ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Christina Li <christina.li@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
I think I can answer a couple of your questions around orientation; yes 
we will support orientation and there'll be an API for that as Nathan 
said. In terms of supporting orientation from now on, there are some 
things to remember.*

Phone stages (default phone + tablet side stage)*
1. The primary orientation for an app on the phone is portrait
2.Consider using landscape orientation when we want to have a full 
screen experience for a single piece of content, such as watching a 
video, looking at a photo or gaming.
3. A phone app automatically fits in the side stage on the tablet (both 
orientations), with a flexible height.*

Tablet stages*
1. The primary orientation for an app on the tablet is landscape
2. Consider portrait orientation when it will help the user engage with 
your app; for example reading a magazine or writing a long email.

*A similar question on scaling was also mentioned in the emails 
yesterday, here's what we have in mind at the moment (some of you might 
have seen this already):*

Your app needs to handle all aspect ratios from different devices to 
orientations. We consider two strategies which both must be considered 
for your app to be scalable: responsive layout and responsive content.*

*Responsive layout **
To design your app layout responsively
1. Position UI components relatively
2. Reflow content based on space available, for example increase / 
decrease the number of rows and columns of content*

*Responsive content**
Decide how your app might show more or less content for different shapes 
and orientations, for example
1. Your app in the side stage with a list of content, for example a 
feed, will show more content than when it is on the phone. An app on the 
tablet's main stage would also show more content than on the phone
2. If your app fills the screen size on a phone and nothing more, you'll 
find yourself with extra room in the side stage (height, not width). 
Consider what content your app could show in this extra space, be it the 
history of a calculator, a list of missed calls or even high scores!
3. Your app whose content is larger than what fits in view, for example 
a map, might consider showing more or less content depending on shape 
and orientation.
4. Your app whose content is fixed in shape can simply scale up to run 
on the tablets main stage, showing the same amount of content.
/
If your phone app does not scale, it will remain a fixed height in the 
side stage./

I hope this helps a little, we're working on this content for the app 
design guides, illustrating these points to make things a clearer, 
everyone loves a diagram right!

Cheers,
Christina


On 26/02/13 11:10, Octavian Damiean wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 12:05 PM, jaywink@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto:jaywink@xxxxxxxxxxxx> <jaywink@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto:jaywink@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>     Personally as a user I would find it very annoying if all
>     applications that do rotate didn't auto-rotate by default ;) Of
>     course if there is the availability to set this in settings it is
>     ok but for default behaviour personally I expect when trying out a
>     new phone for apps to autorotate (when available). Forcing a user
>     to choose rotation settings imho is not very user friendly.
>
>
> Completely agree here. As a former Android developer I can tell you 
> that applications that don't support auto-rotation are bad 
> application. It was and still is a bad practice to force and 
> orientation. Games are the only exception to that rule though.
>
>     For sure apps that do rotate should be available to be locked to a
>     certain orientation (via the HUD?).
>
>
> That should be a system wide setting in my opinion. You turn off 
> auto-rotate and select either portrait or landscape and the system and 
> applications would have to adjust, except the ones where it wouldn't 
> make sense.