Hi. Few more words about UI improvements in some applications and not forgetting additional wallpapers you can try with new OS2008

You can now use finger sized arrows in PDF reader’s full screen mode to change between pages. Page changing is as easy as switching through images in image viewer. In chat application’s side, layouts have got some updates and new features were added like support for avatars & instant messaging through SIP. Smiley selector in chat is also bigger to be more easily used by fingers. Selecting right contact from contacts list is now faster by using live filtering where only contacts matching the inputted characters will be displayed. Get the OS2008 to personally test these and other new improvements. Keep the comments and ideas coming; we are always interested to get feedback.

Wallpapers:

-Marko

(Note to planet maemo which sees just the first chapter: The post contains wallpapers for your enjoyment! ) 

So, the new internet tablet OS is finally out of our hands. One of the most apparent changes is the transparency in the theme – the panels are now translucent and show the wallpaper through. This works nicely as you can change the appearance of the theme quite radically by just trying out different kinds of background images. The applets on the home screen also look nicer since they blend smoothly to the background. Or at least we think they look nicer than before :^)

The theme is also visually much cleaner, I tried to achieve a simple, elegant look that would go with the smoother design of the device itself. Hopefully you all like the end result – I am pretty happy with how it worked out. We also tried to improve the finger-usability some more, as with the N810, at least I find it cumbersome to keep the stylus around while I am using the keyboard to type – it’s more natural to just reach the screen with either thumb when needed. Sure, there’s still room for improvement, but I think it is already better than before.

As some of us in the user interface team are enthusiastic photographers, we decided to make a little christmas present and dug into our photo folders, looking for nice stuff to be usable as wallpapers. Hopefully you enjoy them The following images are from my photos, others will likely post a few more in the following days.

“Frozen leaves” is was taken near my home a few years ago

“Driving in Vermont” is from a photo trip with Garrett and Jakub during the Boston Gnome Summit a few years ago

“Stage” is from a theatre in Bangkok, Thailand

“Sunset” is from Lauttasaari, Helsinki, this autumn

To use them, click the images to go to their flickr page, select the “all sizes” and download the largest (800×480 pixels) version to your internet tablet. You can change the wallpaper by tapping the menubar in the home screen and selecting “Set background image..”. They all are the correct size, so “centered” mode is the way to go.

- Tuomas

It was nice to meet so many old friends and new people in Guadec. We had lots of great discussions and got valuable feedback and ideas about our Maemo user interface.

We try to take a more active role in the developer community, hoping to better support application developers from UI point of view. And we are also looking forward to participate in the creation of Gnome Mobile together with the rest of the community, sharing our experiences and the lessons we have learned while developing a mobile device with a touchscreen.

Hopefully you were all present in Ari Jaaksi’s keynote speech, where he explained many of the challenges we face when creating a product to be sold in stores. It hopefully made it a bit easier to understand why it sometimes takes so long to get improvements or new ideas included into our products.
We hope to have lively dialogue with you in the future. This is of course meant for everyone, not just those of you who were in Guadec!

Jenni & Tuomas
“Beauty and the Beast”

Hello everyone. Silence means busy – and busy is of course good, in many ways. We’re busy with a lot of new stuff.

Personally I’ve also been busy with writing my master’s thesis document. And hooray: it’s finally done. Since the subject material is closely tied to the Maemo UI, I thought I’d post it about here. Basically the thesis deals with the design and principles behind the text input methods, more specifically the virtual keyboard, designed for the Nokia 770 and subsequent products. It discusses the topic of touch screen text input both from theoretical and practical sides.

It can be found from the Maemo site, here:

http://maemo.org/intro/presentations/text_input_on_mobile_devices-master-s_thesis_document.html

If you get any ideas, questions, rants/raves from reading this thesis, I would be happy to hear them and discuss. Additionally, if you have any thoughts you would like to share about the current touch screen text input methods found in the devices – irrespective of this thesis – I’d also like to discuss about those. This includes at least the virtual keyboard, handwriting recognition, full screen keyboard and the bluetooth keyboard.

Best regards,

Roope Rainisto

Hi. One thing that we would also like to do is to promote and review some of the best and most interesting installable applications from our Maemo users and community developers that are currently out there. Naturally there are many available (check out the Maemo site or your local Application manager app), and we can’t unfortunately highlight all of them, but let’s start anyway. This is not a official Nokia company endorsement or a seal of approval, but just a review from one designer and user.

Hi everyone. This blog as such might not be the most ideal forum for this, but if you have specific comments (rants/raves/questions) about individual parts or aspects of the current UI design, feel free to give your comments here.

However, if you have found something that is clearly a bug, please use our public bugzilla tracking system, found at http://maemo.org/bugzilla . Yes, we could and should do a better job of tracking and utilizing that system, but we’re trying to improve on that also.