasnap

There can be on and off widgets on the notification bar in android. Makes it easy to get to things like screen brightness and wifi on and off. The screen brightness widget changes the screen brightness as you tap on it.

Heres a youtube video of what I mean

[youtube]Z5V070lTzys]/youtube]

Hmm not sure why the youtube link did not work

http://youtu.be/Z5V070lTzys

The tag didn't work because you made a typo. It should be
[ /youtube]
(without the space between "[" and "/", and not
]/youtube]

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[Lasnap]

Didn't see that until you said something about it imlost

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[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by Lasnap

Those toggles are standard in Cyanogen Mod so quite a number of phones have access to them besides the galaxy s phones RAP

Yeah, but still not all phones. By that, I mean it's not a tweak that anyone can get to in the Marketplace after rooting their phones. In contrast, you can find a section on Cydia that's dedicated to Notification Center tweaks.

The way I look at it, Android users in general do care about stuffs like that, but developers don't, so most of the time, it's a waiting game to get something. XDA has bounties for this kind of thing, but even that doesn't work most of the time.

Edit: just joined the 4[S] bandwagon. Now my phone can play back 1080p!!!

But joking aside, the speed improvement over the 4 is quite obvious. Well, that's all the better!

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Last edited by runawayprisoner; March 31st, 2012 at 20:16..

[Silenus]

*Although you can get good apps on the market that help change the way we use android phones, it's true that in some cases (not sure) there are more tweaks for JAILBROKEN iphones.

With android you can get a lot of apps without being rooted, with iphones there is zilch.

The only "advantage" of the jailbreak scene is that there are no modified custom firmwares by different devs that change the internals so that keeps the compatibility of tweaks to any iPhone aside from hardware limitation.


About the 4S
The 4S is too boring.

Wonder why you didn't wait till june or september for the real 5.

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Last edited by Silenus; April 2nd, 2012 at 19:16..