Maemo 5 Desktop Widget Example

General, ,

I’m working on some example code for Maemo 5 as standalone modules with full autotools files.

I now have Desktop Widget example code working in the Maemo 5 Beta SDK, showing a simple clock face, using the drawing code from Davyd Madeley’s cairo-based custom widget example, with his kind permission. Implementing a Desktop Widget is much like implementing a regular GTK+ Widget: You can draw in the expose-event handler, or add child GTK+ (or Hildon) widgets.

I’ve filed documentation bugs to make it easier for the next person to figure out how to implement and install Desktop Widgets, and a few bugs about the Hildon documentation in general.

I expect the final Maemo 5 version to have many standard Desktop Widgets, far more attractive than this:

maemo_beta_sdk_clock_in_edit_mode

In Desktop Edit mode, you can move the Desktop Widgets around by dragging them with your finger, remove them by touching the X icon, or configure them by touching the spanner icon. You can add extra widgets (if installed) by touching the “Desktop menu”. Note that you need to apt-get update and upgrade after installing the Beta SDK to see the X and spanner icons.

The rendering artifacts (such as the white line at the top) are just a known bug in Xephyr (on the PC). They won’t appear when running on an actual device.

8 thoughts on “Maemo 5 Desktop Widget Example”

  1. I hope that next Maemo device would support “standard” xhtml+css+js widget framework, like the one that is provided with Nokia phones…

  2. @Manrique: That’s offtopic here. For explicit enhancement requests, feel free to file a ticket in bugs.maemo.org (though »“standard” xhtml+css+js widget framework« sounds very vague and might become a WONTFIX. I don’t think there’s something i’d call standard in this area yet).

  5. Thanks for the example.
    What worries me the most is the amount of knowledge required to create such a widget.
    (debian packaging,autotools,c programming ,gtk and glibc pragmas,hildon additions)

    Lets create some more lightweight ways’ of doing this

  6. keesj,
    > What worries me the most is the amount of knowledge required to create such a widget.

    Well, it’s incredibly easy for anyone used to using GTK+ already, which is many people.

    Otherwise, well, programming is hard.

    I believe there is a bookmark system to add simple images that go to websites when clicked. I also hope that Desktop Widgets can be implemented with the python bindings soon, which would be slightly simpler than using C.

    Or do you have something else in mind?

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