i thought i would ask what people really think of the PIE and RIBBONS features.
personally i find them quite useless and clunky whenever i WANTED to use them, but i am a simpleton who will do things the long way because it actually feels MORE convenient. i have my apps set up on my homescreen in neat named folders, i use the status bar when a notification comes through and the apps i use most are already in the Recent Apps menu.
i know i know i know, it's a customization thing. some people like them and others swear by them. yes they have their uses and functions but i already find it all too easy to do the same thing they offer right out of the gate without having to go to the settings menu and find the actual feature then configure how i want it to react and how big and where to put it and then getting used to where the triggers for them are so i dont keep opening them by accident while im doing something else and...
or i could just use the notification bar and the app drawer because im too lazy and it just feels more natural.
these are my thoughts. what uses have you found for PIE and Ribbons outside of what you can already do from the homescreen.
i don't want to argue and i do find these options neat, so please don't think im $h****ng on them! just want to find a reason to want or need to use them
If you don't use expanded desktop, then there's no need for pie. Simple.
a manta wrote this.
Man I love AOKP's ribbon feature. I can jump to any app anytime with a swipe. Of course you could always press home, tap your folder and launch an app but this is so convenient.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
bk201doesntexist said:
If you don't use expanded desktop, then there's no need for pie. Simple.
a manta wrote this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yea, another cool feature that i just havent found a proper reason to turn on for more than 5 minutes
keith.mcintyre26 said:
Man I love AOKP's ribbon feature. I can jump to any app anytime with a swipe. Of course you could always press home, tap your folder and launch an app but this is so convenient.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
like i said, actually having the feature is nice but no matter how much ive tried to "train" my thumbs right i just cant get the Ribbons to respond the way they should. its not a problem with my phone and its not that im afraid of change or anything, i just cant do it LOL.
Ribbons is like Swype to me. a good feature that is supposed to, and proven to, make a common task simpler and more fun to use. unfortunately for me, like with Ribbons, i just cant get around to using it at any point.
Ribbons have four quick access options. I use nav widgets app window screen off and torch. Apps on the left and quick toggles on the right.
Hated pie until it got the second layer. The extra screen real estate makes a difference. Hidden nav bar is actually useful now.
Only have one home screen and that only has zooper widget and status bar. All other widgets are hidden in the nav widget place.
Phone is inaccessible to most ppl, Ribbons and pie are a great way to really personalize your phone.
Persuaded yet?
namtombout said:
Ribbons have four quick access options. I use nav widgets app window screen off and torch. Apps on the left and quick toggles on the right.
Hated pie until it got the second layer. The extra screen real estate makes a difference. Hidden nav bar is actually useful now.
Only have one home screen and that only has zooper widget and status bar. All other widgets are hidden in the nav widget place.
Phone is inaccessible to most ppl, Ribbons and pie are a great way to really personalize your phone.
Persuaded yet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you know with the hidden navbar...i might actually. will have to give another crack at it and see if i can a way to make it work. like i said, it looks and IS really great and useful. but i havent been able to effectively get a use out of it that i dont already do out of habit.
and thats the biggest thing with me. its so habitual to just do things the old fashioned way
dragonhart6505 said:
you know with the hidden navbar...i might actually. will have to give another crack at it and see if i can a way to make it work. like i said, it looks and IS really great and useful. but i havent been able to effectively get a use out of it that i dont already do out of habit.
and thats the biggest thing with me. its so habitual to just do things the old fashioned way
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dont use ribbons but i do use PIE, steroid PIE though. i didnt really like pie until sourcery took it to another level with adding additional custom buttons and it seemed to get more responsive plus you can have multiple launch points enabled at the same time which i kind of like, one on the bottom and one on the right. i honestly jump back and forth between nav bar and pie. i have used PIE on PA and it worked well but i like it much better in the newer sourcery builds. and PIE does take some getting used to because it is such a different way of navigating
switched to using ParanoidAndroid for a while and with PIE set as my main nav bar location, sans the navbar and statusbar, it works wonders! really gives me a bit more room to play on. i have been persuaded there at least ^_^
Related
Hi, I recently broke my HD2, and just got SGS2. On the HD2 I had Kumar's ROM. I'm new to Android, and I'm finding the Window Shade quite annoying. On the HD2, when I got a new message, voicemail, etc., I would tap on the notification bar which opened the notification window. On Android this requires swiping the bar, which is not easy using just one hand, and is simply more input than necessary. Is there any way around this?
Thanks!
I grab the notification bar with my thumb and flick down. One handed.
Sent from my SGH-T989D
Use adw ex and set the gestures. Use swipe down for notifications.
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Deebo took your bike too?
The_Biz said:
Use adw ex and set the gestures. Use swipe down for notifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, Biz. I installed ADW EX & tried that setting, but it didn't change anything. I'm using the updated stock ROM, perhaps using one of the modded ROMs could affect this?
hella356 said:
Thanks, Biz. I installed ADW EX & tried that setting, but it didn't change anything. I'm using the updated stock ROM, perhaps using one of the modded ROMs could affect this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ROM wouldn't matter much. Did you go in the ADW settings and look for screen gestures? Change the swipe down to show notifications. That way when you just swipe down on the home screen, that whole thing will shoot down.
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Deebo took your bike too?
Thanks for the help, Biz. Yes, I tried several settings. The one you are referring to DOES work in that manner, which is a little better, but I'm just hoping to find a way to not have to swipe at all. I realize it's a small thing, but it's something that will aggravate me to no end, and as far as I can tell applies to all Android phones. I thought these things were supposed to be more configurable than this. I am amazed that there may be no way around performing dozens of extra motions every day to accomplish something so simple.
May sound crazy, but I'm missing my perfectly configured (but lesser hardware equipped and no longer available) Windows Mobile 6.5 HD2.
hella356 said:
Thanks for the help, Biz. Yes, I tried several settings. The one you are referring to DOES work in that manner, which is a little better, but I'm just hoping to find a way to not have to swipe at all. I realize it's a small thing, but it's something that will aggravate me to no end, and as far as I can tell applies to all Android phones. I thought these things were supposed to be more configurable than this. I am amazed that there may be no way around performing dozens of extra motions every day to accomplish something so simple.
May sound crazy, but I'm missing my perfectly configured (but lesser hardware equipped and no longer available) Windows Mobile 6.5 HD2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK. On the homescreen using adw ex, you can hold down and add a launcher action anywhere on the screen you want. You can add a show notifications action wherever you like and edit it and use a blank png for its icon. Then when you click that part of the screen, the notifications bar will drop.
It's similar to what you want, you just don't necessarily click the notifications bar.
I hope this helps you more and you start to enjoy android. As I had a hd2 before the sensation and love this way more than both of them combined.
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Deebo took your bike too?
Thank you, sir. I have been messing with that ADW EX launcher setting, and it's a step in the right direction. Still not at all what I'm looking for, but better than the stock setup. Any idea if there is some way to get the window shade to simply open and close, rather than the animated and slow way it moves now? That's another annoyance; I just want the thing to work quickly without any superfluous animations and such. It opened and closed instantly on my HD2.
Really appreciate all your help!
Don't know of a way to do that man. Sorry. :-(
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Deebo took your bike too?
Why not just set your home button to go home and open notifications? It's in adw settings as well.
Sent from my SGH-T989
Thanks, GideonX. That's another OK option, but still an irritating kludge. I realize it's just a swipe or a couple presses of the Home button or aiming my finger at an icon, but I'm used to a single tap on the bar & no swipe, and find any extra required motions wasteful. Also, unnecessary transition effects are a pet peeve, they serve only to slow things down, IMO. I'm really astounded that the Android bar is that unconfigurable, even with 3rd party apps.
Sorry for venting my frustrations on you guys! I really do appreciate your input.
GideonX said:
Why not just set your home button to go home and open notifications? It's in adw settings as well.
Sent from my SGH-T989
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wile playing with my Gnex phone the following idea poped into my head;
would it not be handy to have the time displayed in the ICS navigation bar, replacing the homekey grafics but not the function...
then you can keep track of time while playing games of running any other fullscreen application where the notificationbar is hidden.
what do you guys think?
I like it
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Funny, I just had the same thought and saw this thread.
I would love to see the clock be displayed in the nav bar and persistently. I think it would look sick.
Is this even possible? I wonder ...
chewy74 said:
Funny, I just had the same thought and saw this thread.
I would love to see the clock be displayed in the nav bar and persistently. I think it would look sick.
Is this even possible? I wonder ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It might be. I forgot which rom had this but you were able to put music controls (previous, forward, play/pause) in the navi bar so it might be possible
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
You're right, I totally forgot about the music control on the nav bar! Good catch
xXJay_RXx said:
It might be. I forgot which rom had this but you were able to put music controls (previous, forward, play/pause) in the navi bar so it might be possible
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
then the question remains, is there any developer that can make this or is already working on it?
http://forum.aokp.co/tracker/
Go request it for AOKP.
good ideas but i need power menu soft key can use soft key from power menu
>.> Ummm bump? I like this idea too. perhaps not limit it to time but serve as a ticker?
I.e, normally it shows time, but it will show notification icons somewhere and a swipe will reveal the notification centre?
EDIT: On the top of my mind... we probably could get a couple of apps/mods to get something similar:
* There are full screen mods
* GMD gesturecontrol works on Gnex last time I tried.I suppose you can assign swipes and gestures to mimic the navbar buttons
* Only thing I don't really get is how we'd get a clock or notification area to show permanently at the bottom. Perhaps there are some apps that do this, Notifierpro plus does notification.. not time though.
* Paranoid android tablet UI, hide/remove the nav bar buttons, and try to move the notification area to the centre. Something like that...
There is a ROM that has all the features you are looking for:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1729942
However the base is CM9. I hope it will be upgraded to JB soon. I use it since a month and I prefer it over any other ROM.
xt720 said:
There is a ROM that has all the features you are looking for:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1729942
However the base is CM9. I hope it will be upgraded to JB soon. I use it since a month and I prefer it over any other ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is pretty much exactly what I wanted! Thanks!! Waiting for jelly bean! I'll run PA until then.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
Edit: Forget it, s2d2 just made me realize that the newer versions of LMT have integrated exactly the stuff I'm talking about here
First of all, I’m no developer and I don’t even know if this stuff is possible, I just wanted to share my thoughts about an alternative way to navigate through the OS without wasting too much space with the navigation bar.
I use roman’s awesome AOKP ROM at the moment, which has an option included to hide navigation bar. To access home/back/menu/recent, you have to use an app like LMT for example.
Although LMT works quite ok, I think it is not the ideal solution to replace navigation bar. Drawing symbols is not as intuitive as I imagined it to be and it looks kind of weird how the homescreen and many apps react while drawing the symbols.
So I thought about alternatives and I had the following idea:
Would it be possible to create something like the quick controls from the browser for system-wide use? Let's say you swipe up from the bottom of the screen and a set of buttons appears in a half circle like it does in the browser. Of course it should work system-wide and across all apps, just like LMT.
To make it available across all apps, it would be necessary to still reserve a "swipe space" on the bottom to differ between app input and navigation bar access. It could be smaller though since you don't need to show any information on it. Theoretically, a line with a width of one pixel should be enough since the swipe gesture would start outside the screen (which makes me think, maybe this line can be a battery bar at the same time )
I see some advantages in this kind of navigation:
- maximum screen real estate
- a swipe from the bottom would be quicker and more intuitive than drawing symbols (where you have to remember the shape and the starting point for every action)
- smaller chance to trigger navigation buttons accidentally (for example while writing with onscreen keyboard) since the navigation bar is hidden.
- doesn’t get in the way of other swipe actions like scrolling/turning pages/homescreen transition. I can’t think of any situation where you swipe from the bottom of the screen that would interfere with the Quick Navigation.
So developers, do you think something like this is possible? It would be an awesome solution to get the most out of the screen size and still have quick access to the navigation buttons and maybe even custom apps/actions.
If it's not possible or just plain stupid, what are the problems realizing something like this?
Lmt has pie wheel=half circle stuff in your terminology, already implemented...
Nearly two weeks late
s2d4 said:
Lmt has pie wheel=half circle stuff, no need to draw stuff
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, didn't know that So probably my idea is unnecessary after all
qwer23 said:
Cool, didn't know that So probably my idea is unnecessary after all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
be happy
He's adding even more features to it too
s2d4 said:
be happy
He's adding even more features to it too
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am! Just installed new version and it's awesome! It's pretty much what i wished for ^^
Any webOS user knows how you can simply use your finger to swipe up from the gesture area to pop open the app drawer. I think this would be a fantastic feature for any ICS phone in order to access the multitasking view.
I would gladly sacrifice 2-3 rows of pixels on the bottom of the screen in order to implement such a feature.
Of course this mod would render the actual button obsolete, I'm not sure what to replace it with.
Any devs wish to take on this project? I don't think it would be impossible to pull off.
NOVA Launcher has swipe gestures and will do what you are asking for.
WiredPirate said:
NOVA Launcher has swipe gestures and will do what you are asking for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will it work from within any app? Not just the home screen? I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing.
Oh, no. Not from within any app. Like you said from the home screen.
However, you can use WaveLauncher to open the app drawer from within any app. I love WL, couldn't go without it.
EDIT: You could also try this.
GestureControl is pretty much what I wanted... very nice
Now what do I replace the multitask button with?
Good deal. I know with AOKP you can change and rearrange your soft keys, but I don't think there is an app that does this, although that is a good idea! There are also some mods for this in the theme section but I think you have to be de-odexed.
Wasn't the web os launcher ported to android in the market called wave launcher? I tried it before and it worked identical, from any app too.
I don't understand... LMT allows you to do any type of gesture to pretty much do anything, from ANY app...
Yeah here it is, even has the stretchy animation and all just as web os does.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobilemerit.wavelauncher
As someone mentioned, LMT would work perfectly for you!
Yes, I know it's been brought up quite a bit...
This is really bugging me. I had the original Kindle Fire and put ICS on it and loved it. The Honeycomb-style user interface rocks. I bought a Nexus 7 thinking that I'd be able to put it into that mode with KitKat (the point of owning the Nexus # is to have the latest and greatest, right?), but have found myself unable to do so.
Is there any way possible to enable this on 4.4? I'm running into a gap on this discussion; most stopped talking about it about a month ago it seems. AOKP? Do I have to copy and paste the tablet UI code from 4.2 into 4.4?
This is Android. ANYTHING is possible. I know it has the potential to be done.
watsonism said:
Yes, I know it's been brought up quite a bit...
This is really bugging me. I had the original Kindle Fire and put ICS on it and loved it. The Honeycomb-style user interface rocks. I bought a Nexus 7 thinking that I'd be able to put it into that mode with KitKat (the point of owning the Nexus # is to have the latest and greatest, right?), but have found myself unable to do so.
Is there any way possible to enable this on 4.4? I'm running into a gap on this discussion; most stopped talking about it about a month ago it seems. AOKP? Do I have to copy and paste the tablet UI code from 4.2 into 4.4?
This is Android. ANYTHING is possible. I know it has the potential to be done.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was under the impression that google removed the tablet UI from kitkat altogether.
I thought I wasn't going to like the phablet UI but I got used to it, and now it just makes sense to me on a tablet this size. I say give it a chance, you might grow to like it.
I hate it, i'm forever catching the navbar when typing in landscape or passing the device to a friend because of thin bezel, it'd better located on it's side in the same portrait position next to the shortcuts & apps drawer button.
Q8-V08 said:
I hate it, i'm forever catching the navbar when typing in landscape or passing the device to a friend because of thin bezel, it'd better located on it's side in the same portrait position next to the shortcuts & apps drawer button.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do agree with this. When in landscape it is in the most inconvenient place possible. I would love a way to force it to remain on the right side but I haven't been able to find a solution other than setting the whole tablet into phone UI mode which then messes with the notifications shade.
If you're only problem is the nav bar, try GMD auto hide soft keys. It works great.
purple lady said:
If you're only problem is the nav bar, try GMD auto hide soft keys. It works great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried that, not really what I'm looking for. I don't want something that overlays the navbar and hides it when not in use, I want a permanent navbar that just stays on the right side of the screen. With GMD even if I turn auto hide off, it will still hide it when I rotate the screen, and when I swipe to bring it up it always covers part of my dock icons.
Have you tried gravity box xposed module? It gives you the ability to run pie. Or if that's not your thing in navigation bar tweaks it has an always on the bottom feature. It shouldn't be too difficult to make it always on the "short side".Why not ask the Developer in his thread ?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2554049
doop said:
Have you tried gravity box xposed module? It gives you the ability to run pie. Or if that's not your thing in navigation bar tweaks it has an always on the bottom feature. It shouldn't be too difficult to make it always on the "short side".Why not ask the Developer in his thread ?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2554049
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've used the pie before on my gnex and it was OK. I might give it a shot. Android is starting to feel quite dumbed down lately...
doop said:
Have you tried gravity box xposed module? It gives you the ability to run pie. Or if that's not your thing in navigation bar tweaks it has an always on the bottom feature. It shouldn't be too difficult to make it always on the "short side".Why not ask the Developer in his thread ?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2554049
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, I use GB on all my devices. I use PIE + expanded desktop when I want to game in full screen. The always on bottom tweak isn't what I'm looking for either. I want it to remain on the right in landscape. I appreciate the input though.
_MetalHead_ said:
Yep, I use GB on all my devices. I use PIE + expanded desktop when I want to game in full screen. The always on bottom tweak isn't what I'm looking for either. I want it to remain on the right in landscape. I appreciate the input though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No probs. The part about keeping the navigation on the "short side". I meant on the right (Short Side). It`s worth asking the developer surely
CM10+ and PA had the tablet UI I though and you could pit it on the right hand side. I'm not sure if this applies with the newest KitKat builds though.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app