Comment 1 Ryan Abel (reporter) 2008-04-17 13:53:59 UTC

Created an attachment (id=751) [details]
Mock-up of the category grid view

Comment 2 Ryan Abel (reporter) 2008-04-17 13:54:49 UTC

Created an attachment (id=752) [details]
Mock-up of the category column view

Comment 3 Ryan Abel (reporter) 2008-04-17 13:57:42 UTC

Created an attachment (id=753) [details]
Mock-up of the category tree view

Comment 4 Andrew Flegg 2008-04-17 15:14:18 UTC

There was talk many moons ago of having the category list be a tag cloud; which
could be cool.

However, something hierarchical will probably be necessary to support things
like Multimedia/Canola or Communications/Pidgin - where I don't want all their
plugins filling up my limited screen estate when I don't care about them.

One really nice (relatively easy?) fix would be to have the app manager
remember the category you were just in and set the scroll back to the same area
like it now does with the package lists. As of now, you go into a category and
when you go back, it puts you back at the top of the list of categories, even
if you were way down in the middle of the list. I just submitted this in a
separate bug #3104.

Comment 6 Andre Klapper 2008-10-08 14:50:16 UTC

(Removing deprecated "Future" Target Milestone.)

Comment 7 Andrew Flegg 2008-10-26 18:22:31 UTC

Created an attachment (id=997) [details]
Patch against branches/2.1.x to give category grid

The attached patch (h-a-m-grid.patch) against branches/2.1.x (the current
diablo branch) gives a grid view:

http://bleb.org/software/maemo/h-a-m-grid.png

However, with the talk of sub-categories[1], I think the category list should
be the same GtkTreeView as the package list. This will give consistency, then,
with the user selecting subcategories. The "version" column should be
hidden/empty, but "Size" for a category should contain the number of packages
it contains.

Given we're talking about the Application Manager forcing everything[2] to be
in one of the i18n'ed categories, there can also be i18n descriptions for them,
and maybe even section-specific icons.

[1] http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Package_categories
[2]
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Package_categories#Defined_top-level_categories_.26_application-specific_subcategories

Comment 8 Neil MacLeod 2008-10-27 14:57:33 UTC

How relevant to the average user is version and size in the category column
view (comment 2) - these extra columns make the screen look very "busy" and
crowded and this information is in the details section if the user wants to
view it.

I think the mock-up in comment 2 might be more usable than the mock up in
comment 3. I like the grid view (comment 7) for categories, but would
icons/glyphs be possible in place of plain buttons?

Good to see the App Manager getting a makeover, it's about time - nice one
Ryan!

Comment 9 Marius Vollmer 2008-10-27 16:22:04 UTC

This is what I ultimately applied to the Diablo branch.  The columns are now
homogenous and there is no empty row at the bottom when the categories exactly
fill the last row.

Will be in hildon-application-manager 2.1.20.

Index: src/util.cc
===================================================================
--- src/util.cc    (revision 1431)
+++ src/util.cc    (working copy)
@@ -2036,6 +2036,8 @@ unref_section_info (gpointer data, GClos
   si->unref();
 }

+#define GRID_COLUMNS 3
+
 GtkWidget *
 make_global_section_list (GList *sections, section_activated *act)
 {
@@ -2048,24 +2050,33 @@ make_global_section_list (GList *section
       return label;
     }

-  GtkWidget *hbox = gtk_hbox_new (FALSE, 0);
-  GtkWidget *vbox = gtk_vbox_new (FALSE, 5);
+  GtkWidget *table = gtk_table_new (1, GRID_COLUMNS, TRUE);
   GtkWidget *scroller;

-  gtk_box_pack_start (GTK_BOX (hbox), vbox, FALSE, FALSE, 10);
-
   bool first_button = true;

   scroller = gtk_scrolled_window_new (NULL, NULL);

+  int row = 0;
+  int col = 0;
   for (GList *s = sections; s; s = s ->next)
     {
       section_info *si = (section_info *)s->data;
       GtkWidget *label = gtk_label_new (si->name);
-      gtk_misc_set_padding (GTK_MISC (label), 15, 15);
+      gtk_misc_set_padding (GTK_MISC (label), 0, 14);
+      gtk_label_set_ellipsize (GTK_LABEL (label), PANGO_ELLIPSIZE_END);
       GtkWidget *btn = gtk_button_new ();
       gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (btn), label);
-      gtk_box_pack_start (GTK_BOX (vbox), btn, FALSE, FALSE, 0);
+      gtk_table_attach_defaults (GTK_TABLE (table), btn,
+                 col, col+1,
+                 row, row+1);
+
+      col += 1;
+      if (col >= GRID_COLUMNS)
+    {
+      col = 0;
+      row++;
+    }

       si->ref(); 
       g_signal_connect_data (btn, "clicked",
@@ -2084,7 +2095,7 @@ make_global_section_list (GList *section
                   GTK_POLICY_NEVER,
                   GTK_POLICY_AUTOMATIC);
   gtk_scrolled_window_add_with_viewport (GTK_SCROLLED_WINDOW (scroller),
-                     hbox);
+                     table);

   global_section_list = scroller;
   g_object_ref (scroller);

Comment 10 Ryan Abel (reporter) 2008-10-27 16:43:47 UTC

Does it remember the scroll position now? and any word on what we might expect
for Fremantle? Hopefully a slightly improved grid up giant buttons isn't it. ;)

Comment 11 Andre Klapper 2008-12-17 20:11:40 UTC

(Fix not included in today's 5.2008.43-7 SSU update)

Marking patches of interest to Diablo (Maemo4) community updates, please excuse
the noise.