Today I’d like to discuss an app that we’re using probably every day on our smartphones but each time it feels underrated — the built-in web browser.
The problem is that the Maemo browser has been facing functional devolution year after year. But the web has been changing constantly as well as our lifestyle so now we need a proper tool to view the Internet in the right way more than ever.

So here are my thoughts on what should be changed in the default web browser in Harmattan. Many of those features you maybe have already seen in different apps so basically I’m just making up the concept out of existing pieces.

1. The Grid

So first of all I’d add the grid view to the home screen of the browser that has been introduced by Opera under the “Speed Dial” name and then used by many other modern desktop browsers. A quick and easy way to jump right to your favorite bookmarks. As I nice bonus I’ve added user-adjustable color tags for labels so your eyes will catch the bookmark you need even faster. Along with the Grid itself you can also find a shortcuts to all necessary browsing stuff like bookmarks, history and settings. Also you can just type the address or search query on the bottom.

To manage the Grid you can simply tap’n'hold on any of the squares, just like you do in the apps menu.It will allow you to add new bookmarks or delete or relocate existing.

2. Bookmarks

Let’s move on to the other important feature of any web browser – bookmarks management. It’s nice to have the Grid view or even a shortcut right in the apps menu, but what if you have just too many bookmarks for such simple interfaces? That’s why we need something more sophisticated.

As you can see, now we have good old detailed view of all bookmarks you have no matter where they are located. Just tap edit to create new folders or delete existing items. Also notice that now we’re using favicons instead of almost useless tiny snapshots of pages for even easier navigation.And of course there is a “pull down to search” feature just like in any other place in the system (Harmattan) if you know what you’re looking for.

“Add bookmark” dialog has been modified too.

Now you have a bunch of options for this action. Along with label you can change the target folder to any you want. Also you can chose whether you want to add the bookmark to the apps menu and/or Grid view. And the third option that needs some extra explanation.

3. Web Application Mode.

Basically it’s the mode where your web page loads without any “browsing” attributes like address bar, back/forward buttons or anything else, just simply fullscreen. It will finally open the door to proper mobile web applications with their own navigation, advanced caching and many other things. Just imagine one single multi-platform application that looks the same on any device (of the same category of course).

4. History

Since we’ve revamped bookmarks I don’t have any reason not to improve history list.

Favicons for easier navigation, quick scrolling between time intervals, handy way to quickly clear the list without drilling down the menus.

Now I want to ask you, what other features do you need in your mobile browser? Desktop sync? Fit to screen mode? Unicorns? Please feel free to share your thoughts here and who knows maybe one day developers will read this stuff and use these advices.

Thanks for reading.

Hello everyone.

I haven’t posted updates of my work for quite a long time but now I finally have enough time to fulfill your interest by showing you some of the upcoming projects that I’ve been working on. So let’s start with something you’ve been quite familiar with all these years and that got a complete overhaul to step onto Harmattan platform. It’s OMWeather and this time it’s not just a tweak of good ol’ weather widget – it’s a completely redesigned application so we had to choose some more “marketable” name for this OMWeather successor. Let me introduce you: MeeCast.

1. Branding

MeeCast absorbed all key features that you’ve loved in OMWeather like extreme customization, detailed settings, icon sets, GPS tracking and more. But now it has evolved from just a weather widget on your home screen to full featured open source cross-platform solution for developing weather related applications all thanks to Qt and QML. Right now we’re focusing on delivering MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan application as fast as possible but we’re also cooking something really extraordinary for you and I hope we’ll soon be able to show it to the world. But that will happen later this year, right now let me give you a sneak peek on what’s coming up for Nokia N9  (and of course for N950 ninjas too :P)

2. Concept

Since Harmattan got rid of home screen widgets of all sorts ( or is it? ) we’ve decided to mimic the “instant access” experience of the widget in our stand-alone application. So we’ve designed an app that will load as fast as possible and show all necessary info without carpet bombing your eyes with fancy special effects that QML allows us to do. So here’s the home screen:

There’s nothing much to describe, everything looks pretty intuitive (for me at least :P). Your location along with basic but most valuable data right in front of you. Day temperatures are color coded along with the background to give you instant “feel” of the outside conditions. Not so representative with boring Moscow weather but still :)

The “Day details” view shows you all the info available at the moment for chosen day. We’ve decided to use text labels instead of icons for maximum readability in all languages (and we have 8 different locales. If you wish to help with adding your native language – feel free to email us at vlad[at]gas.by). Also day and night parameters are now divided in two tabs for additional comfort.

All for now, but stay tuned, there’s still landscape mode and testing package waiting to be revealed :)

Thanks for reading.

Since I’m not a big fan of boring lectures, tribunes or formal declarations of any kind, I’d like to introduce new format for my talk at the San Francisco conference, which, in my opinion, suits the idea of open collaborating community much better. I want those of you, who want their application to be re-designed in a fancy way, to send me links and descriptions of your work and I’ll do it not only for free (as always :), but using techniques that I’ll be talking about on stage. And I’ll use your particular application to show things in real world. To my mind it’s a totally win-win solution. I’ll have great examples to show during the talk, much better than imagining fake ones, and you’ll have nice UI/UX mockups to use (or not to use if you’d like to) in your application. Actual presence in the room during my talk is a great bonus :)

So don’t be shy and post your applications right here in comments!

P.S.: No commercial software is allowed. Sorry, folks.

Hello all.

Since I’m not a big fan of boring lectures, tribunes or formal declarations of any kind, I’d like to introduce new format for my talk at the San Francisco conference, which, in my opinion, suits the idea of open collaborating community much better. I want those of you, who want their application to be re-designed in a fancy way, to send me links and descriptions of your work and I’ll do it not only for free (as always :), but using techniques that I’ll be talking about on stage. And I’ll use your particular application to show things in real world. To my mind it’s a totally win-win solution. I’ll have great examples to show during the talk, much better than imagining fake ones, and you’ll have nice UI/UX mockups to use (or not to use if you’d like to) in your application. Actual presence in the room during my talk is a great bonus :)

So don’t be shy and post your applications right here in comments!

P.S.: No commercial software is allowed. Sorry, folks.

Lot’s of things have already been said around the internet, both apocalyptic and joyful, about this agreement between Microsoft and Nokia. But mostly people somehow felt “betrayed” or something like that.

Let me ask you a question: would you like to see your favourite company dead? I really doubt it. But you still want Nokia to devlop only their own products, without realising actual states of them right now.

1. Symbian. This is a long story, this OS has both pros and contras, but it has one only downside that ruins the whole story – right now Symbian is the syninim to “Old”. You can argue with that as much as you want, but it’s true. And it’s suicidal for marketing to have “old” OS onboard. You just won’t be able to sell it to ordinary people, who just watch the ads and listen to their quasi-geeky friends.

2. MeeGo. MeeGo is a great and abitious start, but it needs money and work to make it useable for casual user. Meanwhile Nokia needs to sell something, anything. Maybe you’d suggest just not to develop any high end smartphones untill MeeGo is ready, but that not sounds  like a great plan for #1 phone manufacturer, eh.

So, Nokia needs to sell devices and it needs to sell it right now. I don’t know why the developement of symbian is taking so long, but right now it’s clear that Symbian is being developed much slower than competitors. And that will make a gap between them even wider.

Android is really the worst choice possibe and the reason has already been discussed thousand times.So there was pretty much one option – WP7

As for connection between Mr Elop’s past in Microsoft and current actions – I see pretty clear sense in it. He needs to do something right now, today, with no “dating” period for him and his future possible partners. So he started to work with people that he already knows well enough to do business. If I’m starving to death and have nothing to eat at home – I won’t be riding to some unknown grocery across the city.

And right now Nokia has only 3 things to eat at home: haribo bears, very old donut and half baked wedding cake.

So please, don’t feel betrayed when your favourite company is trying to breathe in to continue their marvelous work. Nokia still does the best hardware on the market, it searches for breakthroughs in every direction, it tries to do something with this difficult situation in software. Nokia does, Nokia will do.

Thank you.

After pretty long pause I’m happy to announce that our team is alive and still rocking hard for your amusement. And today I want to tell you about some really hot stuff for your Nokia n900.

Initially started as a project for FRUCT application competition by Tanya Makova, new name in the maemo.org community and Vlad Vasiliev, who is well known as an OMWeather project leader, this application has evolved into one of the most shiny pearls on the scene. Thanks to these two people you’re now able to amaze the audience with your n900 like never before. Instead of showing static wallpapers on your desktops, now you can set almost anything from video files to XScreenSavers. Let me introduce you – Live Wallpaper. Project details with screenshots and video are after the break.

Here’s a quick look on what is already done now and what’s planned for the nearest future. First of all Live Wallpaper is already available in extras-devel repository so you can go and get it right now. This application adds one more option to your settings menu. Also, statusbar applet is planned for quick on/off toggling (to conserve battery life, for example).

By clicking “settings” you’ll see main layout window that shows you all your 4 desktops with your settings. Tap any of them to view its details. Also you’ll be able to donate to the project via PayPal, which is highly recommended, considering all this awesomeness that you can do with Live Wallpaper.

Settings window is pretty straightforward. Here you can disable Live Wallpaper for specified desktop or chose one of your favourite from available. All wallpapers are divided into categories: Video, Live Wallpapers or XScreenSavers. Each of them has its own settings. For example for Video you can chose the file to play and enable looped playback.

Here are some examples of what you can expect with Live Wallpaper installed. Screenshots doesn’t show all beauty, so you can scroll down for the video.

You can also find a lot of “n900 ready” videos in this thread on talk.maemo.org. And feel free to add your favourites too.

To see all XScreenSavers available you can visit its homepage.

Well, that’s all for now, don’t forget to report any bugs or wishes in Live Wallpaper discussion thread. Some more cool news will come soon, so stay tuned and thanks for reading.

I thought it would be it would be useful and motivating if I’ll describe my way of creating themes. I’ve used it to create Marina in Windows but you can use it in any OS I think. Special thanks to Master Carsten “Stskeeps” Munk for all the info and guides. And here we go.

Step 0: Downloading required software.

[download link] MADDE – Maemo Application Development and Debugging Environment

[download link] Hildon-Theme-Example template

[download link] Coordinates template file

Step 1: Software setup.

First of all you need to install MADDE environment. It’s pretty straightforward so don’t panic, just follow the instructions.

Then you’ll need to untar downloaded Hildon-Theme-Example file called hildon-theme-example-stskeeps-hildon-theme-example-stskeeps-master.tar.gz (yeah yeah :) into <MADDE INSTALLATION FOLDER> / <MADDE VERSION NUMBER> / home / <USER NAME> / Theme name (Marina, for example).

We’re done.

Step 2: Theme editing.

Now lets move to the editing itself. Open theme folder that you’ve just created and filled with files from tar archive.you’ll see a bunch of files and folders. Right now we need the one called template. There you’ll see 4 files: coordinates.png, template.png, template.svg and MakeFile.am. Remember, if you’re a fan of svg editing – go on, but remember that it should be converted to template.png anyway. But let’s pretend that you want to edit template.png. Open it with your favourite Photoshop clone (:P) and you’re good to go. Almost. Cause there’s the only one problem with this file – it doesn’t have “zones” mark up – special layer that will show you exact sizes of different UI elements. This layer is held in coordinates.png as you may have guessed, but there’s the catch – if you’ll just copy and paste it – it won’t be placed right cause it’s actually smaller than it should be. That’s why I’ve created “right” coordinates.png file for you. Download it and paste it into your templates.png file. Now you’re clear to launch your creativity into the stratosphere :)

But before you’ll start, please note that some of the theme files are not covered with templates.png. Take a look at the “applications” folder that lies in your theme folder. It contains different subfolders, where you’ll find different backgrounds, icons and templates, that should be edited too. Especially rtcom-messaging-ui (“Conversations” app). Never forget about it, or terrorists win!

Step 3: Theme packaging.

Ok, you’re done with drawing all this stuff, now let’s move to actual packaging (you want to test your theme, right?)

• run MADDE and cd to your theme folder (for example cd Marina)
• type sh try_it_out.sh . It will start some kind of first run wizard that will guide you thru the process of initial theme setup. It will ask you some simple questions, answer honestly :) IMPORTANT: If your theme name has first letter upper case,  directory name must have first letter lower case!
  IMPORTANT: If your theme name has first letter lower case,  directory name must have first letter upper case!

  This is REALLY GODDAMN IMPORTANT, DON’T MESS THIS UP.

• Ok. Now minimize MADDE and go to debian subfolder in your theme folder. You’ll see some files there, right now we need control. Open it up with your favourite text editor.
  Here, after “Standards version” row you’ll need to insert one more row and it should look like this:

  XSBC-Bugtracker: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32761
  

  This is the bugtracker URL, replace it with the address where you’ll want to, you know, track bugs.

  Now we need to add a pretty icon for the package and it’s really not that straightforward as it looks like :) Right after “Depends:…” row in the same control file you should add this:

  XB-Maemo-Icon-26:
  

  then break (new row) and now we came to the most weird part :) Icons are 48×48 png files actually BUT they are stored right in this control file in base64 format. So, you’ve drawn a png with right dimensions (transparency allowed btw) then you need to convert it into base64 fomat. You can do it here. Just upload your file and this website will show you base64 code you need. Paste it on the next row after XB-Maemo-Icon-26:. You’re almost done.

  BUT REMEMBER TO DO LAST IMPORTANT THING. YOU SHOULD PLACE “SPACE” IN THE BEGINNING OF EACH LINE OF THAT BASE64 CODE OR YOU’LL RECEIVE AN ERROR.

  Ok, we’re done with icon, let’s move to Description row. Right now you can see just your theme’s name there, it’s boring. Write something more descriptive there.

  And the last one bit of code you’ll need to add is Pretty Name ©. Without that row your package will be shown in Application Manager like hildon-theme-marina for example, and we want something like Marina Theme instead. Just add a new line after description and place that row there:

  XSBC-Maemo-Display-Name: Marina Theme
  

  Congratulations, we’re done with control file!

• Now let’s move to changelog file. Don’t worry, it’s much simplier than control. Open it up with your favourite text editor.
  Though it’s simple, but it’s really important file cause it will tell MADDE which version you want to build and it’s the right place to track your changelog. It should have format like this:
  hildon-theme-marina (1.095) jaunty; urgency=low
  
  * Calendar agenda view fixed
  * Titlebar arrow color changed

  – Andrew Zhilin <andrew@zhil.in>  Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:53:02 +0000

  hildon-theme-marina (0.1) jaunty; urgency=low
  
  * Initial release.

  – Andrew Zhilin <andrew@zhil.in>  Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0000
  
  Top row always shows the version you want to build right now, don’t forget about it

• Ok, we’re done with text editing at last, now the most sacred process – package creating. You’ll be surprised but it’s as easy as typing 1 row of text in MADDE console. Yeah, MADDE will do the rest. So, cd to your theme folder (Marina for example) an simply type:

  mad dpkg-buildpackage -S -us -uc -d

  And that’s it. If you’ve done everything well – you’ll see 3 files appeared in your MADDE home/<user name> folder .changes, .dsc and .tar.gz. Congrats!

Step 4: Autobuilder

Ok, we almost did it, now we only need to upload all this stuff to The Mighty Autobuilder ©.

• First of all you’ll need to have maemo.org account.
• Now go to the maemo.org Extras Assistant and just follow the steps. After all this registration stuff it will finally ask you to give it your 3 files (don’t mess up with file versions!) and autobuilder will create a .deb package for you. But how can you find it?
• There’s an app for that – Maemo Package Interface. There you can search for yor new shiny .deb and, if it’s worth it, you can promote your package from Extras-Devel repository to Extras-Testing repository, where users will judge if it’s worth to be placed in Holy Maemo Extras or not :)
• IMPORTANT: Every autobuilder or promotion related action takes time. If autobuilder will fail at building your .deb – it will e-mail you with log, don’t worry and be patient.
• IMPORTANT: SSH key is “blahblah” :)

Well, that’s all, folks, I hope to see some more professional themes for Maemo 5 soon!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.

As I promissed, today I’d like to present you my first, and lets hope not last, theme for Fremantle and also the default theme for Mer called Marina.

Dark, a bit glossy but calm blueish theme, packed with loopable wallpaper. First 3rd-party theme to be designed from scratch, every UI element is hand drawn (except for loading “flower” and navigation icons :). I really wanted to give it a finished professional look, hope you’ll feel it.

Right now it’s heading to Extras repository and you can vote right here to promote it even faster. You can also report bugs (if any) here or in the t.m.o. discussion thread. But I hope I’ve cleaned all of these, even though it was a tough experience without actual devic, thanks all of you who helped with them.

Anyway, I hope you’ll use it, thanks to Xisdibik some screenshots are waiting for you after the break.

And thanks for reading.