Improve app integration with SailfishOS UI

asked 2014-01-09 09:16:43 +0300

strnous
7296 ●46 ●53 ●52

updated 2014-02-09 19:05:05 +0300

I would really like to encurage the developers either Jolla's own or third party to consider higher integration of their apps into Sailfish.

As Sailfish is true multitasking system there should be no need to have a separate apps for some of the tasks. In particular I believe that apps providing a messaging/news/feed stuff of any kind could/should be integrated into the Events view rather than having their own covers flooding the home screen unnecessarily. With the number of social networks these days the Home screen could easily reach the current limitation of 9 covers and/or become a mess of a number of covers for different social networking apps when the limitation is gone.

I will use Mail app and Tidings as an example as these are the two I use currently the most, but the same would apply to others such as Facebook clients, Foursqare clients, WhatsApp clients, news readers, current messaging app, ....

My idea is to have an entry in the notification view showing, besides the current Facebook and Twitter accounts, also each mail account configured in settings (or a single entry representing all mail accounts). Clicking on that entry would dive into the application specific sub-page (i.e. Inbox view for a particular mail account as it is used within the current Mail app). The other sub-pages (folder view) below this one would act as they do now.

Another icon in the Event view list would be for RSS feeds (i.e. Tidings) and clicking on it would open the app specific sub-page again.

Even Calendar could be integrated here as it is also event handling app.

Swiping from the right screen edge would make the Event view disappear as it is done now not leaving any active cover opened in Home view. The apps' necessary services would stay running in the background or they will be woken up for their regular tasks such as polling updates. Swiping from the left edge would bring you back to the main Event view from any of the application specific sub-pages to switch easily between the messaging apps.

With such integration each message received will be available from any point in the Sailfish UI with a same simple swipe-from-bottom and one or more clicks.

I know there's quite much which would need to be clarified and done for this idea to work (integrate apps notification icons in lock screen, integrate apps account configuration in Settings as requested here, integration of the apps into the Event view pulley menu (i.e. there could be single "Update all" item to refresh all integrated accounts/apps) but I believe it would really make Sailfish easier to use and differentiate from the other OSes as there is no such level of integration at the moment (Androids and iOSes use a separate app for nearly anything). It would also leave the Home screen free for the other important stuff such as browsers, e-book readers, camera or whatever the user chooses.

Please, feel free to comment, enhance, criticise the idea described above.