[maemo-developers] Fremantle UI Portrait Mode

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 17:19 +0200, ext Cornelius Hald wrote:
> Hi,

Hi,

> as I was asked to write a bit about the fremantle-ization of the Conboy 
> UI, I first would like to ask some more UI specific questions. Then I 
> can complete this process and write about it.
> 
> * What happens with the AppMenu-Filters when in portrait mode? The HIG 
> tells me that the 2x5 button layout of the AppMenu will change into a 
> 1x10 button layout. But what happens with the single row of Filters? 
> Will it still be a single row? This is important to know, because it 
> would mean that we have to reduce the length of our labels by around 50%.
> 
> * What happens to toolbars when in portrait mode? Is there some 
> automatic behavior like showing the toolbar as two rows instead of a 
> single row? Is it scaled? Is the space between the buttons reduced?
> Or do we have to care about this by ourself, for example listen to some 
> signal and then hiding some buttons or rearranging them?

AFAIK, there is automatic relayout only for confirmation dialogs (and
maybe application menu as you said), but not much more. So toolbars you
have to handle yourself.  The toolkit people can give better answers
(I'm handling the hildon-desktop side).

> * What happens to any other widget when in portrait mode?

It looks crap. That's why the rotation is not unconditional, see below.

> * Is there a signal which signals that the screen orientation changed?

Yes, XRandr signals, which are handled by GTK, methinks.

> * Is there a function to change the screen orientation and can we 
> somehow use this with the beta SDK?

Yes, we have _HILDON_PORTRAIT_MODE_REQUEST and
_HILDON_PORTRAIT_MODE_SUPPORT window properties (I think libhildon has
convenience functions for setting them).  The request property makes
hildon-desktop to rotate the screen using XRandR, _IF_ all other visible
windows are ok with that.  If you don't have the support property or
request property, it means that your window only supports the landscape
mode.

> The HIG[1][2] is very vague on that matter so it would really be nice if 
> someone from the hildon team or the UI specs team could comment on that. 
> I think it would be a shame if the new device is finally available and 
> every time someone holds the device in portrait mode, everything* looks 
> like crap.

Crap is good for the flowers :)

BR; Kimmo

> 
> Thank you!
> Conny
> 
> [1] http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hig/html/ch02.html
> [2] 
> http://maemo.org/api_refs/5.0/beta/hig/html/ch07s02.html#fingers-one-hand-usage
> * but the build in applications ;)
> 
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