An Unofficial Guide to Creating a Most Excellent maemo User Interface

Thank you for visiting the development site for “An Unofficial Guide to Creating a Most Excellent maemo User Interface” — especially if you’re a developer. This guide is intended to be both a starting point and a reference manual for developing applications for the maemo development platform. My main goal for writing this document is so that maemo applications will not only be enjoyable and easy-to-use for Internet Tablet users, but also so that maemo applications will reflect well on Nokia Internet Tablets in general.

Keep in mind that this guide is “unofficial.” This means that the content contained within is primarily a well-educated opinion, written by a designer who thinks that there could be some improvement in the execution, presentation, and consistency within third-party maemo applications. Likewise, this is a living document. That means that it is continually being scrutinized and revised so that the information imparted is both easy-to-read and accurate.

View the most up-to-date version here:

• http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfrtdqv5_7hp33bq

Important links pertaining to this guide:

• Maemo UI Guide at the maemo Garage
• Bug Tracker for Maemo UI Guide
• Contact Tim (Tim’s blog)

Again, thank you for taking the time to visit and read this documentation. I hope that it is helpful. Please use the Bug Tracker if there are any issues or if you think that something in missing or inaccurate.

Happy developing!

Just as we’re leaving January 2008, I’ve realized that I’ve been neglecting updates for this project. I had planned on doing a major update/redesign to this document before the end of last year, but things go so hectic (you know if you keep up with my blog) that I wasn’t able to get to it.

Now, I have my N810 (which was key in completing some updates) and I’m ready to get back into the editing process. So, the plan is to look everything over and rewrite a few of the sections with some additions (e.g., keyboard bindings and shortcuts) and some subtractions (think Application Menu logic).

I still haven’t made the final decision to convert the Google Document into a Google Presentation, but I am still leaning that way. I’ll do some tests to see how that works.

Consider this a very minor prelude to the major update that’s coming.

I’ve uploaded some edited graphics files that better represent consistent button placement (according to Gnome UI guidlines).

I’m in the process of reorganizing/editing some of the content pertaining to Notification Dialogs, etc., so expect some more significant changes soon.

View the latest version of the doc here.

“An Unofficial Guide to Creating a Most Excellent Maemo User Interface” is a hands-on description of concepts that developers should consider while creating user interfaces for their applications.

Read the full description here:
http://sense-datum.org/tim/archive/2007/08/24/Maemo_UI_design/tim_samoff__weblog

This document is still in “beta” and will most likely change a little in the next few days.