That’s a way to stand one’s ground that is hard to argue with.
But please show me how I can scroll to position the first few items within reach, and if you’d like to learn how to stop the app drawer in a position of your choice, feel free to ask.
Sure brother.
I’ll try to help you one last time by asking you to do what you were supposed to before replying. Read.
Focus on the bold parts to avoid info overload.
I like folders but organising the in the middle of the screen never came to my mind. Great idea.
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Ok, you want a scrolling list and don’t like the the current solution for stopping the app drawer at will. That’s fine.
I prefer a solution where I can have all items within reach. The current design achieves that, scrolling doesn’t.
This could be interpreted to mean that you considered scrolling to be stoppable at any position, unlike the current design, which is not the case. Hence my comment.
Scrolling doesn’t have to take away from everything we already have. If anything, it looks like an addition to me that won’t change anything for anyone who wants to keep using the phone exactly the same way.
For the most part at least, can’t think of any specific case where this would break the current system.
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I haven’t used SailfishOS yet. So I won’t argue on the finer points of this discussion. But I would like to express strong agreement with @Kanthal regarding his broader point. Any design decision that makes one-handed reachablility with your thumb (with small hands no less) less of a pain is a plus in my book. Just commenting to show that there is demand for this kind of thinking. More than might be obvious, I’d like to think.
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Then they should really just say that from the start instead of taking 60 posts to get to the first point. There’s a very big difference between:
- “This sucks!”
- “This sucks, and here’s why.”
- “This sucks, and this is how it could be improved.”
And there’s an equally big difference in the kinds of reactions and discussions that logically follow each of those three.
Anyway, I agree with your examples - especially the notification pop-ups (although they are a step up from the Sailfish 1-style notifications, which fit in even less) - except for the app icons, which all follow (or should follow) the style of having four corners that can either be round or square, with a gradient background colour, but @jojomen already explained it (the appeal/reasoning) better than I could. Third party icons, well, there’s nothing much Jolla can do about that other than say “please follow the icon design guidelines”. Also, keep in mind that Android app icons used to just be the actual Android app icons, and it’s only a couple of years ago that they automatically got Sailfish shapes (although it doesn’t work properly for a handful of applications). It would be nice if, in the future, the software that adds those native icon shapes would be able to examine the icons individually and choose shapes to fit each icon, like a square one for F-Droid, a bottom-left straight corner for Signal and a round one for Firefox. And certainly some icons of Jolla’s own applications just got assigned a specific shape to show off the different shapes on a fresh installation, where they don’t necessarily fit - e.g. there’s no real need for the camera icon to be anything other than round, or for the mail icon to have a rounded top if the envelope is closed - it wouldn’t hurt to give those shapes that accentuate the content (like make the camera icon round), or change the content of the icon so that the shape accentuates it (like open the envelope).
That could also just be dynamic icons, such as the calendar icon displaying the actual date, or the clock icon displaying the current time.
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You are right, let me rephrase it then. This is what reasonable people mean.
I was thinking past conversations as well but i didn’t have professional naggers in my mind when I was writing this. And there are quite a few showing up in these conversations so you are right.
Icons on Android don’t have a couple of years that are unified. I was using a galaxy s in 2010 and there was a very nice square with rounded corners for all icons. If my device’s stock launcher back then didn’t have that, there were a lot of third party launchers that would fix that instantly for me.
The reason I’m mentioning the above is because I really don’t like the fact that something so easy, so common, but so impactful like swapping a launcher and having options to customize your home screen never found its way to sfos. Meaning in some shape or form that it works, it doesn’t need technical skills, and doesn’t break with updates.
As I said in the past as well, we should have options. There’s no one size fits all in taste, productivity, and personal preference.
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The design is one of the reasons why I like Sailfish: it is elegant. Please do not change it.
Design is not the same as UI. Design is a matter of art, beauty and taste.
The UI of Sailfish is a matter of technique, how one uses it. Compared to Android Sailfish is more intuitive and easy to use. The pulley menu also is ok.
A few things could be improved: the possibility to remove multiple mails and pictures.
And the possibility of a dark(er) mode in browser would also be fine.
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@nthn Animated calendar or clock icons? I wonder, what sense that woumd make in your opinion. I have seen animated clock icons. They are so tiny, you can hardly tell the time they show and I looked at it, found it funny and forgot about it. If I want to see time, I can,in any situation, swipe slightly from the left and see it. What else would one need?
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The reason that I see is the Joroleman mailbox. Yes, it’s a US-centric design, but once you know, you can’t unsee that specific shape for a mailbox.
I agree about the Camera icon. While it is reminiscent of the lens cap or shutter/aperture shape you can see on some cameras, I don’t think the connection is very obvious. But it does set it apart from other camera apps.
To me, the utility of dynamic icons in the app launcher is too limited to warrant a change. Every example I have seen or been able to come up with fits better in the Events view and is often already well served. E.g. time and date, where you have 3-4 places to choose from (Lock, Home and Events screens plus app covers).
App covers on the Home screen is the Sailfishy way to achieve anything “dynamic icons” would do - and more. These are active tiles where running apps can show relevant dynamic information. Calendar shows day, date and today’s schedule. Clock shows current time (analog+digital).
Covers are superior to dynamic icons, because they are interactive. You can create a new appointment in Calendar, set an alarm in Clock and pause the current track in Media player.
About apps: because Sailfish does not yet support video calling with Threema, I use a second device: Volla 22. There the icons move all the time, based on how often you use them. However, this algorithm does not work well so I have to search for the app I want to use, which is annoying.
Normally humans have muscle memory, so the possibility to give your apps a fixed place by yourself (and rearrange them) is most convenient.
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I thought we agreed that scrolling would take away reachability for the first few rows.
Here’s my suggestion:
- Keep the App drawer as a screen that is swiped in from the bottom
- Keep the ability to stop the swipe and lock the screen at any row
- Enlarge the stopping zones to make them easier to find
- Suggestion: Height of stopping zone = icon height, centered around the row gap
- Put the icon grid in a scrolling container within the screen
This just might work, and would keep reachability while removing the paged nature of the app drawer. I think there could be interactions between the opening swipe and scrolling that may be tricky to sort out.
Edit: A variation on this theme would be a setting for the number of rows to show instead of/in addition to the “swipe lock”. Then a quick/“sloppy” swipe up would open the Add drawer in a position that is within reach without having to find the stopping zones.
It could default to full screen or some device-dependent number. I think this could work, since the unreachable part is device and user dependent.
ApB
‘You will probably understand it when jolla decides to hire a designer to fix things.’
‘And i am sure that if he does a good job all the fanboys (of the unhealthy type of fanboism) will also cheer his work.’
This woman sees no reason to change the design of Sailfish because she likes it, nor does she think it is necessary to hire a (male) designer. ‘Outdated’ is a rather strange argument when it comes to art and taste. Who sets the norm and does everyone has to follow like sheep?
As has been said: the focus should be on well working features.
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I rely on muscle memory, too, and would actively dislike app icons moving around instead of staying in the place I have assigned.
As a side note, many years ago, I changed habits on laptop/desktop. I still put apps in folders, but I start my most-used apps by searching. After hitting the “Windows key”, it only takes 2-4 letters, which is much faster than dabbling with the mouse/trackpad.
Having apps sorted by recent use is a mixed blessing in the desktop scenario. Gnome does it, KDE doesn’t. With Gnome, I can start an app with fewer keystrokes, but the needed sequence can change at any time which is very annoying. With KDE I get to type more, but the sequences are mostly stable.
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Sure, I just mentioned that that’s what people could mean if they’re talking about ‘animated’ icons.
Continuous scrolling instead of moving to the next app page immediately will not take away from anything.
Sfos currently has one dedicated gesture to reach the first apps on the app drawer. The same gesture still applies if you have scrolling or not.
But sfos currently lacks any way to reach the top apps of all the other pages except the first one, and with continuous scrolling that issue disappears because you can stop wherever you want as you are scrolling up.
Fair enough. For me, the issue is that the request for “dynamic icons” keeps popping up without examples of an unfulfilled need. I would like people to either provide that or drop this idea entirely. Without enough background to make a change possible, it just becomes noise.
We could have avoided a great deal of noise, if you had been more specific about these things:
I am talking about scrolling here, that’s why I mentioned the rest below it.
Scrolling can fix reachability for every other app but not the first few ones. That’s where the gesture we already have comes into play where it can only help with the first apps.
And as I mentioned as well I am not a fan of this gesture if I can have a couple of widgets there.
The way I like to use my phone is by having the apps as a main page. I already made a patch that made the app drawer the main page and moved open apps in the former app drawer. Peak experience for me because it also removes the very dated app opening animation. But widgets at the top would be the only way for me to have reachability in this case.