[maemo-developers] Community widgets for Fremantle

[From: Piñeiro]

From: Cornelius Hald <hald at icandy.de>

> There are some important widgets which are deprecated without a
> replacement in Fremantle. Those widgets are still available, but they
> are not fully finger-friendly or don't look good.

As far as I remember, we have a conversation with you about the color
selector and picker. But I dont find the exact place :P

As far as I remember, the conclusion was that that widgets are
interesting, on hildon itself, but nobody has time to do that at that
time, due time restraints and priorities.

> Developers are expected to implement those widgets by them selfs which
> could lead us to a situation where we have lots of duplicated work and
> inconsistent behavior between different applications.
> 
> I propose to create a garage project, let's say 'hildon-extras' with the
> goal of creating a library containing missing widgets where more than
> one person is interested in.

Well, I suppose that you are thinking in something like libsexy [1], a
"more-flexible" library to put shared effort. Anyway, as I said,
probably all this widgets can have a place inside hildon. Would you
like that in the future this widgets would be moved to Hildon or you
prefer a differen approach?

> Personally I would like to see the following widgets:
> 
> * HildonExtrasColorButton:
> A button that looks like a HildonCheckButton, but instead of the check
> mark it displays the selected color. When clicking this button a
> HildonExtrasColorChooserDialog is opened.

So in this case, at least in the behaviour, is more similar to the
HildonTimeButton or HildonDateButton, but showing a "square" with the
color, instead of the value string. Right?

> * HildonExtrasColorChooserDialog:
> A dialog that displays a HildonExtrasColorChooser.

In hildon was not required to created a specific dialog for the
HildonDateButton or the HildonTimeButton. Both uses the current
HildonPickerDialog. Why do you think that a specific dialog is
required? What features do you think that misses HildonPickerDialog?

BTW, as I still think that a future convergence would be a good idea,
and as a HildonColorChooserDialog exists yet (the deprecated one), I
would use another name, like HildonExtrasColorPickerDialog (just a
suggestion).

> * HildonExtrasColorChooser:
> A widget that lets the user select a color by only using fingers. I'm
> not yet sure how it should look like, but personally I would like
> something with three color wheels or touch selectors for red, green and
> blue. Then next to it a field shows the composed color of those three
> 'color wheels'. Plus an area where you have, for example, the last 8
> used colors.

Hmmm, as far as I see this is just the current (and deprecated)
HildonColorChooser. What would be the difference? Bigger buttons (to
be more friendly)? Could you make a mockup?

AFAIR, when we were talking about that, me (or Claudio) suggested a
friendly-finger touch-selector, with a limited amount of colors
predefined.

Other option could be a three column (red+green+blue) touch-selector,
that allows you to select the mixture you want.

(This touch-selector approach could be called
HildonExtrasColorSelector, for example)

> * HildonExtrasFontSelectionDialog:
> A dialog that lets the user select font face and size. Maybe also font
> style (bold, italic, ...), color and other things.

As I said before, why it is required a specific Dialog?

So I would bet for a HildonExtrasFontButton and a
HildonExtrasFontSelector. So the button just open a
HildonPickerDialog, and put inside a HildonFontSelector, like the
current HildonDateButton-HildonDateSelector.

> * HildonExtrasCheckButton:
> A button with two labels like a normal HildonButton, but with a check
> mark on the left like a HildonCheckButton. So basically a
> HildonCheckButton with two labels. (I'll do that if no one minds).

> There are probably more widgets, so feel free to write about your ideas
> and how you think that some widgets should look and behave. Also of
> course, those names and ideas are not fixed - nothing is fixed, it's
> just a very early proposal. I just felt, like we should discuss this
> here, visible for everyone because there have been some discussion about
> that issue already in other places.

Well, as I said, this is a good idea if you think in something like
libsexy, in order to have ASAP a place to put this widgets, and the
future plan is integrate this widgets or features on Hildon. As we
talked before, I agree that give Fremantle-like equivalent widgets to
the Hildon 1.0 deprecated widgets is a good idea, and a good idea to
put that on Hildon.

BTW: the problem that I found to "hildon-extras" name is that is too
long ;) HildonExtrasFontSelector seems too long for me. I would prefer
a name for the library, probably with a "H" to infer that is Hildon
related (like HAIL-Hildon Accessibility Implementation Library), what
about Hexy? (Hildon Sexy), so HexyColorButton and so on. But this is
just a question of taste.

> So who is interested? Who wants to provide code or mockups? Ideas?
> Critics? Flames? Let the ideas roll :)

Just my two cents.

> Cheers!
> Conny

BR

[1] http://www.chipx86.com/w/index.php/Libsexy

===
API (apinheiro at igalia.com)