Background
Ok this may be silly, but just wondered if there would be any interest in this idea I had earlier. What I love about Sense is that it's like each tab has almost moved past being a widget and has almost program like functionality, it seems to me this is really unique on a mobile device.
Concept
So I was thinking, what if it was possible to have extra tabs, in which ongoing programs could run, in something like a window. So for example, slide right one from a Facebook tab immediately into TCPMP, or continue one further into the File Explorer app? Why not extend the Sense UI?
Other thoughts:
1. I noticed that altering the tabs in sense causes a restart. I don't know if there is any way that this could be worked around, but otherwise I guess it's not possible to open up a whole new tab for each program. Perhaps there could be several open in which programs appear as they are run, with a customisable preference for the apps which appear on each tab/ a priority list?
2. maybe it would be possible to have something like a task switcher instead, I was thinking about something like the fantastic iManager, but where the app was fully functional in the tab, then could be switched with a nice simple gesture? This could skirt around the problem of new/blank tabs, and would be pretty cool!
3. Maybe this is nuts, as after all a quick tap on the home button will bring us straight back to Sense, but one less press is never bad right? And also the idea of a unified seamless UI is perfect for mobile in my opinion- I get frustrated by the jumping in and out of apps which Andoid and iOS require. CHT and Sense is exactly what is keeping me on WM
I can't code, but just thought I'd open the idea up to your opinions. Maybe someone who can wants this enough to do it?
Related
At the moment I'm using LauncherPro, but I don't remember seeing an option for this in any other launchers.
It would be nice if we could specify different widget layouts for landscape/portrait, and if possible different grid sizes. Widgets never behave well when switching between orientations.
No idea if this is possible, but it could be handy.
That would be real nice. I have that same thing on mine when switching back and forth. I am not sure that would be possible either, but wouldn't bet against these guys here that it couldn't be. They do some really amazing stuff..
+1
I think I was able to do this with spb mobile shell on my win 6.5 Ph...
In retrospect, switching layouts is a hacky solution. None of the current phone-based launchers feel right on a tablet. VTL is decent but it still has the same core problem.
They're functional of course, and with 3.x and onwards it might be less of an issue. A completely unique launcher would probably be required to have a "desktop" that felt native to the form factor.
For the time being the best solution is probably just to lock to a single orientation. Moving away from the widget/grid system completely would be nice, but I'm not sure how much could be done within the current android framework.
Sweeter Home 2 does this. I've been using it for a while in the past for exactly this reason and just gave it another try. It's a public beta, so keep that in mind.
It lets you create your very own interface with independent layouts for portrait and landscape. It takes some time to get used to its complex edit mode but once you've figured it out, you can do some pretty neat stuff with it. Also, it syncs with an online database to automatically sort your apps in different categories
Sadly, there's no support for scrolling widgets. It's also pretty resource-heavy, so it gets killed pretty often and eats some battery. This can be improved by disabling automatic syncing, though.
Here are some screens of my setup. I can upload it as a theme if anyone wants to try it (Dunno if the theme thingy works as intended, though. Haven't tried it)
Hey looks nice. I'll be keeping an eye on that.
Arbelzapf said:
Here are some screens of my setup. I can upload it as a theme if anyone wants to try it (Dunno if the theme thingy works as intended, though. Haven't tried it)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll have to give it a try...
The Note is my first Android phone coming from iPhone and so far I'm loving the phone and loving Android. It's obviously much much more customizable in a lot of ways (theming, widgets, settings, etc), and I find that it loads most applications much faster and does things quite a bit faster than I'm used to on my iphone 4.
One thing I'm surprised about, and maybe I'm not looking in the right places or I have it all wrong, is that there aren't many _low level_ tweaks available? It's mostly just widgets and themes, but nothing really available that can change the core behavior of your phone as you can with tweaks on a jailbroken iPhone?
For example, two things I've looked for so far that seemed like no-brainer easy peasy things.... music controls for the notification bar (or perhaps music controls that are accessed by overriding a capacitive button, such as holding down the settings button), and a user agent faker for the default browser. Yes I know there are other browsers available, but that's not the point (I tried Dolphin browser HD and did not like it.. it was slower and less responsive than the stock browser).
Those two examples may have their own workarounds (I know notification music controls are coming in ICS, and about:useragent will temporarily change the user agent), but I'm really getting at a larger question here. Other examples of "low level tweaks" from iphone that I kind of liked -- if you are viewing a text window above an open keyboard (ie gtalk, sms) and scroll down within the text window, it moves the keyboard out of the way. This was really natural for me, and just a simple download from Cydia. Another example -- swiping up from the bottom of the phone opening the multitasking bar -- again, really natural and awesome... a better fit for iphone for sure, but again, I'm not necessarily looking for those _exact_ tweaks, just offering some examples of what *types* of tweaks I'm referring to as "low level tweaks". Based on that, is there somewhere I can look to find these *types* of tweaks?
Unless I'm mistaken, it seems that to get these low level tweaks, you need a custom ROM? And then I guess you either need to learn how to build your own custom ROM, or hope that a dev will bake *all* of YOUR favorite tweaks into the _same_ ROM. Is that assessment about right when talking about low level tweaks? Or maybe there are other ways to add these tweaks, such as using adb to push them over? If so, where might I actually locate tweaks like this -- is there a repository / database / market of them somewhere?
FWIW I am rooted and OC'd using Da G's kernel (thanks Da G!). I've never dealt with custom ROMs on android so I'm partially speculating based on what I've heard about them and the lack of low level stuff on the market.
i think your comparing apples to oranges.
Apple keeps it simple and navigation is seamless IF YOU USE the device the way THEY INTENDED. step outside of that little box and they won't even support you .. i.e. jailbreak - after jailbreaking you can screw your phone up with all kind of cracked apps and all that junk.
As far as the keyboard moving out of the way, i don't think their are a great deal of ppl who care too much about that.... i think android compensates quite well in other areas.
having owned both platforms i would say it like this:
Apple holds software to a higher regard than hardware. after all, if you can't use your phone because it force-closes every 2 seconds then what's the point.
If you are like me and you like to "think outside the box" a little bit, then there are more possibilities with android... seems like eventually android drives you to learn more about your phone and how stuff works. i call it "the phone for adults!" lol
As far as the keyboard is concerned, you just need to download a different one. Go Keyboard, for example, has a button you can press to hide the keyboard whenever you want.
There's always an app/widget/setting in Android that will let you accomplish almost anything you want. That's the beauty of the platform.
Hitting the back button while in a text field will hide the keyboard, and allow you to scroll in the text box.
Sent from my SGH-I997 using xda premium
I'm not sure about low level tweaks but you could try something other than the default TW launcher and keyboard to achieve some of the gesture based control you mention. For example, Swiftkey X has gestures to hide the keyboard by swiping down and ADWlauncher allows you to program the swipe up function to various things.
Android is a platform built on top of a Linux kernel. If rooted, anything you can do with Linux (e.g. everything), you can do with Android.
So, I like Sense 4. It's a lot more trimmed down compared to previous versions, and IMO 2nd only to Sense 1.0 (which ran like a champ on the OG EVO). But, it still has some issues, and I think we've all come along them. The point of this thread is to figure out ways which these issues can be fixed. Please, submit issues you have with sense. Here is what I have encountered so far.
1. Widget browser - Long pressing a screen will bring up the widget browser, which is very similar to Honeycomb. This is very clunky, and you have to scroll through page after page to find and add a widget. This is very annoying, and cumbersome.
What should happen: Long pressing on a screen should bring up the wallpaper chooser. To add a widget, the app drawer should be combined with the widget drawer like stock ICS/JB.
2. Multi-tasking - We all know that Sense's multi-tasking sucks. Not only the memory values, and the extremely conservative memory management which kills apps only a few seconds after you leave it, but the look. In stock ICS/JB, you can see and easily swipe away about five applications, instead of having a full screen, almost app in itself.
What should happen: Stock ICS/JB multi-tasking. This was implemented in the Charmeleon ROM, but that hasn't been updated in some time. Would be worth contacting the devs to see how they got the stock multi-tasking into Sense.
3. Overall memory usage - Sense uses much more memory than stock ICS/JB. Often free memory can get down to <100MB, which can hamper the overall speed of the launcher.
What should happen: Memory usage should be scaled down, using the already implemented memory tweaks, removal of un-needed services and applications, and more liberal task management settings.
So, feel free to submit any other problems you have with sense, and submit suggestions on how to practically fix it.
yankeeboy254 said:
So, I like Sense 4. It's a lot more trimmed down compared to previous versions, and IMO 2nd only to Sense 1.0 (which ran like a champ on the OG EVO). But, it still has some issues, and I think we've all come along them. The point of this thread is to figure out ways which these issues can be fixed. Please, submit issues you have with sense. Here is what I have encountered so far.
1. Widget browser - Long pressing a screen will bring up the widget browser, which is very similar to Honeycomb. This is very clunky, and you have to scroll through page after page to find and add a widget. This is very annoying, and cumbersome.
What should happen: Long pressing on a screen should bring up the wallpaper chooser. To add a widget, the app drawer should be combined with the widget drawer like stock ICS/JB.
2. Multi-tasking - We all know that Sense's multi-tasking sucks. Not only the memory values, and the extremely conservative memory management which kills apps only a few seconds after you leave it, but the look. In stock ICS/JB, you can see and easily swipe away about five applications, instead of having a full screen, almost app in itself.
What should happen: Stock ICS/JB multi-tasking. This was implemented in the Charmeleon ROM, but that hasn't been updated in some time. Would be worth contacting the devs to see how they got the stock multi-tasking into Sense.
3. Overall memory usage - Sense uses much more memory than stock ICS/JB. Often free memory can get down to <100MB, which can hamper the overall speed of the launcher.
What should happen: Memory usage should be scaled down, using the already implemented memory tweaks, removal of un-needed services and applications, and more liberal task management settings.
So, feel free to submit any other problems you have with sense, and submit suggestions on how to practically fix it.
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Click to collapse
I agree with all of these but I really want the Stock ICS multitasking style.
"Widget browser - Long pressing a screen will bring up the widget browser, which is very similar to Honeycomb. This is very clunky, and you have to scroll through page after page to find and add a widget. This is very annoying, and cumbersome."
You're doing it wrong. You can use the dropdown menu to select the app you want a widget of, which can be quicker than the stock method. And the stock method isn't too much different from scrolling in Sense, besides the fact that you see more widgets at a time stock.
I agree. I'm moving storage from my phone, to my sd card just now, and I go into setting to cut my bluetooth off, and my transfer stopped. It's becoming very annoying by the day.
I'm definitely an unhappy customer at the moment. My phone doesn't restart my UI as much. Because I don't have Sense anymore. Thank god, for the Apex launcher.
Something has to be done asap. HTC should at least acknowledge the problem. Give us some hope. And to think there are some people, saying these things, doesn't bother them.
edub186 said:
I agree. I'm moving storage from my phone, to my sd card just now, and I go into setting to cut my bluetooth off, and my transfer stopped. It's becoming very annoying by the day.
I'm definitely an unhappy customer at the moment. My phone doesn't restart my UI as much. Because I don't have Sense anymore. Thank god, for the Apex launcher.
Something has to be done asap. HTC should at least acknowledge the problem. Give us some hope. And to think there are some people, saying these things, doesn't bother them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They did framework mods that mess with multitasking and kill tasks far too aggressively, see the One XL forums for more info.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk 2
Hunt3r.j2 said:
They did framework mods that mess with multitasking and kill tasks far too aggressively, see the One XL forums for more info.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But didn't HTC fix the XL's multi - tasking issue with an OTA? And if so, I really wonder why our OTA didn't include that same fix?
Sent from my EVO using xda app-developers app
What about the horrid IMAP/POP/Exchange mail app? HTC really botched that one and has let it slide since people brought this up back in May.
Surely it's not too difficult to fix the "download images" option and apply smaller zoom/font sizes. No, K-9 is not the answer.
After testing android-x86 I'm convinced this OS could have a lot of potential on desktops..........if it were more desktop-friendly.
I been thinking this a lot and I'm guessing it shouldn't be that difficult, like at the very bottom a lot could be done with a custom launcher that gave easy access by mouse to functions that depend on gestures like the config section in the status bar. Adding right-click shouldn't be hard either, though building an API to support right click on apps is a step up.
I think the most difficult part would be running apps as windows instead of full screen. Something can be done with xposedframework and modules like flying android. One option would be to add the side-by-side of touchwiz, or even an array mode like 4 apps on the same screen at the same time. Even with a 15" laptop you get more space (actual space, not resolution) than with four 4.5" phone screens put together.
A lot of apps specially those made for tablets could be used with a mouse and keyboard without too much problem (eg: evernote, es explorer, gmail) but other would probably need to be at least tweaked, but eventually with a userbase we might get devs to build actual custom apps. I imagine devs could also use the existing design from the windows/mac versions of their apps, like in the case of evernote for example, instead of having to rethink the entire app's layout.
Anyway, opinions?
So here is the idea, a X-Cross Media Bar (XMB) style interface launcher that can be used on android devices, phones or tablets, but I plan on using it on my N7 since I use a Bluetooth keyboard I use for remote desktop and chrome and a pc xbox controller for games from time to time I have been trying to figure out how to make a decent android home screen that interacts like the XMB controls wise but have come up short.
I have found quite a few threads and other pages for stuff like this that has moved nowhere in the past and was hoping you guys might be able to get something in some sort of solution to my desire for a clean interactive interface. The closest thing i have, thanks to one of my friends who first came up with the idea but I have obsessively been trying to find a way to perfect, is using Nova launcher with folders set to tap to open a set app and swipe up to open the folder and a custom icon based off a PS3 theme pack I took the images from all arranged in an XMB style (picture linked) with the Wave Life Wallpaper to give it that PSP/PS3 look.
Basically all I want is an interface that interacts like the XMB, can be controlled either with directional buttons or by swiping across the screen (or tapping the icon of what you want if possible). But the big kicker here is that it has to support each column set acting as a customizable folder, like in Nova, and a standard app drawer where you can see all your apps. I don't even care if this requires xposed, a different launcher, and widgets, I want it and have done everything short of trying to code it myself. (probably not a good idea, I'm a network guy, not a good programmer)
All the pages I have come across in search of the pot of gold:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1104989
http://home.gna.org/gp2xmb/
https://code.google.com/p/xpmb/
http://boards.dingoonity.org/jxd-devices/xmb-launcher-for-android-5891/
The second to last one was a launcher somebody made, and believe it or not runs on 5.0.2, but has some issues and does not really let you change anything. The last Link is an actually functional one but does not allow for much customization.
What I am thinking of is more of a launcher that allows you to create columns for certain things and select which apps fill them like a folder does, allows you to have whatever wallpaper (static, scrolling, live) and has customization options. If somebody out there can program this and get it working I would pay for it. It just seems like such a usable interface for when using a controller, keyboard, or even on a touchscreen as a way different way to have everything organised. Although a standard app drawer would still be nice to avoid having every app in a column and just the ones you frequently use (I basically want an XMB in place of multiple desktops on the home screen)
Just let me know if anybody can help me figure this out.