[maemo-developers] Proposal for new hildon-extras widget

[From: Piñeiro]

From: "Gabriel Schulhof" <nix at go-nix.ca>

> I've been working on a HildonPannableArea/GtkTreeView-based multicolumn
> widget to replace GtkMenu widgets. I wanted to do this because, as you
> know, Pidgin has quite a complex menu structure.
> 
> I have created a pair of before/after videos that illustrate the new widget:
> 
> Before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1xmWLi1dJU
> After: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlahbMSx8kA

Although Fremantle Guidelines are not commands written in stone, I
have one doubt. Have you tried to rearrange the menus using that.

After all both videos are against the current Fremantle GUI
Guidelines.

This guidelines are oriented to simplify as much as possible the
menus, and avoid nested menus, as the one shown in your first
video. The second video just shows that menus in other way, but it
still show a lot of menu information in a really small screen, being,
IMHO, somewhat messy.

Being simplistic, the idea is replace GtkMenu with HildonAppMenu, and
avoid the nested menus using stackable windows, as explained here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide/Porting_Software/Redesigning_From_Maemo_4_to_Maemo_5#Limit_of_10_items_in_the_view_menus

More information (some are legacy, but basically functional).

http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide
http://wiki.maemo.org/Legacy_Maemo_5_Documentation/Graphical_UI_Tutorial
http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/eb8a68ba-6225-4d84-ba8f-a00e4a05ff6f/Hildon_2_2_UI_Style_Guide.html
http://wiki.maemo.org/Legacy_Maemo_5_Documentation/Human_Interface_Guidelines

> Please let me know what you think,

Note that I'm not against your work, as there are a lot of valid
solutions for the same problem.

Just noting that in Fremantle it was made a lot of effort in order to
create a GUI style, oriented to mobile devices, and just noting that
probably it would be good to test it if is possible to maintain the
coherence with other applications as much as possible.

BR

===
API (apinheiro at igalia.com)