Symbian Belle custom theme effects, “Anna” on 5230 and Animation/UI effects Rant
As well as all the new and pretty changes in Belle’s appearance, one of the things that won’t come across in screenshots are the lovely new animations/UI effects. These are pretty important as you’ll see in my mini rant after the videos.
Anuj and Jill tipped these videos in of custom firmware in Belle with custom effects. It may be worth comparing to Belle UI demoes from Nokia or hands on of the Belle trio (600, 700, 701).
by andrenlsbr
by symbianworld
UI animation effects. They have to cater for three main things:
- Make the UI look prettier
- Distract the user from any possible delay in loading something
- Give indication/direction to the user as to exactly what is happening on the page.
4. animation balances the eye-candy appearance with being appropriate and not over the top (to some going to the point of being nauseating).
5. Animations and theme effects should not hinder the performance of the rest of the phone.
Here’s an example of nauseating. Here you will see some nice effects, but some are over the top like the spinning screens. This is on a 5230, so actual Anna isn’t coming to this handset. But it’s nice to see custom firmwares still pimping its appearance.<
Animation is one of the key things, in addition to the overall appearance that was missing with Symbian. Although you can go between two pretty screens very quickly, an intermediate animation – depending on the context of those two screens, is more pleasing to the eye and more useful for the user.
Examples of this include perhaps digging into menus. Instead of just appearing another layer further down, you see the screens slide to the left. That motion indicates you have moved within the UI. If the animation slides to the right, that indicates immediately you have moved back.
Another example is screen rotation. Isn’t it much nicer when the device’s screen rotates with you? Something live and dynamic like a bubble in a level. Of course it could just switch without that, but it’s just not as nice. It’s worsened when there’s even a fraction of a delay showing a black screen.
Finally, opening apps. You have to indicate that the user’s input is accepted and you are loading something. Blankly doing nothing with no animation suggests to the user either they have not pressed something or their phone has frozen. A wheel as introduced in Symbian Anna is helpful but because you don’t know how many rotations will occur, it’s still somewhat of an annoyance. Something more indicative of a progress bar or a different type of full screen animation to indicate something is happening and to distract would be more welcome.
I could go on. Within those examples the animation themselves have to be EXTREMELY SMOOTH. In 2011, there is no room for stuttering, lagging, low frame rates.
Fortunately these things are mostly addressed and implemented well in Belle. There are more animations, they are appropriate to that context, they are smooth and have not yet displayed lag (not in the Belle Trio anyway). N9/N950 with MeeGo-Harmattan is another brilliant example of animation/UI effects done very nicely (it is pretty much CORE to N9).
Category: Rant
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Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and facebook.com/MyNokiaBlog. Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
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cool symbian belle !!!!
I second this. Any sort of lag or slow transition can sometimes be unbearable these days. Remember when you plug in your headset into your S60 phone? Dear God, that notification takes so slow to go away. Nokia, we don’t want annoying, intrusive notifications. We don’t want any artificial lag. Please iron up Symbian for some of your users here.
Yeah.. Just flashed N8 with Belle, and the CFW has some cool animations.. Very pleasing eye candy, but has a little lag.. At least you can switch it off..
But Animations need to be fast and Effective in design..
the custom animations are nice
i assumed this was an active background animation demo though
Custom animations? Thats actually amazing ;O, would love to see some exciting new themes in OVI Store
destroy your phone cool
well, the 1GHz symbian belle devices are available for pre-order now.. And considering it took like 2 months for n8 anna variant after x7′s release, think its gonna take as long for belle?
Has to be further sleek .. i think the GPU & Processor will play a lead role here
Anyone knows if we can add these effects to symbian belle offical release(600,700,701) without flash.
most of these custom animations are annoying and crap. Belle have some elegant fading animations by default.
I hope those wallpapers are added after the update
well the animation on sgs2 lock screen lags everytime, or at least seems like it
The SGS2 lockscreen disgusts me. It’s just so stupid. You can’t flick it up to remove it. It takes several attempts to unlock. Most SGS2 users recommend that I use an alternative lock app. (even default android is better)
Jay you can try the Maze unlock thingy. It’s preinstalled on the SGSII
Animations add a LOT to the OS. I’d say one of the most important aspect of making a beautiful OS are the animations and transitions.
But they should not be overdone or too long. They should just give you the feeling of direction through the UI.
Consistency is also very important, you can’t animations in one place or one app and nothing in another.
You can’t have one app opening this way and navigating this way and another app opening that way and navigating in a different way.
That’s why Apple has the best animations and transitions, they are all tastefully done without being overdone like on some Android phones and the whole UI has consistency.
In this second video about I like how the applications menu “moves up” the homescreen menu, I like that animation, IMO when you close it it should move it down, not swipe to the left, it would also be cool if other than tapping on it, it was possible to grab that menu button and slide it up manually like you can with the status bar.
“Animations add a LOT to the OS. I’d say one of the most important aspect of making a beautiful OS are the animations and transitions.
But they should not be overdone or too long. They should just give you the feeling of direction through the UI.
Consistency is also very important, you can’t animations in one place or one app and nothing in another.
You can’t have one app opening this way and navigating this way and another app opening that way and navigating in a different way.”
Agree. Yes, that’s another thing I missed. Consistency. Both in look of applications, where and what interacts as well as consistency in animation. What animates and how they animate. Consistency is often overlooked by a lot of OSes. Very early Symbian Touch experience was one of the worst perpetrators.
@Jay whens your review of android comming? or a review of the SGS2 comming? i swear i saw something on this site of a review of android or someting.
Next week. Terribly busy at the moment now packing and travelling. Gonna be heading up to Manchester tomorrow (and the house has no internet and T-Mob signal is terrible).
The thing won’t be a review as such, it’ll be really to see what Android is doing well, what we can learn from it and what other Nok offerings may do better or just as good.
OH M GEE JAY!!! check out the Nokia Mobile Web App….seems like nokia has added some neat touches. A.K.A. MeeGo touch ;D
I wish all OS’s would just copy Windows Phone 7′s animations. Especially in Mango they seem to have it down just right!
Nokia, please, change the font. The old font makes Belle seems to be so old than s60. And looks like an improvise thing. The new font adds a fresh and modern look to the os.
Did you noticed that the video starts with a “Hello Gays” instead of “hello guys”? Did you?
Just to bump a little fact: Anna is still not available in North America.
Why don’t you just flash it yourself? It’s extremely easy.
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