Any alternative ideas to fullscreen popup-messages?

[Lars Hallberg]

Michael 'Mickey' Lauer skrev:
> Let's distinguish two types of popup-dialogs:
> 
> a) informative (i.e. battery low, incoming sms, sms sent)
> b) confirmative ("Mickey calling. Answer / Ignore / Reject?", "Do you
> want to remove all contacts?")
> 
> Right now, we're leaning towards (ab)using the bottom status bar (in
> openmoko-language called 'footer') for informative dialogs and using
> half screen (480x320) popup dialogs for confirmative.

Let's distinguish asynchronous and synchronous popup.

"Do you want to remove all contacts?" is probably synchronous, a direct 
reply to a users actions. Then a floating modal popup is OK. But it 
should be slightly less then half screen and movable - so You can 
inspect the screen before answering. Avoiding one gui annoyance.

For asynchronous popup, like incoming phone call, The footer 
notification aria is better. Along with the notification area could be a 
'popup' botton showing more info and buttons for actions in a 'popup' 
aria sliding up from the footer. The aria should have short history (2 
min?) navigation for when allot of notifications comes in fast. That is 
enough for most stuff (like incoming sms). No button pop up over user 
action unless the user ask to.

Phone call *are* special on a phone :-) There should be one tap to 
answer the phone, and always in the same easy to find position. So, put 
the notification area in one side of the footer, the general popup 
button on the side facing away from the corner. When there is an 
incoming call, use the notification aria as usual, but put an 'answer' 
button in the corner end of the aria bar. The corner is easy locatable, 
it is a corner normally covered by the notification area so no user 
interaction should ever go there.

And newer ever use that space for any other interaction! Games will want 
to brake this... So... give them an option to move the footer to the top 
of the screen (more rarely used fore game input)?

Buttons to cancel the call should be on the popup like normal, together 
with all info on the caller.

Wasting the complete footer for notifications sound expensive, but have 
the advantage that popup button also ends up in a corner. But I bet a 
keyboard button and a few more is more important.

BTW: I'm not completely against phone call popup to popup automatically, 
but then any buttons in the popup must be disabled for 1/2 a second. 
Actually, it's not *too* bad having preferences for what event that 
should auto popup and not.

Harder problem... What to do when the screen is off and a phone call 
comes in? Turning the screen on is OK, but I don't want the 
touch-interface to go on in my pocket... so what to do that's not 
completely awkward. See little choice but to use the 'hardware' buttons. 
But there position do not look optimal.

/LaH