Skip to main content

HP webOS interface kudos


UPDATED 06/07/2013 Pandora no-longer makes the webOS version of its player available.


While quite obviously a piece rooted in opinion, a subtle nod is offered to Palm for the excellent interface work it did with webOS.  Since it’s initial release with Sprint in June 2009, Palm quickly slipped into relative oblivion.  With the recent purchase of the company by HP coupled with new product releases set for the summer, webOS may become relevant once again.  If so, then perhaps a whole new lot of users will come to appreciate the consideration that was taken with the webOS user interface (UI).

An example is the popular webOS application for the even more popular Pandora Internet radio service.  And as it turns out, the company has a collection of screen captures for the various mobile platforms that have native applications for the service.  This happens to double as a quick way to compare the interface elements of other platforms by using the same application as a benchmark.

You can find it here:  http://www.pandora.com/on-the-go/

A couple of things to note about the webOS version are that the album cover screen doubles as a way to track back through your played tracks.  This, in itself is not unique, as at least the iOS version allows this as well.  However, it does include the ability to rate those tracks as well.  And unlike several of the other platform versions, the webOS version makes use of eye-pleasing gradients and color for a refined fit-and-finish.  Compare this to relatively drab screen captures for the Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile versions.

Admittedly, drawing attention to features of an application like scrolling over past tracks is more of an application review type point.  It still showcases the suite of tools available to developers.  Take this as a tip of the hat to the ones responsible for the effort put forth with this UI.  Especially, when considering that for the most part webOS users are still on version 1.x and are already enjoying a level of refinement that paces that of much older competitors.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skype Now Supports Emergency Calls In the US

With the latest round of updates to Skype , it was noticed today that the instant messaging and VoIP phone service now supports emergency calling in the United States. The release notes for the most recent update to the Android version of Skype indicated that the service now allows calls to be made to US emergency calling systems via 911.  Telephony services like Skype, Google Voice , and Vonage typically don't offer this emergency calling ability without some sort of intermediate step like deferring to the phone's default dialer, as is the case with Voice, or setting up a physical address location ahead of time which is how Vonage handles it. The indication is that Skype will handle the 911 calls natively, but when verifying with an account that does not have a Skype phone number assigned to it, it was found that the instructions in the FAQ explaining how to turn on emergency calling are not accurate. Emergency calling support in Skype for the United States Interestingly, th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Allow Windows authentication using SQL Server driver with DBeaver

DBeaver will allow Microsoft Windows single sign on access when connecting to Microsoft SQL Server using the SQL Server driver (rather than jTDS ).  From the driver properties settings, set the integratedSecurity flag to true . Open the Connection configuration panel and choose the Driver properties section. Set the integratedSecurity flag to true . A subtle, but important step is to not provide username and password credentials to the connection.
7 comments
Read more

Edit CUPS Configuration File To Re-assign Network Address

The printers.conf file can be edited to change the network address a printer uses.  This can be useful to fix situations in which the printer in question has a new IP address, but the local system is trying to use the previous address. Shutdown the CUPS server Change the network address Restart the CUPS server sudo systemctl stop cups sudo nano /etc/cups/printers.conf sudo systemctl start cups NOTE The editor used in the example is nano for the sake of those who may be less comfortable in the command-line.  With nano, once the change has been made, use Control + O to save the changes, and then Control + X to quit the editor. Ideally, this process would not be necessary.  Instead, once a printer is added, it will always be reachable at the address it was assigned when it was added to the system.  In practice, things like power outages, or breaks in network connectivity, may be enough for the DHCP server to issue a new IP address. A tip when making the address cha...
Post a Comment
Read more