Hello everyone.

As I promissed, today I’d like to present you my first, and lets hope not last, theme for Fremantle and also the default theme for Mer called Marina.

Dark, a bit glossy but calm blueish theme, packed with loopable wallpaper. First 3rd-party theme to be designed from scratch, every UI element is hand drawn (except for loading “flower” and navigation icons :). I really wanted to give it a finished professional look, hope you’ll feel it.

Right now it’s heading to Extras repository and you can vote right here to promote it even faster. You can also report bugs (if any) here or in the t.m.o. discussion thread. But I hope I’ve cleaned all of these, even though it was a tough experience without actual devic, thanks all of you who helped with them.

Anyway, I hope you’ll use it, thanks to Xisdibik some screenshots are waiting for you after the break.

And thanks for reading.

Hello and good evening. The year is almost over so is 2010 user Interface countdown here. I was thinking bout that final post for some time. And finally, instead of another Mer improvement or application interface concept I’ve decided to thank all those people that I wanted to thank the whole year. No breaks.First of all Vladimir Vasiliev and Pavel Fialko – great developers and great guys that allowed me to make a user interface for Other Maemo Weather – probably that brought me here where I am now. Also I want to add some kind words about Max Usachev – great passionate young developer that brought you Mnenosyne for Maemo. I want to thank Carsten Munk a.k.a. Stskeeps for his extraordinary administration skills and bright mind. I want to thank Valerio Valerio aka VDVsx for his support and honest will to help.I want to thank Marat Fayzullin that he allowed me to finaly give something in return for stolen long ago VGBA emulator and for just being such a cool guy.I want to thank Ed Bartosh from Nokia – you’re great and you know it. I want to thank Nokia and Forum.Nokia. All that doesn’t kill us – makes us stronger. I’m really sorry if I forgot someone personally. I want to thank all of you for working with me, reading my blog and discussing my ideas – this is the greatest motivation for me to continue. Sometimes life punches me right in the face but you always can keep me on track. See you all.

Good evening everyone.

3 days before 2010 and we’re close to the end of 2010 user interface countdown. Today I’d like to show you another concept for Mer operating system. As you probably remember, I told that the main goal for Mer interface is to be as much hardware independent as possible. That’s why it needs proper onscreen keyboard. I have some ideas how to make typing experience a bit more deep and they are after the break, as always. Take a look.

So. The main problem for touchscreen finger friendly (and it should be finger friendly anyway, cause we have to think about capacitive screens too) keyboard – the main problem that comes to mind is space. You just can’t fit any key you want on the screen. Some of them should be placed under tabs, some should be sacrificed. But then I thought that touchscreen can understand not only simple taps or double taps but gestures as well, such as tap and flick. Currently, on most devices it’s used for typing capital letters but since they all have shift there anyway – nobody uses it actually. (You are? Comment ) So let’s use it for real action, not fictional one! There you go.

As an example I’ve added “Tab” sub-label to the “Shift” button. Just tap and flick your finger up to press Tab. It can be “Caps-Lock” as well. You can also notice two arrows on the language switcher – these are copy and paste sub-labels. Flick up to paste and down to copy. And this white row in the middle is word auto-completion suggestions zone (a bit like in Illume keyboard).

This gestures system will also be very useful for non-english layouts, russian for example.

Now you don’t need to dig into tabs to type a letter – just flick it.

Well, that’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed this small article, thanks for reading and see you tomorrow to see the last article in this series.

Hello there.

First of all I’m very pleased to see active responses on my concepts, that makes me feel that this work actually worth it, thanks a lot you all. Now, as I promised I’d like to show you a quick concept for Mer status area. Details after the break.

As you remember, we’ve moved all the status data from top bar to the special area to save some space for portrait mode manipulations. To call it you can tap status zone on the top bar or flick from right to left in the Mer Menu. Here’s how it can look:

It reminds Fremantle layout cause this way it can be used in portrait mode and that is important, but widgets are placed within pannable area so you don’t have any limitations. Also, I thought that it would be very handy to have all the radio switches all together in one place, always visible. Widgets addition is made thru hildon menu – consistent and clear.

That’s all for now, please, keep sharing your opinions, Mer is first of all community project so anybody’s opinion counts. Thanks for reading, take care and see you tomorrow, there will be some really hot stuff.

Good evening.

As I promised, today I’ll show you my interface concept for Mer applications/task swithcing menu, or simply Mer Menu. Details after the break.

First of all we need a scalable menu that will work in both portrait and landscape modes. Also I’ve added a quick launch area (like “Dock” on the iPhone) that will appear even if task switcher is launched for immediate acces for hot apps like phone or anything else. Then, I thought that it would be great to add shortcuts not only to the applications but also for different folders. And return categories for better organisation. So as a result we’ll have something like this:

Quick launch area, pannable applications area. Blue circles are categories. You can set up menu thru hildon menu, just like any other app or homescreen. That’s how it will look in portrait mode:

And this is how task switcher will look like:

Well, that’s all for now, tomorrow I’ll show some thoughts about statusbar area. Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.

Hello everybody.

Today I’d like to continue my countdown series with a pack of posts about user interface concepts for one of the most global maemo community project ever been done — Mer. Thanks to Stskeeps and his great administrative skills, along with all great developers involved, community now has its own way to stay updated with an old hardware like n800/810. So, I’d like to show you fresh thoughts bout visual appearance of Mer in 2010. Lets start with statusbar.

So, the main goal of user interface optimizations was to allow Mer to be usable in as many different environments as possible. That’s why I’ve decided to make it button-independent so you’ll need only touch screen to manipulate. Then I thought it would be great to give user as much screen space as possible for desktop applications, that you can run with Mer (the whole god-damn Ubuntu repository!). Also Mer UI should not be very different frome Fremantle, cause Mer should support all the apps made for Hildon environment. And the last thing — Mer should be usable in portrait modes and even low resolution screens without sacrificing functionality. So I came up with this:

As you can see, statusbar is a bit thinner now, but you can still reach it with fingers even on n900 screen (it’s even easier cause n900 screen doesn’t have bezel around). There’s Mer button, that acts the same way as applications/task switcher button in fremantle, Window title (yeah, it’s back :), shortened status area (tap it to see all of the system status, also you can set up what 3 widgets will be displayed there) and close/back button.

You can share your opinions here right now, and tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at Mer Menu. Thanks for reading.

Good evening everyone.

Today I’d like to show you interesting user interface concept for extremely popular IRC messenger called Xchat. As you remember, it never had properly hildonized interface so I thought that it would be cool to design something for it.

Check out the concept after the break.

This is the main window. As you can see, now it looks more natural. Every user has its own colour for better clearance. Also “Tab” button was added cause it’s pretty functional in IRC but you don’t have one on your hardware keyboard. But there’s one problem – this fontsize helps you to see more but it’s too small for finger manipulations. That’s where I come in :) Tap somewhere in the text where the part you’re interested in is located and you’ll get into zoomed mode.

Now you can see enlarged text with timestsamps. And you can easily tap the part you need.

On tap you’ll see text input window and three options, copy selected text, copy all text quickly and open link (if there is one)

But lets get back to the main window. Now we need some intuitive way to switch between channels and user-selection. I thought that swipes from left and right would fit very nicely for this purpose. Left for channels:

And right for users:

Well, that’s all for now, hope you’ll like this concept. Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas for those who celebrating it!

Today I’d like to tell you bout thing that you probably heard of – a theme for Maemo5/Mer called Marina. Thanks to Urho Konttori and his awesome updated Theme Maker – you can make pretty remarkable stuff for Maemo 5. Every widget and every background is changeable. But as for me, insane perfectionist, uber-customizability of Maemo 5 UI takes much time to draw something complex and unique, since you need to change huge ammount of data. Nevertheless, I’ve found some time to work on one theme and I called it “Marina”.

Details after the break :)

So, the goal was to show user as slick UI as possible, without overacting wth gloss. Something non-distracting but with its “soul”, unique style. After many changes you’ll soon see something like this:

As you can see, buttons became a bit subliminal, you see them but they don’t want you to stare at them. Also calm green and blue colors instead of bright makes the look solid.

And as it’s Christmas here, I have a very small, but handmade present for all of you – since Marina will be backed with proper “Mer’ish” loopable wallpaper – I want to give it to you right now :)

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Well, that’s all for now, Merry Christmas again, happy celebrating, hope to see you tomorrow, more cool stuff will be waiting for you :) And thanks for reading ;)

Hello everyone.

Another day is over and it’s time for some exciting stuff from me :)

Today I’m gonna show you a brief preview of the new homescreen widget for n900. It’s dead simple but I hope you’ll like it. It’s called Personal Clock and we’re developing it with, orly :D, Andrew Olmsted . Details, as always, after the break.

So, the main purpose is to show large, shiny analog/digital clock on your homescreen, so you can use it with kickstand on your table or just comfortably check the time on the go.

But the most interesting feature is ultimate customizability. Basically, the only limitations you’ll have are widget size (680×370 for digital and 370×370 for analogue) and clock behaviour. Widget is drawn with multiple .png layers so you can easily draw your own skin if you want to. You don’t even need to build .debs or other stuff, just put properly named layers into the tar.gz archive along with information file and load it thru the UI. Layers structure looks like this:

All layers are 370×370 so you can draw virtually any skin you want with any type of background, hands or foreground. You can start to design your skins right now by the way ;)

That’s it for now, thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.

Good evening everyone!

One more day is over and we’re getting closer to the new year. I’ve prepaired some really cool stuff for you today — it’s called “Extras Assistant”. We’re developing it with great Nokian Daniel Wilms and his crew. The purpose of this app is to provide additional comfort and ease to the maemo.org Extras browsing, no matter what version of Maemo you’re using. Tasty shots and bref descriptions after the break.

So, you’ll have all functions of the browser version with some modern favour of touch user interface. For example, list of apps in Desktop Environment category will look like this.

That should remind you maemo5 ui, but with some changes. Tap the maemo.org logo to go straight to the homepage, tap’n'hold to minimize. You can go one step back by pressing, you know, “back” :) Also you can rearrange the list (by downloads count, rating, alphabet and so on) or search within the category for stuff. When you’ll tap the item, you’ll see something like this:

Here you can see all possible info bout the application, including screenshots. And, obviously, you can install it from here :) As for the comments, we have separate screen to show them, where you can add your own as well.

Since you need to be logged in into maemo.org to post comments – we have small panel to show your status. Log in, tap “comment”, set rating, type something and you’re done.

Well, that’s all for now, more things to come tomorrow, so stay tuned and thaks for reading :)