Jonas Dressler of the GNOME project has published a report on the work done over the past few months to develop the GNOME Shell for use on smartphones and touchscreen tablets. The work is funded by the German Ministry of Education, which provided a grant to GNOME developers as part of an initiative to support socially significant software projects.
The current state of development can be found in GNOME OS nightly builds. In addition, builds of the postmarketOS distribution package are being developed separately, including the changes prepared by the project. The Pinephone Pro smartphone is used as a testing platform, but Librem 5 and Android smartphones supported by the postmarketOS project can also be used for testing.
For developers, there are separate branches of GNOME Shell and Mutter, which contain the existing changes related to the creation of a full-fledged shell for mobile devices. The published code provides support for navigation using on-screen gestures, adds an on-screen keyboard, includes code for adaptive adjustment of interface elements to the screen size, and offers an interface optimized for small screens for navigating through installed applications.
Main achievements since the last report:
- Continued development of XNUMXD gesture navigation. Unlike Android and iOS's gesture-driven interface, GNOME has a common interface for launching apps and switching between tasks, while Android uses a three-screen split (home screen, app navigation, and task switching). ), and in iOS - two (home screen and switching between tasks).
The summary interface implemented in GNOME eliminated the confusing spatial model and the use of non-obvious gestures, such as βswipe, stop and wait without removing your fingerβ, instead of which a common interface for viewing available applications and switching between running applications is offered, activated by simple swipe gestures ( You can switch between thumbnails of running apps with a vertical swipe and scroll through the list of installed apps with a horizontal swipe).
- When searching, the output of information in one column is implemented, similar to the search in the GNOME desktop environment.
- In the on-screen keyboard, the organization of input using gestures has been completely redesigned, which is close to the organization of input practiced in other mobile operating systems (for example, a pressed key is released after pressing another key). Improved heuristics for determining when to show the on-screen keyboard. The emoji input interface has been redesigned. The keyboard layout has been adapted for use on smaller screens. New gestures have been added to hide the on-screen keyboard, as well as automatic hiding when trying to scroll.
- The screen with a list of available applications has been adapted to work in portrait mode, a new style of catalog display has been proposed, indents have been increased to make tapping easier on smartphones. Provided options for grouping applications.
- An interface for quickly changing settings (Quick Settings screen) is proposed, combined into one drop-down menu with an interface for displaying a list of notifications. The menu is called up with a sliding gesture from top to bottom and allows you to remove individual notifications with horizontal sliding gestures.
Future plans:
- Porting prepared changes and a new API for gesture control to the GNOME mainstream (planned to be implemented as part of the GNOME 44 development cycle).
- Create an interface for working with calls while the screen is locked.
- Support for emergency calls.
- The ability to use the vibration motor built into phones to create the effect of tactile feedback.
- Interface for unlocking the device with a PIN code.
- Ability to use extended on-screen keyboard layouts (for example, to simplify URL entry) and adapt the layout for the terminal.
- Reworking the notification system, grouping notifications and calling actions from notifications.
- Adding a flashlight to the quick settings screen.
- Support for regrouping workspaces in overview mode.
- Making changes that will allow rounded corners for thumbnails in overview mode, transparent panels, and the ability for applications to draw in the area below the top and bottom panels.
Source: opennet.ru