UI Design - add resource window more gesture oriented

[Marco Martin]

On Tuesday 13 September 2011, Fania Bremmer wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> While I am documenting the UI Design for Plasma Active, I came to the
> point to have a closer look at the add resource window.
> 
> For me it has currently a very "oldschool" interaction, as known from
> the pc with a mouse. Marco and I had already discussions about how to
> make it more touch-friendly and easier in interaction.
> 
> I made up my mind and designed the following ideas (maybe not for
> version 1.0, but the next relases will follow soon :) ...). Please
> consider the following screens as wireframes, not as final design
> specifications.

yep, i think they are good ideas, i don't think is 1.0 material as well tough

> http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/1-addResource_window.jpg
> #1: The Add content window (wording "content" sounds better then "items"
> in my opinion):
> Here the user can either search for content (like it works already now)
> and/or select categories (a dropdown instead the current icons, that
> rather confuse then show the filtering function).

hmm, i find comboboxes rather pain for touchscreens, i know meego tablet is 
using them in several places (and we have one in the battery since is still 
the same plasmoid used in the desktop) but i would be careful with the usage 
of that widget

> Underneath nepomuk already delivers best hits, that is content that is
> already related to the current activity and shows the first 20something
> resources based on that recommendation. As soon as the user inserts
> something in search or dropdown, the content changes of course.

i guess that would depend from 

> http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/2-addResource_select.jpg
> #2: Selection works like in the current development with single touch,
> the selected file gets a highlight.
> 
> http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/3-addResource_dragndrop.jpg
> #3: Now I start dreaming :) Instead of an add-button, the user simply
> drags the selected content into the activity area behind the window. The

yep, that's should be supported, as a possible way, not as the only way tough 
i think.
btw, that would be possible as soon as we can switch to master for kde-runtime 
since there are drag and drop qml components there

> 
> http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/4-addResource_multiselect.jpg
> #4: still dreaming :) Multiselection could also be done with a two
> fingers gesture: indicate start point with the press of the first
> finger, stay there and move the second finger over the surface withouth
> loosing contact to select all items laying in between. This would be a
> nice feature if I want to select a big amount of data, lets say all my
> last vacation pics...

that was by the way the exact problem i banged my head around today in making 
this experiment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvqip960aKg

is pretty visible that doesn't work as good as it should be, since the only 
multitouch thing is going to be exposed in Qt 4.8 is a pinch gesture that 
doesn't let to know where the two individual points are (i think they want to 
keep raw touch events hidden, we can write some ourselves tough) there could 
be enough use cases for it: both in that video, resizing boxes with fingers, 
or drawing a rubberband requires having the coordinates of all touch events.


> I would love to see our development become more and more gesture
> oriented - I think we already have cool features like the dragging from
> the status bar and the wheely movement of our switcher... but maybe
> there is even more potential. Would be a nice topic for next weeks
> workshop, what do you think?

yep, me as well.
overall, i didn't try to puch many multitouch gestures is just technical right 
now.
The bindings are still not api stable, so for just even having pinching in the 
web browser and in the image viewer i have to put the whole support in a patch 
just for the meego build to make the thing running everywhere, with a stable 
gesture (and raw touch events) api we will do way more crazy stuff ;)

Cheers,
Marco Martin