Widgets for Nokia N9
Nokia N9 doesn’t do widgets. It takes on a different usability set of menu, multitasking and notifications.
But it seems folks are still wanting Widgets and have done exactly that.
Well, it’s apparently an app so not exactly a streamlined integrated solution, but perhaps better than nothing and good to illustrate the concept. It was created by gioni88 from MeeGo forums who said:
I got a bit disappointed when I realized Harmattan doesn’t provide a way to use the old fashioned desktop widgets I was used with N900. Since UX cannot be touched, I tought to create an application which offers a sort of platform to run widgets.
And some background on how it works:
Widgets can be added and dragged, theirs position is saved and restored at next application startup.
There is a canvas of 480×3200, flickable, and so not like on N900. Background is 480*1200, and there is a parallax effect to fill the canvas.
The best thing is about the widgets: they are just qml files! I have created a Widget component to handle the dragging, the saving of the position, the multi istancing (yes, I have also implemented a sort of differentiation between the same type of widgets), the showing of a settings sheet, the showing of a background.
More details can be found at the forum:
Thanks incognito for the tip!
Category: Applications, Maemo, MeeGo, Nokia
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Review Nokia N9 | Free Bird | January 23, 2012
just about the time….. widget will come to MeeGo (and iOS)
Not really for the iOS – such an app is pointless on a non-multitasking device – the widgets won’t be able to update in the background so every time you’d start them it would take quite a bit of time for all of them to update.
And if they are not updating, you essentially have a glorified app launcher, not a widgets ‘screen’.
So all the widgets on Android are glorified app launchers?
Android has widgets by design, they are ‘live’ on the home screen(s) so they update constantly. If you were to write a separate app for Android to do the widgets approach yourself, without modifying the Android stack, that app would just be a glorified app launcher as well.
how in the hell did you bring android up into this when they’re speaking of meego/ios….
Widgets will not come to iOS, because they consume to much power and give to much freedom to user – that is oposite to Apple policy.
pretty good widget. weather widget is there?
The power of harmattan.
why cant they hack it to create a widgets view?
or add the more widgets just underneath the two default widegts found at events view?
The Swipe UI part of the Harmattan is by the most part closed-source, you can do a tweak here and there on the parts that are open-source due to their need to link with the rest of the system, or certain things that its API allows, but to change its paradigm – hardly.
What one could do is to rewrite and replace the UI stack completely, but that would be a huge task that I don’t think anyone would be much keen to do + you’d lose all the benefits from the Swipe UI.
Or you can use MyMoves to have a gesture that will always bring you to the widget app as the main screen, thus at least emulating the ‘third view’.
The MyMoves gesture is a smart suggestion, good idea man…
“The best thing is about the widgets: they are just qml files!” – that’s great. I can’t wait to be able to write widgets for Symbian in QML.
if the person who created this app can read this:
I would rather have the widgets in the pull down menu on the title bar. Should be able to adjust brightness, turn on WiFi, turn on Bluetooth within that pull down menu like iOS or even symbian.
the developer of this app is very active at talk.maemo.org
you can find him
Post in the thread linked to in the article.
That’s where the app was originally launched.
Much of that part of the UX (title bar) is closed though IIRC.
Well that’s a way to ruin a beautifully designed UI. I understand why people are intrigued by the widgets, but isn’t this just an attempt to make the N9 into a symbian phone? I use the E6-00 myself and love it, but I couldn’t imagine making the N9 into something else. Isn’t the point of buying an N9 the unique OS and UI? I’m not trying to point fingers at anyone or telling you what to do. Just sharing some of my thoughts on the whole topic.
+100
.. to me, if you want widget, get android instead, or symbian ..
The developer of that piece of software is an ex-Maemo user:
“I got a bit disappointed when I realized Harmattan doesn’t provide a way to use the old fashioned desktop widgets I was used with N900. Since UX cannot be touched, I tought to create an application which offers a sort of platform to run widgets.”
It’s optional. Nobody’s forced to use it or “ruin a beautifully designed UI”. What’s wrong with having options?
There’s nothing wrong with it. People should of course have the opportunity to do whatever they want to with their devices.
To me it just seems funny, after hearing all the talk on creating a new and unique UI pattern (Marko Ahrtisaari’s talk on where the mobile industry is heading) — just to see someone else reverting to the old again. That’s a funny paradox, don’t you agree? Nothing wrong with it. I suppose I just don’t understand why people would want to do this.
To me it’s like taking an original Wishbone chair by Wegner and starting to customize it because I wanted it to feel like a different chair.
I work as a designer myself and have always had a certain respect and interest for the original intentions of a design.
But that’s probably not a view shared by everyone.
Well, it’s all just about habit.
When people hanging around for years with Symbian, they act like Symbian.
MeeGo is a fresh newly OS, that lot people are unfamiliar with it, some people love the new and abandon the old one or just mind separated both, but some still had the old behaviour and tried to implemented on the new one.
Everybody had its own adaptation.