webOS Community Edition gets card stack management that makes sense 29
Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:39 pm EDTHow do we love the work going into improving the open source webOS Community Edition? Let us count the ways… While we're counting, we're going to direct you to the video above, posted by Andrew Holbrook (the same guy who whipped up the tabbed card stacks) is another improvement to LunaSysMgr, this time making it a whole hell of a lot quicker to manage your card stacks. The alteration makes it possible to hold a stack with one finger and use the other hand to drag an outside card into it. You can also do the opposite, holding the stack and dragging off a card, but here's where things get awesome: grab two cards in the middle of a stack and pull them apart to split the stack. We know, right!
So yeah, we're excited to see this and other improvements we haven't yet conjured in our heads brought to the Community Edition and can't wait until it's ready to be installed on our TouchPads. We're also just plain happy to see a better way to manage card stacks. As much as we love the concept, we could never quite the the hang of the slow drag to move a card into a stack and the seeming surgical precision that it took to get the card place in the stack where you wanted it. This modification looks to make things quite a bit easier.
Source: Andrew Holbrook (Twitter)
29 Comments
MMMAAANNN!!!
Why they don't release open webOS already!!!
LONG WILL LIVE webOS!!!
You should be aware that WOCE and Open webOS are two quite distinct items.
Whilst the open source license means that any community contributions to WOCE (like this one), can be used by HP for Open webOS, there is no compulsion for HP to do so, and no guarantee that they can or will do so.
It's the same situation as homebrew patches and webOS. HP has previously taken a couple of the homebrew patches and incorporated them into webOS proper, but it was the rare exception, not the rule.
-- Rod
Absolutely genius!
Shame my pixi is stuck with 1.4.5 :\
I hate that's its almost impossible to see what's on the bottom cards in the touchpad version of webos. Would be nice if we could make the cards smaller and more visible some how like the phone. Great job tho
now THIS I do like! Didn't care much for the tabbed card thingie before, although it was kind of cool, but this is nice.
It certainly hasn't helped that stacking has been broken to a degree since 3.0.2 or so. That was at least partially fixed in the CE release that we received right from the get go (there's still some issues with it that I'm not sure we can address with the code that we have, although I do intend to go looking for them at some point).
Since this video, I've found myself using it a bit more (and it does help that many apps do stack correctly now), and although it's a bit inconvenient to build the stacks myself, I have found it to be a lot handier than I did at first try, which was just "oh, that's neat. didn't know i could move things around stacks. what will i ever use that for ..."
... and I can't wait to get Dukiedrew's patches into my LunaSysMgr. Should be fun to show off :)
Sweeeeeeeeeet!!!
When will Open webOS be released?? Will it work on Pixi and Pre??
When I first heard of this, it did not seem very interesting or useful, since I haven't used card stacking much. But after the video... Wow! That's how those stacks should work.
Until now I haven't been interested in WOCE. NOW I'M EXCITED!!!
Love it! Works like it should =)
Very cool!
Nice!
I'm kinda used to not having it but it would be nice to have the old swipe to close non-centered apps too (instead of only being able to close the centered app). With small cards that would even work better.
J
I second that! - It really annoys me that on the Touchpad I can only close the currently centered card as opposed to WebOS 1.45 where you could swipe up any of the visible cards. I'd love to see that return.
I still don't get it. If someone ever makes Community Edition loadable for the masses, won't Web OS 1.0 just overwrite it when HP pushes it down to the Touchpads?
What makes you think that HP will push any future versions of open webos to anybody on anything.
Dumping webos into open source is a way for HP to keep it around in case they need a fallback if/when W8 fails and they don't want to use Android for some reason.
It's a small just-in-case side project and tax write-off. And perhaps it has some value as a threat.
Homebrew devs will simply copy the code from WOCE to open webos. If you like it you'll have to install it yourself.
Ok - I know others may have said/thought this, and please don't get me wrong here - its great to see these fundamental improvements...
But.... unless there's a way to get these onto people's phones/pads in a simple non-geeky way (e.g. preware install)... I've got to ask what is the point...?
Yes it looks great for someone to demonstrate, and as mentioned above, these improvements may or may not be folded into the main open webos code - however, why should we be dependent upon the whim of someone at HP? - shouldn't we have the choice of whether we as individuals want a given facility? - Ok, it may break any 'guarentees' / support options we may have through openwebos (not that I expect to have any anyway!)
Bottom line, I guess this is a plea that while its great to see these overall improvements, can effort please be given over to creating a simple (as can be) method of delivering the changes without the geek reply of 'youll have to compile it yourself' which puts 90% of people out of reach of the improvements....
It takes time to build the things that will be required to make that happen. I am not officially part of webOS Ports, but I can assure you that there are people who are working to make this happen. I have not been able to take the time since working on my two UI patches to CE, to be able to contribute much in that fashion, but other people have been.
You need patience.
People are doing this in their free time.
Sooner or later it's likely that somebody invests his own free time to pack this up in a neat package and a simple checklist to go through.
But unless you have a few thousand bucks lying around with which you'ld like to pay a programmer to do this next week, patience is the price you have to pay.
I've no problem with patience - I wasn't asking for stuff to be done next week, but being a professional developer (unfortunately not java/C++), I know how long these things can take, and that a great product can be let down by less than great implementation. The plea is for the implementation to be given equal consideration, not that it is done 'next week'. The average user will get disillusioned if they keep seeing great improvements but never be able to use them...
Hope that makes sense...?
There just doesn't seem to be any real plan though. HP throws community edition out there for people to play with. A few months later they will throw out WebOS 1.0. Then they are just going to hope that someone into the community does something with either one of them that ends it up on a device - new or even an old Touch pad - by some random chance. It is like hoping in the 8 ball goes in the pocket on a break.
my understanding is that the current WOCE LunaSysMgr that all these changes are being made to is not quite ready for general use; it doesn't support PDK apps, and there's some problem with full-screen Flash, and maybe other issues. Once those issues are resolved, it will be possible to install a customized build of LunaSysMgr via preware (rod whitby posted words to that effect in the forum).
I don't know whether HP is supposed to make a further release of WOCE that fixes those problems, or if this is something the community is supposed to be able to fix. Maybe they won't be fixable, I dunno...
See my other comment below this but I was told those issues have been resolved (PDK, and flash).
Double post
They did release a ipk for a alpha release of tweaks this has the option to tweak Luna. I'm no dev but I think that is there plan on releasing it to the masses and hopefully as a easy preware download.
The reason I hate android is because of all the unecessary things people do to it. Card view is at its best the way it is. This just adds nonsense to complicate things. I usually toss my cards off the screen after I'm done. Not play with them for fun. Leave the UI alone and work on something that can help us make Webos more useable n not make leggy n slow.
Thank you!
^^ I agree. WebOS needs to be optimized. It lags in areas where android using the same hardware won't, music stutters and skips when it's the only app running, and the keyboard doesn't respond to keys 100% of the time. My only gripes.
phat! Great job!
Just compiled it !!! Will try it over the w/end :) Yeehaa !!!