Having thought about the
Harmattan UI a bit more, I realized that since there are no 'desktop screens' as the N900 has, there are also no widgets! The demonstration at #nokiacnxn showed the three aspects of the UI: Events, Applications, and Open Applications. It appears that certain application events can populate the Events View. For instance, the
AccuWeather application puts the current weather conditions in the Events View.
One of the most useful N900 widgets I use is the contact card, providing one-touch access to frequent contacts from the desktop. It will be interesting to see if users will miss the N900-style widgets, and if Events View and/or the Swipe UI can make up the difference.
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7 comments:
good point, i had the same thought after watching the engadget hands on video today. on n900 i use one homescreen for quickdial contacts. i find the phone-contacts app dichotomy quite annoying on n900, those should definitely be unified. haven't seen a phonecall demo on n9 yet.
hrmm.. i much agree.. i will dearly miss widgets
it was almost a make or break for me..
i also have a homescreen on my n900 dedicated for my contacts, to quickly make phone calls and send text messages
lets hope its still just as easy with a 'swipe'
in fact, see how nokia's meego ui comes closer to windows phone experience
- events view vs. tiles view homescreen
- app view vs app list homescreen
- tasklist vs nothing (no multitasking yet)
you move by left and right swipe between homescreens
even nokia pure and msft font (metro? i don't know the name) are similar.
of course those things are not the same, but philosophy seem to be similar.
and with all of this I wanted to say, that windows metro ui uses tiles as widgets, so there will probably be some live event widgets in meego.
I wonder if someone writes a "Desktop" app that will allow widgets etc. It would start when the OS starts, and you might even be able to hack it to be a peer of the other built-in views (app menu, events), with old-school buttons to take you to the other views for those who don't want to swipe...
I think I had mostly facebook/twitter/rss on my home screens in N900. In 1 screen I had app shortcuts and last screen was my most used contancts. So basically I would only miss the contact shortcuts with N9.
Haven't see how they implemented them but at least you can mark them as favourite so they will be on top of the contact list.. might be good enough alternative since thats how it works on my N8 now.
I agree with you there. I wish that I could find something that would greatly improve my widget, Click Here To Buy Blue Widgets to have an overview about it online.
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