Chinook look’n’feel

The Chinook desktop with Plankton theme looks quite ok. It has some transparency as you can see from the desktop screenshot.

It seems to work decently although is has some minor and some major issues. They are probably solvable but at least didn’t work out of the box for me. For upgrading your application to match the Chinook’s APIs it’s stable enough, imo. Although I’m not sure which new APIs the Chinook alpha SDK includes, in addition to the new Hildon Desktop.

Chinook desktop

Chinook desktop

The Navigator application menu has a new big look. I’m sure some people will love it and some hate it, as usual. The menu behaviour seems a bit odd, like it remembers my last position in the menu when I reopen it, but is buggy.

Some of the old apps work, some not. I could get screen shots with my screen grabber, I could play OGGs with kilikali but although evince started up, it just jammed there. Mirage didn’t even start. And I couldn’t find File Manager from anywhere. Opera works OK when started from the application menu but the Hildon Desktop crashes when I try to open the Browser menu from Navigator. The most important app, osso-xterm, luckily works :)

Connectivity (wlan, bt, usbnet) seems to work.

Power saving, on the other hand, does not. Or at least for some reason the battery didn’t last even for a day when it lasts easily several days on the latest official release. I might have had the usbnet running though which can affect the situation.

2 thoughts on “Chinook look’n’feel

  • August 24, 2007 at 4:43 pm
    Permalink

    Tuomas, I’m not using Chinook right now, but I did want to ask about how the N800 is caching (and releasing) Theme elements when the themes are switched… This happens in most cases when switching between themes, but thwne I applied Plankton on my N800 a few items remained unchanged:

    1. The Launcher icons on the left.
    2. The “skin” for the FM radio

    Concerning #1… This is a common issue that currently exists when switching between any theme. A few steps of uninstalling, restarting, etc., will usually fix it.

    Concerning #2… All of the other applets had their skins changed just fine. Just not the FM radio. Was this item left unchanged on purpose or is it another caching issue?

    Anyway, the look of the Launcher menu seems cool (although from the look of your screen shot, a little cleaning up/aligning needs to occur).

    Good work! :)

  • August 24, 2007 at 5:17 pm
    Permalink

    Thanks and sorry, I’m not a theme guru. Try asking in the developers mailing list :)

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