ImprovementIdeas

Collection of ideas on how to improve maemo and existing maemo software

Clarification please: does "maemo software" include the closed source Nokia 770 things or not? --DannyMilosavljevic

Note: Bug reports and feature requests concerning the system and the included software should probably go to the Issue Tracking System.

Policy

  • This is probably the wrong place for this comment, but I can find no other. The manual that comes with the 770 states on page 37.

    "Application installer — This feature is intended for software developers only. It enables installing new applications, viewing installed packages, and uninstalling currently selected packages."

    This certainly is a stopper for anyone who wants to increase the usability of the device that they just paid $360.00 for. This is NOT a good idea. Users should be encouraged to put new apps on their device. There must be a way to fix this. I know that this needs to be voiced to Nokia, but I think this is where the power to change is.

  • Rather than provide (all possible!) applications as standard, you could raise user confidence that an app will work by testing it and reporting success. Many (most?) 770 early adopters will feel pretty comfortable about downloading and cross installing the app. I know there's a wiki section on this, but I was thinking of something more widely publicised, perhaps even on the Nokia site (and everyone's blogs of course!) Note: this would not be enough for mainstream volume users. But we're not there (yet).

Updates from upstream

  • Updating Flash Player to 7,0,63,0 (latest stable release for linux) would allow users to watch Flash Video (FLV) based on the Sorenson Spark Codec, which is quite popular at the moment.

    I really don't see how anyone could even expect any flash on the device. Its minimum system requirements are insane. -- DannyMilosavljevic

    An updated Flash Player with proper Javascript support is highly recommended. It is really not cool enough if the device could not watch youtube easily. -- meowson

Default Kernel (and Kernel Modules)

Base System, long term

  • Remove gnome-vfs. One VFS is enough (FUSE is nice for network mount access etc). And worse, the names are inconsistent (Unix-VFS <-> Gnome-VFS), leading to namespace fragmentation.

  • use alsa (with mixing support), then remove esound

  • Put ALL user-related data on the rs-mmc-smartcard, so if i remove the flashmemory and put in my sister's one, it will look like my sister's 770 and no longer like mine. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer for ideas)). (I, DannyMilosavljevic, shamelessly culled the text above)

    You mean like MMC-unionfs? Is nice, yeah. Has not been updated for a while, though. -- DannyMilosavljevic

Look and Feel

  • Allow user (not root) installable themes.

  • Allow user to setup smaller fonts for main font.

  • Remove the GTK_STOCK_YES and GTK_STOCK_NO from gtk so people get a clue and design dialogs like all good dialogs are designed ever since the 1980s. Read just about any Human Interface Guidelines and see.

  • Add ability to flip the orientation of the screen. Some websites are thin (like slashdot) and are better viewed vertically.

    I use FBReader only in portrait mode...

Monitoring

  • Many icons have that 4-stage intensity display: brightness, audio volume, battery. Some of the open source apps have that intensity bar as well. It would really be nice if the strength of the WLAN would also be displayed on top of the little globe symbol. It's already known, because on the "connect" screen, it's shown already. But I want to see it all the time, up there (except of course when an application is full screen).

  • Allow the user to manage items on the Statusbar. I have 3 applications I would like to add to my Nokia that use the Statusbar, but there are only 2 open spots; I could fix this by disabling or removing one of the items preinstalled (& not obviously removable) there.

    Or it could support arbitrary number of entries. Then it wouldn't have to magically hide entries, nowhere to be found ever again. -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • WLAN 'world' icon could be substituted by a wifi/bt signal strength meter when connected

Input Methods

  • Add a shift button on the right side of the on screen keyboard. And BTW a control key visible clearly somewhere. If you tap on a button and move the stylus upwards the output will be shift + button.

  • Handwriting recognition: Make it easier to differentiate between capital and small letters (maybe mark caps by underlining them?). Provide gestures for switching between letters mode and symbols mode; also, between languages. Gestures for shift, control, shift lock.

  • Add a systemwide macro facility to paste frequently-used snippets of text into text fields (such as email address and name) -- especially if Opera doesn't add a password manager to the browser. (This should be an enhancement of the text prediction engine, shouldn't it?)

    In fact Opera did add a password manager :), although it looks like from another planet - tiny dialog with buttons that say "ok"/"cancel" instead of the obvious "Remember"/"Forget". Details see OperaWeirdRememberLogin

  • There should be an application-independent way to bring up the onscreen keyboard, for use with non-gtk and remote applications.

  • Add a third "Hybrid" mode between Handwriting recognition and Keyboard input. It uses the keyboard screen as the main input source but also has a handwriting-recognition drawing square that replaces where the number pad is on the keyboard layout. Then, as we're typing, we can also use our default 16 user-defined macros we're allowed in the Teach area of the Handwriting Recognition window. This would allow for the best of both worlds in one screen, for those of us who can't get a BT keyboard right away.

Development Environment

  • Split busybox into busybox and busybox_root - busybox_root contains the functions that must be SUID root to work (e.g. su, sudo, mount/umount, ping, traceroute) and busybox contains the rest of the system functions. Doing this would allow setting busybox_root as SUID root, and would allow more functions in less space.

  • Keep Python up to date

Web Browser

  • Add feature to Opera: "Open Selected as URL" to get Opera to open a new window from URL's (that you have highlighted) that are in text format, not hyperlinked. It would just be a great timesaver since many of the RSS feeds I subscribe to have links in them I can't just click on for some reason.

File Manager

  • I want the file manager to show file extensions and allow you to change them. For example, if an mpeg file exist on the RS-MMC, you can't see the extension in file manager or change it. If you copy a file with an extension the 770 doesn't recognize from a PC, then the extension is visible in file manager. As soon as you change it to something it recognizes, the extension is truncated, and thus no longer able to be altered by the user.

    Actually I've been preaching for like forever that abusing part of the file name as the file type is a bad idea and complicates everything for no reason. Ideally, the file types would be listed in the inode (along with the preferred application). Sigh. -- Danny Milosavljevic

  • If there are multiple applications that could open a file, allow user to associate the preferred application ( 1 ) per file (f.e. /foo/bar/baz only, ...) or

    2 ) per file type (f.e. image/png, ...) ) and per action (f.e. open, edit, rotate, whatever).

    for example user prefers to:

    open image/png with program "open-png.desktop"

    open file "/bla/bla/bla" which is a image/png by program "bla-png.desktop"

    edit image/png with program "edit-png.desktop"

    rotate image/png with program "rotate-png.desktop"

    and let's say actually, opening image/png would be supported by "open-png.desktop", "bla-png.desktop" and_ "foo-png.desktop"

Reading

  • Enhance the PDF viewer to precalculate the next page and to scroll continuous between pages. This is especially useful when reading in fullscreen mode.

Multimedia

  • Add support for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (both files as well as streaming) to the audio player

    (there are some instructions on the Wiki on how to compile such a thing yourself, but it didn't work for me - i.e. "Video Player" used up all available memory, then crashed; and I don't find the page anymore :()

      • DannyMilosavljevic

  • VLC media player compiled and tested for maemo. Open source available on www.videolan.org

    I really doubt we need multiple frameworks doing the same thing on an embedded device. Who agrees? -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • why is there NO image viewers like (Irfanview) or the equivalent being developed for the 770?

    Well, you can change that. Shameless-plug View Manga, a little image viewer I wrote to be able to read manga (comics) nicely. Feel free to extend. Or port some huge 99%-of-its-functionality-you'll-never-use app like gqview over :) -- DannyMilosavljevic

    • The default image viewer cannot seem to recognize about 40% of all the pictures I download, and I have to load Evince (which isn't even designed for that)to see the images.

      Check /etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders to find out what formats are supported by gtk. If some is missing, install a loader for it. In an embedded device I really don't need loaders of every format under the sun to be installed by default, but rather I'll convert images when uploading them onto the device. -- DannyMilosavljevic

    • We really need an exhaustive, quick, image viewer, with slideshow capabilities, and saved imagelists.

      exhaustive: is the enemy of design. Good Design leaves everything unneccessary out. "Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler"

      quick: well, my manga viewer stays barely on the 2 second pain-threshold time for loading an image (usability guidelines: anything taking more than 2 seconds as a response to user input when user is waiting on it is too slow). I see no way to improve on that further without a hardware upgrade - and believe me, I tried to find ways, since I hate to be only "barely acceptable".

      slideshow: well, I mapped a hardware button ("+") to go to the next image. I don't see what a slide show is good for on the device. (Or do I misunderstand what you mean?)

      saved imagelists: Such a thing is called a "directory" of "links". Really, try it :)

      Inner Comments by -- DannyMilosavljevic

    • Also, icons for images don't appear fast enough, is there some way the icon system could be updated to display faster?

      I have no idea. There is a nice patch though that speeds up the MMC card access A LOT. -- DannyMilosavljevic

    • What about saving the icons generated into an icon database inside each folder that then automatically updates on the 770 when you enter the folder?

      You mean storing the thumbnail as metadata of the file. Be careful, people get the wrong idea whenever someone says "database" nowadays. They think "relational database", when here actually a simple normal icon file on the filesystem per image suffices.

        • Danny Milosavljevic

E-Mail

  • Include fetchmail and getmail and efficient CLI tools

  • Folders in IMAP-based mail. It's pretty useless without this capability. Even one-level down would be a world of difference.

  • Filters for the mail client.

  • Ability to mark messages read in the mail client.

  • ImprovementIdeasForOssoEmail

  • For email

    1 . Add an option for automatic BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) primarily so that user can send copy of maemo originated mail back to themselves (for situation where user primary mail client is somewhere else and they want a record of things they sent from maemo). Currently there is an option to request that a copy is sent - but it is reset to default as No for each new message. 2 . Offline mode when marking for delete - should not need to be on-line when choosing to delete mail from remote server. It should remember and then delete later (assuming that the mail is still there to be deleted). 3 . Alternate SMTP servers for given POP/IMAP mailbox - to cater for roaming user that is sending via different ISP mail server depending on where they happen to be (but is fetching from same source). Many ISPs do not allow sending of email through their server unless you are in their IP range but do allow fecthing. UPDATE: IT2006 has this feature - thanks. 4 . Marking multiple messages - right now this requires 4 clicks (Options/Edit/Select/Mark) - but would be much easier if the final column could be click on to toggle select/deselect. This is the column where the green tick appears when using the Mark function above. UPDATE: IT2006 makes this worse because you cannot select multiple messages any more (except for All Messages). 5 . Use smaller fonts for lists (all) 6 . Do not show email header as default behaviour 7 . When receiving forwarded messages, the email client does not show the original sender, but the email from which the email is forwarded. It is showing the Resent-from field and not the correct From field.

News

  • NNTP News Reader client (pan 1.107 ?)

  • ImprovementIdeasForOssoRssFeedReader

  • Add support for podcasts and video podcasts to the news-reader. Now it opens the web-browser when opening a podcast.

Organizer

  • The PIM functions so far are interesting and useful, but it would be even better if the Nokia 770 could fully synchronize with full function organizers such as ACT!, etc, including not only the PIM data but the notes, tasks, etc.

  • The functionality of the Nokia PC suite is getting closer to this capability, so perhaps there is a way to port over that program and allow sync between the 770 and other Nokia phones.

  • Improve synchronization (ie., do more testing), especially with regard to GPE. I need a way to backup GPE contacts/appointments, and it would be nice to have a client (i.e., Evolution) that could sync with the PIM. On a similar note, while we're waiting for that to happen, I'd like some way of knowing that GPE data could eventually export easily into a PC application. (i.e., export from GPE into Evolution). Is very important!

External Tools (not on the device)

  • Allow same functionality found in Nokia PC Suite. Using phone can send/recv SMS. Can browse phone file system. Can manipulate calendar and address books.

Connectivity

  • Enable NAP BT mode as recognized connection type

  • WIFI: Add support for WEP with PEAP (I know that WPA with PEAP support already exist) (also 802.1x support?)

  • Add support for .mp4 video-files. Nokia N90 outputs .mp4 video so this should be a must.

  • The connection manager should be able to automatically connect to multiple networks. Once a network is configured, it should not ask about it again.

  • The connection manager should store settings based upon MAC address, not SSID, as many people reuse common SSSIDs (e.g. Linksys, Netgear, private, etc.) with different settings.

  • Add support for NFS or SMB remote file systems so movies and music can be accessed from a server. NFS does work but requires root access on the device. There's currently no GUI for NFS. A GUI cannot be installed with the application installer due to the need for root access. It will have to be a part of the flashed image. This can also be done after you gained root. The openssh package for example contains a shellscript that installs sshd in init.d and adds it to the startup scripts.

    I'd prefer something normal like sftp -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • Add a configuration plugin to define the default usage of the USB port (networking or storage).

Left Hand Mode

  • Add left-handed mode.Rotation of the screen for left-handed users. Also, this lets you to attach the cables in the upper side of the device so you can put it vertically on some holder or on the table.

    Done in part, via the randr X library.

  • Add a way to bring up the app menu with the stylus, this would help single handed use. 'In non-fullscreen mode, clicking the title bar brings up the app's menu. Is this what you meant?' yes, now, in full screen mode, grabbing the device with the right hand is required

Things already done (should I delete them from the wiki? hesitating...)

  • Hosting space on maemo.org

  • Add Java support Does that mean Java applets, applications (with hildon), games (j2me/no hildon?) or everything? --TommiKomulainen

    I saw http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog2006Wip#head-27308ca5c27fe7db1e0c2fc21649ffa7b88ff28d , so we at least have some beginnings? -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • Show favicon instead earthball in left sidebar for webbrowser. This is very usefull when browsing with multiple browser instances on different sites.

  • Host USB devices.

    If you give it power, it will host. -- DannyMilosavljevic Easy USB Host Hub setup

  • Act as a USB storage device when plugged into a computer for easier file transfers. Any specialized interaction can be managed by an extra level of interaction based on installed drivers.

    With an MMC card, it does exactly that. Not sure if possible for ${HOME} too.

  • apt-get or synaptic or gnome-app-install with a repository of course

    Last time I checked there was an "Application Installer" - is the wiki entry that old? :) -- DannyMilosavljevic

Things inappropriate/impossible

  • Add printing support (PCL/Postscript?) (cups ? bt-printing ?) Printing wastes paper.

  • I really need to load Wine any way it could use the card? - john hadley takefreshair@yahoo (Wine is not an Emulator! And don't even think about emulating a PC. Try Bochs on a decent PC and you know why.)

Things unverifiable

  • Modify Opera to access the bookmarks faster

    How fast is "faster"? What do you mean by "Access the bookmarks"? Open the menu at the top left of the desktop? -- DannyMilosavljevic

Things questionable

  • Ability for a application to disable the Home Button.

    Why? -- DannyMilosavljevic

$3xx Remote Control

  • Port some HID profiles (both client and server). Wouldn't it be nice if you could use your n770 as mouse- or keyboard-replacement with any ordinary window§-notebook ? just an idea if someone has a lonely weekend. Partly done: Xkbd-btHID. Mouse/Touchpad/Joystick any?

  • (Sorry, I know this is a hardware issue.) Add an IR transceiver to the Nokia 770. If one of the 770 use cases is as a web browser for couch potatoes, we might as well let it control the TV. May be that Audio->IrDA solution would be a case? how-to-turn-your-ipod-in-to-a-universal-infrared-remote-control

  • Add a feature to make the PDA to act as complementary keyboard of your computer... (IR, bluetooth... or whatever), the idea is to have a programable keyboard in which you can program personalizable hotkeys for creatig shortcuts for other programs like CAD program. "keys" should be customizable (you could assign an action and a name to each one).

A unic key should send a combination of keys... It would as well have multiple key layers.

I think this PDA is the more apropiate to make something like that since it has a great screen...

That's the idea, maybe SCI/FI? Everybody that plays games,or use programs whre complicated key combinations or people that have to make repetitive tasks will love it. I hate function keys and it's placement in every keyboard.

Other

  • Invent an address book that lets you put phone numbers in it and initiate a call via Bluetooth (SEE BELOW) as well as collect statistics from the phone.

  • Make system software updates available directly to the 770 (via rs-mmc?), not through a Windows/Linux/Mac/whatever pc. If people outside of the computing world can't update easily (really, really easily - think 1-button), the 770 will never fly. Using a real package system for the device software and not just user installs would be a good direction to go here. A lot of linux distributions already have "one click" dist-upgrades.

  • I agree with the above poster about having a way to flash our 770's without the use of a PC or Mac. That's just dumb. So let us save the new update to our RS-MMC cards, and when we boot up, hold the Home key and have a small program load that says "Click on the file" and loads our RS-MMC card and when we select the file, it flashes the rom from our own cards! Why can't something like that work? IT could be added in the 2006 update and free us from our computers. The poster above is a genius, I hope Nokia is listening!

  • Set system clock by NTP. NTP is available. I run it from the mem/load applet RUN feature; requires sudoer edit

  • Opera browser needs a setting to allow it to identify itself as one of the required browsers for online banking applications. Have a look at this howto: /ChangeUserAgentInOpera A nice GUI option would help a lot though Having installed Flash last available version would also increase a lot the users' experience by allowing them to watch live broadcast tv streams among other features :)

    The online banking application needs to be fixed. Oh yeah, the minority needs to adapt to the majority. I forgot... -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • wlan top icon should offer following menu items instead of 'Connect...': 'AutoConnect', & 'Connect To...' --RickHull

  • Open file dialog window is too small. It can't be set to full screen nor does it allow to read the full names or view many archives at once.

    We (Xfce) played with the idea of putting files and folders into the same tree control. Wasn't that popular, I think... (but I like it). Obviously this would give you roughly double the horizontal space to work with (good :) ) -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • Support USB DVB-T Sticks. It would be great to be able to watch TV every where you go.

    Hmm... don't you need a huge-ass antenna to be able to receive that? (like 10 times the size of the device :) ) -- DannyMilosavljevic

  • Tip: VMWare is a very good PC virtualisation package we use it daily at work. And they have just released a freely distributable player. The player is only limited in that it can not create new "images" but there are many Linux images readily available. For example there is an Ubuntu image which can be downloaded to try out ubuntu. I was thinking it would not be too difficult to setup a complete development environment using a pre configured image and then redistribute this VMWare image so that people who want to try and see (and are not profficiant in Linux) can easily check it out. I myself am just starting out on the linux road and do not feel secure enough to set it up... Good luck, and I hope this can help people. - - Twonky

  • When I am thinking about the platform maemo and the Nokia 770 then I have a lot of ideas, but I can not read anything here or in the web about the potential horizon of this well designed hardware. The potential usability and the benefit for users can be big. Lets think big together.

Ideas proposed by the community in Karoliina's feedback request

(I'll not edit these since Karoliina should read them as they were originally, I guess... also, I'm tired ;) -- DannyMilosavljevic)

STATUS BAR EXPANDING HORIZONTALLY AND VERTICALLY, PRIORITIZATION AND REARRANGEABILITY -The ability to have more than 5 icons in the statusbar or the ability to collapse them? (not sure how that would work out) I would also like the icons in statusbar not to be hardcoded and limited in number. Would be nice to have priorities and sort them and/or allow to rearange or hide them like the task navigator now allows with application menu (Task navigator applet in Control panel). 2. The possibility to change the distance between icons on the Status Bar, and at user level (this would make it possible to fit more icons) or, alternatively, make the Status bar wider, or make àll the icons on the Status Bar removable at user level. - I would really enjoy seeing (As others have described) to be able to have an arbitrary number of icons for the task bar and status bar, perhaps with arrows to scroll through them. If there are more status bar applets that available space I would sugest to have some light clickable arrows on left or right side and temporarily pop-up next icons down or to the left over window name. Or maybe scroll them in place? Also, could it be possible to re-arrange the order of the items up there? I’d like my clock applet to be all the way to the right, but it’s a third-party program, so there’d have to be some built-in support for rearranging that wasn’t just limited to built-in applets. In addition, would it be possible to have the statusbar manager delete some of the built-in items that appear in the statusbar? I don’t need the volume control as much as other people do, so I’d like to get rid of it. Or, if it could be a combination screen brightness / volume control squeezed side-by-side into one icon with indicators for each still visible, that would save some space up there, too. When you click on it, you get access to both sets of controls (of course).

SMALLER TASK NAVIGATOR SIZE -The ability to make the left bar with icons smaller in a theme? - And lastly, the Task Navigator bar width should be configurable. There is no reason for its fattness as it is - it is just a waste of desktop realstate, IMHO. Icons in the leftbar not 70% sized, but 85% or else count the icons to best fit, but definitely smaller

EXTENDED BATTERY PLUGIN (not sure if you can anything about this) -battery icon feedback. Like '95% left' ;) 2) Give the lonely battery status icon a menu. It is useful to have it up there in the corner but it is the only applet without something useful underneath. You could group some power management features under there, similar to the stuff that appears when you hit the power button, and it would be a spot to put the UI for any new power management functionality in the future. If the battery meter could tell you how long it estimates the battery will last when you click it, that would be fantastic. Or if it’s plugged in and charging, it’d be great it could tell you how long it will take until fully charged like someone said above. Also maybe a % full indicator in both cases?

LAUNCHER HOME APPLET I'd like to see a launcher home-applet - something that'd provide an icon-view of applications on the home screen. 1. The possibility to add shortcut icons to any installed program/file on the Home screen. - Ditto on the idea to have icons on the desktop/home screen to start applications.

CLOCK IN SYSTEM TRAY Also, an official clock systray applet would be nice.

BETTER HIBERNATION API A better API for hibernation would be nice too :)

WINDOW-CHOOSER FOR FULL SCREEN MODE I guess Opera feature requests are out of your hands, but if not, I'd really like a 'close window' or 'window chooser' button in the toolbar for full-screen mode - it's the only thing missing for me (currently only accessible via the menu hardware key).

IMPLEMENT HIBERNATION 3. The Symbian OS has an interesting feature re memory management: its application manager can decide to shut down cleanly the least used running application(s) whenever memory becomes tight. I'm not at all certain such a feature could be emulated in Linux, but it would be nice if it could. Note that "shut down" actually means: "Save all open files and if not possible give control to user with request to shut down", and not the way Windows shuts down files.

STANDARD LINUX DISTRO ON 770 4.This is a long shot, and beyond the scope of your question, but I figured I was allowed one whacky wish : How about porting a completely different distribution to the 770? Maybe a standard small Linux distribution like Damn Small Linux? It would make it easier for the hackers and the minimalists among the community to port our own stuff. I realize it would mean a fork, but if Nokia doesn't do it, I predict that within 6 months someone else will. At least this way, you still get the credit for doing the cool thing.

BETTER USER INTERFACE, LOOK AT NEWTON MESSAGE PAD 5. This is my whackiest wish, in a special geeky category of its own: Have you ever looked at the Newton MessagePad? Especially the 2000/2100? It simply has the best handheld User Interface in the Universe. Now, copying it would not only be suicide (Apple is acting litigious again), but also bad form (Paul Guyot's Einstein emulator already runs on the Nokia 770). Still, nobody can be sued for looking at how things were done and making their own conclusions.

BETTER HANDWRITING RECOGNITION This point also brings me to my main (but almost only) gripe with the 770: Your handwriting recognition sucks huge chunks! It is, I think, the sole reason why people constantly keep looking for keyboards. May I suggest you have a look at PhatWare's solutions? Their HWR engine is based on the Newton's ParaGraph HWR, which I know was tremendous (I now have 99+% correct recognition on my MessagePad, writing in cursive ànd in Dutch!). If you want to try it out yourself, install the trial version of PenOffice on any tablet (mine is installed on a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400, PIII 400, 192 MB Ram, Windows 2000 and runs unnoticeable).

FLASH 8 FOR OPERA FOR ENABLING USE OF YOUTUBE - It is not directly related, but we are still starving for having Flash 8 embedded into Opera so we can play streamed video from YouTube and other sites. If just people know they could use Nokia 770 as a wifi portable global TV apparatus...

WIFI AND BLUETOOTH SIGNAL STRENGTH INDICATORS -A WiFi (and Bluetotth) signal strength indicator embedded into the top right “connectivity” icon similar to the battery and brightness ones Having Wifi strength in the statusbar icon (maybe just by changing the number of (((o))) parentheses around the wifi antenna icon) would be a huge plus.

OFFICIAL TASK MANAGER -Official task manager integrating RAM/CPU load and clock

EASIER DRAG & DROP FOR REPOSITIONING APP LINKS IN OTHERS MENU -Easy drag&drop repositioning of app-links, specially for moving around installed applications between menu folders and for arranging them within a folder

ABILITY TO REDUCE MENU FONT SIZE -Ability to reduce the menu font size

MOVE CONTACTS MENU FOLDER CONTENTS TO CONTACTS PLUGIN -I’d move the “Contacts” menu folder contents to the second top left icon for simplicity

EASILY CREATE A LINK TO EXECUTABLE OR SCRIPT (ADD ITEMS TO START MENU) -Definitely having the option for easily creating a link to a executable program file or script would be of great help

WHOLE FILESYSTEM NAVIGABLE FROM FILE MANAGER, NOT ONLY GNOME-VFS-FOLDERS -Having the posibility to navigate the whole linux file system from the graphical file manager (maybe inactive by default and activable through an option within the control panel or something like that)

VIRTUAL DESKTOPS -2 or more Virtual Desktops as in linux-powered desktop-PCs About the multiple desktops, the point is to have exactly the kind of ‘virtual screens’ icon that the Gnome & KDE desktops have got, the one with a split square the user may click to switch from one vistual screen to another, the application windows being stored in the correspondant square where they were launched from. The original VS icon also shows a small rectangle depicting the approximate location for each window in the virtual desktops (this is the default behaviour implemented. For this device I find no more than 4 virtual desktops are of use (maybe no more than 2). This is only performable in this device due to its awesome screen resolution compared to similar devices being marketed right now.

FORTUNE COOKIE MESSAGE AT STARTUP -Not related, but having a different “fortune cookie” message and salutation displayed every time I powered on my device would be great for me (using the traditional fortunes from Unix, with the option to turn it off)

GPG PIM SUPPORT * support and integrate gpg support: mail reader, im client, passwd wallet

MAIL CLIENT WORKING BETTER WITH IMAP4 FOLDERS * mail client doesn’t fetch all imap4 folders from the server

AIM, MSN, ICQ AND YAHOO NEEDED * im is very important: we need aim, msn, icq and yahoo * this is available via GAIM.

FREE SIP CLIENT NEEDED * voip is more important: we need a free sip client

CONTACT SHOULD STORE PERSONAL INFO * contact should store personal information about the contact, not only for email and im: website, birthday, phone numbers, address, relationships … GPE port it’s nice, also gaim. but in a PDA users want integration: im, mail, voip, contacts, tasks, calendar … some other things:

NETWORK CONFIGURATION INTEGRATED CLOSER TO DESKTOP * i still question myself why i’ve to disconnect to change the ip from the gui. network configuration is too far from the desktop

MEDIA PLAYER SHOULD SUPPORT EVERYTHING THAT GSTREAMER SUPPORTS * the default player should support all formats that gstreamer can play, not only mp3: vorbis, flac, speex, musepack …

ROTATE SCREEN Not sure if this fits into the "desktop" - but I would like the ability to rotate the entire screen to hold it "vertically".

REORDER STATUS BAR ITEMS - Reorder, hide/show toolbar items

FILEDIALOG KEEPING CURRENT DIRECTORY What I would like is the filedialog keeping its current directory

LOADED ICON LIST (FILE THUMBNAILS) SHOULD BE CACHED AND RESTORED ON NEXT USE (LOADING IS TOO SLOW) so not starting at scratch all the time within an application. That also includes the loading of the iconlist, which btw. is rather slow as well.

SCROLL KEYS REPLACING SCROLL BARS The second issue is more a think-about thingy and that's the scrollbar. I think that scrollbars don't port so well for touch screens (and no mouse). Scroll keys would help but are often for other usages.

OLD X11-STYLE SCROLLBARS I think the old X style MMB, that when cliched actually scrolled to that position, is already a big improvement. Maybe it's already configurable somewhere? A quick idea is eg. | a | b | c |d|e|XX|f|g| h | i | j | where XX is the scrollbutton, e and g the area when clicked a half page scroll, d and g a full page scroll, c and h two pages scroll, etc. and finally a and j are acting like MBB when clicked. Has to be recalculated on each position/viewport sizes changes.

MOVING HOME APPLETS SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED SOME OTHER WAY The above reminds me that dragging, like with the home applets, simply are unusable.

VIEW AS LIST FEATURE TO FILE MANAGER / FILEDIALOG ETC. Also, while on a subject, the file browser needs an optional 'View as list' option similar to the one found in nautilus.

CLOSE APPLICATION WITHOUT SWITCHING * An ability to close an application without switching to it. Holding down the stylus on an app icon shows a popup with the app name; it could be a menu with an additional "Close" option

BLANK SCREEN MODE IN THE MODE CHOICES * A "Blank screen" option in the device mode menu (without locking the keyboard).

HOME KEY SHOWING TASK MENU INSTEAD OF DESKTOP * Home key to open the task menu (the one at the bottom left, labeled >>) instead of showing the desktop

MORE OPTIONS FOR CONNECTIVITY - CONNECTIVITY PRIORIZATION * An option to connect to the Internet using the default/strongest wifi network in the popup menu of the connectivity statusbar icon.

ROBUSTNESS FOR PLUGIN FRAMEWORK * Robustness when plugins crash: currently the device reboots, which causes a certain problem when a home page applet crashes immediatelly on boot. If a malfunctioning status bar applet or home applet is selected, the whole desktop crashes. Applets are libraries which are loaded into the context of the maemo_af_desktop process, so accessing a wrong pointer in applet crashes the desktop. It will be good to see this changed particularly when there is a possibility of 3rd party applet being installed. May be an automatic recovery of maemo_af_desktop will be good to have.

77 0 FUNCTION IN USB HOST MODE EASILY I would appreciate if you made it easier on the Nokia 770 to go into "USB Host" mode. A simple script that is somewhat hidden but could be easily be invoked in a manner like the Palm OS's I realize Nokia configured the USB port to slave only to save battery life. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,16650-page,2/article.html

GRAFFITI SHORTCUTS graffiti shortcuts would be great.

MORE FUNCTIONALITY TO NOTES APPLICATION, ADD WIKI Please also add more functionality to the "Notes" application and add a spreadsheet, small database or wiki to your bundled OS applications. Think how useful a database or wiki would be for tracking recipes, incident tickets...

HOME BUTTON CYCLES THROUGH APPLICATIONS INSTEAD OF SHOWING DESKTOP I'd like to see the "home" button rotate among the desktop and all running apps rather than merely min- and max-imizing the last app to get the screen... Perhaps with a 1 second (better, user-configurable delay) popup identifying which app will maximize (pop to the desktop) unless home is pressed again.

PERSISTENT MOUNT POINTS Also with full gnome-vfs support, with the possibility to create persistent "mountpoint" for external sources (ftp://, sftp://, ...), maybe implemented as optional package installable via application manager. This feature is (except for the "mountpoints" part) already implemented in gpe-filemanager, but having it in the official filemanager would be nice.

BETTER INTEGRATION BETWEEN DESKTOP AND XTERM This doesn't have to be very fancy, MacOSX provides pretty good integration with just a few minimal measures: - The "open" command (from the command line) will open lots of files (and directories, and urls), selecting the application to use with the same database as used for double-clicking. - Dragging an icon from the finder to XTerm will paste the pathname there. - Desktop apps can be started from the command line, and will accept a filename to open when run in that way (implemented in the GUI framework by simulating an open command, not something every app needs to care about). - Even though the Finder doesn't normally show the geeky unix directories you can open them with the shell "open" command or by typing their pathname into a special dialog. This allows you to use standard UI tools (such as the minimal text editor) on things they can't normally reach.

EXPANSION OF CONTACTS TO SUPPORT PHONE NUMBERS ETC. - Expansion of the contacts app to support phone numbers etc. for voip apps etc

EXPANDED POWER MANAGEMENT - Expanded power management. This is more kernel than actual UI but some of the things that I've seen around for projects like OLPC where if the sound driver isn't used for a couple of seconds its shut down etc. Things like the USB port, in the general scheme of things, aren't used very often so could (not sure if they are all ready) be shut down most of the time to save battery (saw a blog entry somewhere where someone played with the shutdown of usb when not in use and saved a couple of watts).

MORE DETAILS TO WIRELESS DEVICE SECTION - More details in the wireless device section.

SUPPORT SPEEX/OGG/VORBIS/THEORA - Support for speex/ogg/vorbis/theora 1.) ogg-vorbis playback would be really fine. Most of "us" it2005 users thought it will be implemented in it2006, but nothing has happend in this direction. -- there's an ogg-vorbis player available.

SUPPORT BT HEADSETS, BT KEYBOARDS, GPSES ETC. NATIVELY - Support for BT Headsets, better support for other BT things such as keyboards/gpses - Applet that makes the connectivity easy to these devices

RESOURCE AVAILABILITY MONITORING APPLET WITH HIGH LEVEL OF INTELLIGENCE An applet that would watch the resources availabitily and warn a user if launching yet another window or application would definitely cause a lockdown (followed by imminent reboot). I have seen enough reports from the end-users complaining that the system is not stable even with IT2006 update. The fact is that the most of them are not aware of the scarce OS resources they hold in their hands. A notification applet to make them aware would help thwart off future negative reviews and general confusion.

RESOURCE AVAILABILITY MONITORING APPLET (LIGHT VERSION): LOAD/MEMORY APPLET: Agreed. The load applet from the application catalog does a pretty good job at this. If the memory is full, I try to close some app before starting a new one.
If the CPU is busy, I know that I should wait, instead of assuming that I didn't press the screen hard enough and retrying.
osso-statusbar-cpu is not as good for this, because the current stat is pretty much invisible -- it focuses more on showing history.

VOICE RECORDER Also, I would love to have a voice recorder developed by Nokia integrated for the next desktop update. It seems like the developers try and don't have enough information about gstreamer/DSP to come up with robust recorder. All hardware elements are there - I guess the general lack of knowledge about its internals and gstreamer framework in general have prevented from developing such an application so far. - - there is a voice recorder app available

LESS AGRESSIVE POWER MANAGEMENT AS AN OPTION THROUGH USER DEFINABLE OPTIONS (CONTROL PANEL) If anything, power management on the 770 is too aggressive. You'll know what I mean if you've ever tried to SSH into it over a WiFi link. So maybe more control over the various PM features would be nice.

FIRST CLASS SUPPORT FOR KEYBOARDS -First-class support for keyboards is important so that it's not something that mostly works and is an afterthought. Things like the ability to set the key repeat rate and a icon indicating a keyboard is detected on the status bus, etc.

CONTEXT MENU FOR APPLICATION SWITCHER FOR MINIMIZE, RESTORE, FULL SCREEN AND CLOSE Finally, it would be great to have a context menu for application icons (that are running) on the taskbar to minimize, restore, go full-screen, and close.

EASY SHOW DESKTOP METHOD 1) Some sort of Show Desktop method as I find myself referencing the desktop applets frequently and they are frequently obscured by an app. This is normally handled elsewhere though minimizing everything, a show desktop button or just clicking the panel icon again. The current way on the 770 of minimizing the windows I find error prone and end up often closing the window by accident because the buttons for doing so are so close together. Adding a show desktop button would likely take up too much real estate, so it is not a great way to go. I would prefer just tapping the panel icon for the currently active app to have it minimize and then tap it again to have it maximize but I am not sure how that would effectively integrate with your similar-app-grouping-under-one-icon feature planned for the future (which I also like very much). Oops ... I just realized that the "Home" hardware button does what I need :] As long as that functionality doesn't get stolen by an app, that would work fine for me.

BETTER BOOKMARK MANAGER 3) Not sure if it is under your control but I would love to see the kind of customization available in the task manager also available in the bookmarks list. Right now, you can group them into folders, but alphabetical ordering is the only order that they sort. I could use the ability to customize the order there.

RESIZABLE APPLET BORDERS 4) I am also not sure if this is under your control but I find that there is not much space on the desktop for desktop applets. This is primarily due to the huge margins and the big borders taking up space around each applet. It might be a theme issue. It also might be an issue with each particular applet just deciding to take up a bunch of space. So there might not be much you can do but if you can, I would like to see some features to be able to fit some more applets on there. Features like resizable borders around some applets (allowing the applets to use up more or less space effectively), slimming the borders/margins and scaling down of some applets (the clock doesn't need to take up so much space for instance.

FULL SCREEN SWITCH LATCHING SWITCH INSTEAD OF CONTINUOUSLY OSCILLATING SWITCH 5) Also not sure if this is in your realm but the fullscreen button should be more of a "latching" switch rather than continuously oscillating switch. So when you press it and hold it, it should send one fullscreen/un-fullscreen event and not send another one until you release the button rather than sending a continuous stream button press events while the button is held. I don't know if it the fault of the application programmers improperly handling this or not but I am finding many many apps that will quickly switch in and out of fullscreen mode really fast when you click the fullscreen button. You have to end up clicking the button really fast or just clicking it many times until the mode that you wanted sticks.

BETTER POWER MANAGEMENT WITH AUDIO PLAYER By the way, I remember hearing somewhere that in OS2005 if you had the audio player open and paused, the device would not enter into a full power savings mode and would drain the battery faster.

BETTER OFFLINE SUPPORT FOR INTERNET TABLET STYLE PRODUCTS I'm not sure if this is a framework thing, but in general, I'd like to see better offline support.
I realize the goal is "Internet tablet", but sometimes I like pulling the data, and reading it offline. Things like reading my e-mail on the bus or a plane.

SYNCING WITH COMPUTER Also, syncing. I'd like to be able to sync my contacts with my phone, my desktop, etc.
Also, as applications like Dates or GPE develop more, sync my todo list and date book also.
I think that something like OpenSync could be part of the base platform -- especially from the perspective of running a background process to acknowledge requests from the external computer or phone.

OFFICIAL USE OF GOOGLE MAPS DATA IN MAEMO MAPPER PS - Probably more a legal thing than a technical one, but it would be really cool if Nokia could work a deal with Google so that Maemo Mapper could offically use Google Maps data.

NICER PDF READER I'd like to have a nice PDF reader. Adding continuous display of pages (like Evince) and configurable hardware keys it would be great. Also to be able to go to Next Page with hw keys without resizing it to fit in width (when page is too large this cannot be done). (usability enhancment) PDF reader is ‘too’ simple: after 5 mins of usage I can immediately think about: - ability to save the current page and position for the document (so it will go to it when document is reopened) - ability to select Zoom Level from the dropdown list (which can replace the current Zoom Level indicator - and include “fit width”/”fit page” levels) - configurable Zoom step - re-applying zoom level “Fit width” on fullscreen on/off - this is very useful too - ability to enter page number for jump directly to it - just put editbox instead of label: user can enter page number and press enter

PATCH THE WIFI DRIVER TO ALLOW USING AIREPLAY Also (but this is morre related to the internals and legal stuff) pacth the wifi driver CX3110X to be able to use aireplay :-)

EASY TO WRITE WRAPPERS FOR EXISTING GNU APPLICATIONS USING HIGH LEVEL SCRIPTED LANGUAGES (JAVASCRIPT, RUBY, PYTHON) I would say that the UI should try to support the existing GNU applications by making it easy write wrappers for them. The requirement that really come to my mind is that the UI must be scriptable so that GUI people can create wrappers around programs without needing to know the whole cross-compile/debian thing. And if I find a broken gui program I can launch vi and fix it.
just javascript or beter ruby:) gui programming.

COMMAND LINE -STYLE THINGS POSSIBLE WITH UI The UI should also try to mimic things linux users are used to do on the command line. starting and stopping a program with perhaps some arguments should be really fun and easy , perhaps dragging an icon to the right side of an home applet to start for example , and dragging it back to stop it.

WEBSERVER ON NOKIA 770 FOR DOING NATIVE-WEBAPPS/APPLETS The power also comes from the Look&feel and scriptable applets can really make a difference because more (less geeky) people can join the effort and have fun. Perhaps all that is needed is an ajax/dhtml component a small webserver and an installation method :). And it that's to much work perhaps java bindings might not be such a bad idea so at least people don't have to cross-compile/package

MOUSE POINTER MADE VISIBLE WHEN USB MOUSE OR OTHER SIMILAR POINTING DEVICE IS CONNECTED As for the mouse pointer being visible you are right. It won't be visible all the time but just setting the root mouse cursor already helps a lot. So, the feature would be that when plugging in an USB mouse, the X cursor would be changed to something visible. :-)

J2ME ENGINE Any chance to get a J2ME engine on the Nokia 770?

NON-HILDON APPLICATIONS WORK WITH INPUT ETC. I would really love if there would be a public API would give non-hildon apps access to hildon features, like input ...

FILE MANAGER TO BE ABLE TO EXECUTE EXTERNAL APPLICATION TO PERFORM TASK ON THE SELECTED FILES I would like to see a menu action in File Manager to execute an external application or script on the selected file(s). The usecase is that I take photos with my camera, insert the memory card to the 770 and then I would like to resize the selected pictures and then upload them to a blog or send them by e-mail. But this could also be used to zip up files, or unzip them or whatever.

HOME QUICK CONTACTS APPLET SHOULD HAVE MORE THAN 4 CONTACTS
* quick contact home applet with more than 4 contacts

APPLICATIONS OTHER THAN MAEMO DESKTOP WOULD BENEFIT FROM POLISHING/REFACTORING/REWRITES, ESPECIALLY FILEMANAGER I think maemo-desktop is fine and now applications should be polished. (file manager is slow… i always have to use mc, wich is also slow)

USE UNIONFS TO EXTEND THE FILESYSTEM TO MMC SO THAT APPLICATIONS CAN BE INSTALLED ON MMC AND DATA CAN BE STORED THERE SEAMLESSLY Use of unionfs to extend the filesystem (applications, user data) to MMC card with a nice gui app to manage it seamlessly. If this is in place, the future of storage, no. of applications, data, on the 770 or newer devices, is not restricted by the size of the builtin flash.

BETTER COMMAND LINE SUPPORT E.G. BY ADDING CTRL-KEY FOR INPUT METHOD, IMPLEMENTING KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS ETC. Also — better command-line support (shortcuts for Ctrl+ sequences, etc). Finally, a suggestion for the virtual keyboard (not sure if it’s in your area though): change the caps lock button (’ABC’) into a control modifier. It would make life much nicer in xterm. a "developer mode" for the virtual keyboard which adds ctrl (or other buttons too) would be very useful for terminal users or developers ;)

NOKIA 7710 UI FOR NOKIA 770 When I first saw the Nokia 770, it reminded me of the Nokia 7710, but without the phone capabilities. It seems like you’re trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of UI. Would it be possible to try to mimic (yes, I understand that they’re different devices) the usability of the 7710 and try to make the integration between the phone and the tablet better.

HIGH LEVEL SCRIPTED LANGUAGE SUPPORT FOR MAKING APPLETS I would also love to see regular people, not C or C++ developers write applications for the 770. Would it be possible to use widgets from Apple’s Dashboard or Yahoo’s Konfabulator on the 770? How about letting people write their applications as widgets? Think about it, to write these widgets all you need to know is a little javascript and other basic web technologies. There’s a lot of web developers in the world and learning curve is a lot smaller than having to write in C. Can you imagine your 770 running one of that beautiful weather widget from Apple?

BETTER MENU STRUCTURE Please fix the menu structure. This is a web tablet, not Windows 98. How about Applications, Documents, Movies, Ebooks, Music and Pictures?

BROWSER FONT TOO SMALL Is it me or is the font on the browser a bit too small? Every single time I go on to use the browser I have to zoom in. Work a bit more on the SSR of the browser and make the font larger. If you look back at the videos of people using the 700 - I’m assuming you do real usability tests - you will see that zooming in is the first thing that most people do as soon as they start the browser. How about giving people a hand and start at say… 125% or maybe 150% and then give the people the chance to zoom out instead of forcing them by default to zoom in.

FASTER EMAIL PROGRAM Please make the email program faster. Faster loading, faster reading, faster composing, etc.. The UI could use some work as well.

ROTATION OF IMAGES IN IMAGE VIEWER Allow a way to rotate images from the viewer.

FASTER BOOT TIME Instant on and faster boot. If you ever used a Palm you know what I’m talking about. This is not difficult to implement.

ADD SOME SPACE TO THUMB KEYBOARD BETWEEN KEYS Make some space between the keys of the Thumb keyboard.

BACKUP TO COMPUTER I know I can backup to the card, but if lose the card and the 770, where’s my info? Where’s the 770 synching program? I can’t synch my contacts, videos, music. There’s nothing I can synch right now.

SMALLER ICONS TO TASK NAVIGATOR I think the web, contacts and applications menu icons are too big. I could still select them with my finger even if they were 70% of their current size. If that were implemented, there’d be more space below for the currently running task icons.

NAVING CONVENTION IN THE OTHERS MENU UNINTUITIVE AND CONFUSING I’m not sure I understand the naming convention in the main menu. Why is sketch a utility? (ditto for calculator and images and notes and pdf reader). I agree with the placement of application manager, control panel, connection manager and teach handwriting in Tools. That’s fine, but Tools and Utilities mean basically the same thing (at least to me, in this context). So I’m just confused on why sketch and notes, etc are Utilities. I see no problem with how they’re all grouped, I just think there must be a better name for the stuff that’s currently in the Utilities subfolder. Could we change the name of Tools to “System Utilities” and Utilities to “Other Applications” maybe?

MERGING SOME STATUS BAR APPLETS TO SAVE SPACE ON STATUS BAR Also, merging some of the built-in ones would make a lot of difference (for example, combine the screen brightness & sound volume (as someone already suggested) and include the presence applet’s functionality into the connection applet). Maybe the ability to disable some of the built-in ones. A clock taskbar applet that includes the alarm functionality (without launching the full clock application) would also be very nice.

RESIZABLE APPLET FONT SIZE Ability to use a smaller font would also help in this area.

DISABLE SOME PLUGINS IN TASK NAVIGATOR Task navigator: ability to disable some plugins

ICON GROUPING IN TASK NAVIGATOR group same-application icons together (a la XP)

DOCK APPLICATIONS LIKE IN NeXTstep/OSX ability to ‘dock’ applications (a la NeXTstep/OSX)

HIBERNATE AND RESTORE SESSION TO MEMORY CARD (this is probably more related to platform) ability to ‘hibernate’ to memory card - so this will allow to save applications statuses and restore to session immediately

SESSION MANAGEMENT (like an alternative to #3) session management - by this I mean that after startup, 770 can restore all applications that were open at previous session

SMALLER ZOOM STEPS FOR BROWSER I find the font of the browser the right size for me, although I see useful to have the ability to Zoom in smaller steps (for instance, the user could zoom in a 5 to 10% with a short push or a 25% with a 1 second-or-longer one). As well for the ability to set the default zoom level for the internet browser from the control panel.

VIRTUAL MEMORY SIZE SHOULD NOT BE LIMITED TO 64MB What is the reason for the 64 MB limit for virtual memory? May this limit be increased to 96, 128 or even more? Logically checking the MMC card’s size beforehand…

MERGE TOOLS+UTILITIES MENU FOLDER I agree to the point of merging the Tools+Utilities menu folders or either being able to create, edit and delete menu folders

SELECT FOLDER WHERE TO INSTALL Also useful the ability to choose the menu folder which to install the launch-link for every new every application installed through the AppMngr.

BETTER USABILITY WHEN MENU GETS TOO LARGE, SCROLLING IS BAD What happens when there are too many icons under utilities menu folder? Scrolling/doble menu laying-out/fontsize shrinking/cropping? Not sure

MAKING ALT-TABBING TO WORK (SWITCH BETWEEN APPLICATIONS) Possibility to toggle between multiple open applications using hardware keyboard (like alt+tab in windows/linux desktop) and hardkeys.

CLOCK TO TASK NAVIGATOR OR STATUS BAR PANEL Displaying time always even when applications are open (may be on top right corner of TN).

SHORTCUTS TO FILES FROM HOME Shorcuts to files in home area. It should be possible to open an image/notes file from Home area. Something similar to desktop area on linux machine.

SET IMAGES AS BACKGROUND IMAGES FROM VARIOUS PROGRAMS Images can be set as background only from HOME menu. It will be good to have a feature, where user can select a image, click and hold (equivalent to right click) and choose "set as background" from the options.

AUTOARRANGE FOR HOME APPLETS Auto-arrange feature would be good to have for HOME applets as the users are not able to arrange applets if they have too many applets.

TOOLTIP HELP ON FIRST USE A tool tip kind of help (interactive) will be good for new features being introduced. It will be helpful to have this interactive help coming up when the user is accessing any feature for the first time. For example opening media player for first time or when teaching the user about normal/layout mode when device is started for the first time.

ACTIVE CORNERS ON DESKTOP I think some kind of UI that acts like the mezzo interface with active corners http://www.symphonyos.com/download/ (debian package who dares porting it?) http://www.jdistro.com/mezzo/ (screen shots of the jdistro impl)

ALPHA TRANSPARENCY Alpha transparency to the UI

SVG/PDF BASED DISPLAY svg/pdf based display rendering, animations

TEXT INPUT BASED ON COMMON WORDS text input based on most common words, I have seen this about 10 years ago the letters flow from right to left and the most common words/letters appear in front of you, using the stylus it is still possible to move up or down to follow a different input path and if the words appears just as you liked you can move the stylus to the right to make the letter appear faster. I will try to find a demo online. You are thinking of Dasher. This is done already, sort of: http://www.dasher.org.uk/download/linux/maemo/. It has serious performance problems and it's not a real input method, though.

HALF-WIDTH VERSION OF CLOCK APPLET On the home view, could you provide a half width version of clock applet. I don't think that many people need to know the date and even if they do, that could be written to the clock background. home view screenshot is about as good a clock as you ca get with current theming, but it would be great if you could modify the current clock to behave more like that and remove the completely unnecessary date information from besides the clock.

Non-software related requests