[maemo-developers] Community widgets for Fremantle

[From: Cornelius Hald]

Hi Andrew,

> I have released countdown-home 0.5-8 to extras-testing for Fremantle.  I 
> have gotten some initial positive feedback for the colour and font 
> selection I use.

I tried your applet and the dialogs are working good and they are finger
friendly. Two things the deprecated dialogs are not :)

To give other people an easy way to look at it, I created some
screenshots here:

http://zwong.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/screenshot11.png
http://zwong.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/screenshot09.png
http://zwong.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/screenshot12.png

> I have made the font selection and colour selection widgets as 
> self-contained as possible - they are not integrated in any way in the 
> countdown-home code.  In my case, I decided to try to parallel past 
> hildon colour and font dialogs as much as possible.
> 
> To this end I now have six different widgets, each prefaced with "he" 
> for hildon-extras (but much shorter).  They are:
> 
> he-color-button, he-color-dialog, he-color-selector
> he-font-button, he-font-dialog, he-font-selector
> 
> As for developing with these widgets, the developer need only put a 
> font/color button in his/her application and he/she can set and retrieve 
> the font/colour through that.  For example, the he-color-button 
> automatically creates a he-color-dialog for user input containing an 
> he-color-selector.  The developer can use the dialog and selector 
> widgets as well, but it is just easier to put a button in and have 
> everything controlled.

I think that's the way to go.

> I would welcome any thoughts on my particular implementation.  The 
> source can be obtained at:  
> http://repository.maemo.org/extras-testing/pool/fremantle/free/source/c/countdown-home/countdown-home_0.5-8.tar.gz

The implementation looks fine to me. I'm not an expert, though :)

As for the look and feel I have the following ideas (I think I already
wrote them somewhere, but cannot remember):

- Render the font names in the font that they represent. You could then
get rid of the preview label at the top.

- On the font button a bit more spacing between the size and the
separator would be good. Or use picker button style (see below).

- I think it would be good to get the labels, which you now have in
front of the color button and the font button, into the button itself.
That's how Hildon is doing it mostly. Therefore:

-- Put the label of the color button onto the button itself to make it
look a bit like a check button. The color field on the button must then
shrink of course, but I think it's not needed to be so big anyways.

-- Put the label of the font button onto the button itself. I think you
could use the feature of the HildonButton here which allows two labels.
The first label would be the label/caption of the button (e.g. Title
font) and the second label could show "Courier New (18)".

- The color selector works, but I think it would be more powerful if it
would be combined with the simple color picker that Thomas proposed.
Also the selected color is quite big, maybe this space could be used
otherwise. Please also have a look at the mockup posted by Felipe. Maybe
you could work somehow together.


Sorry for my late answer and thanks for the work!
Conny