What if Blackberry 10 did something more with their active frames?

Hey Crackberry, I just thought of an idea while I was coding the thumbnail view for my upcoming bb10 app. Please let me know what you guys think.

Right now, BB10 is using active frames to show what apps are open and running, and they have them in thumbnail views. What I'm finding slightly annoying is the fact that these active frames page on the homescreen only allows 4 apps, even if i have more open. Also, if I go into another app it moves them so they are in order of last used (this is a smart idea, but when im jumping quickly from app to app, my brain remembers where the app i just got out is and my finger clicks there, but it moved.

I think Blackberry can do something more with their active frames/thumbnails:
Instead of having the active frames as their own separate page on the homescreen, why not have the thumbnails in the pages on the app icons themselves. When open the thumbnail can replace the space that the app icon and three other apps around it have. See image 135 in attachments which shows a page. Then see the image onethumb which shows you the thumbnail embedded into the page UI. What happens to the three other apps? They just get pushed down and you get vertical scroll navigation on the page.

EVEN COOLER:
Now they can also have the ability for users to open app thumbnails without opening the full app. The could use a gesture like pinch to zoom on the app icon for example, or even double tap the app icon to just open the app's thumbnail. Sometimes it takes 1-2 seconds to open an app when you only need the information the thumbnail has, if blackberry only opened the thumbnail it could render this information much quicker.

EXAMPLE WEATHER APP:
An example of using this is say I just woke up and about to leave the house and want to quickly check the current temp and weather all I have to do is pinch to zoom (or double tap) the weather app icon. This will open the thumbnail will show my city, a background image of sun for sunny temp, and says 15 C. Then I just reverse pinch to zoom (or double tap again) to close the thumbnail. This way i don't have to open the whole app and waste time opening information I don't need. If i wanted to open the full app, all i need to do is press the app icon once as regularly we do, or if the thumbnail is open and we still want to see more, you can press the thumbnail view.

This follows the whole idea of blackberry being efficient and fast. Many other examples include transit app thumbnail to show next bus timings, music player to quickly start playing the song. See attached pictures for examples of when multiple thumbnails are open.

What do you think guys and anyone at RIM who likes this, please talk it over with your superiors. We are all helping to make BB10 amazing at launch. Add me on bbm at 2A09A86E if you guys have some suggestions too and like me is dying to share with people. Thanks have fun, and having coding/

It looks better than the current home screen, however it looks like a poor man's version of Android.


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there called widgets, and yes what you are showing is exactly the way android OS works

You've obviously put a lot of thought into this! First thing, the active frames by default will show a thumbnail, but they don't HAVE to. The developer can specify what information is displayed in the active frame view. Your weather app example is an excellent one; the app itself may be configured to display less information, but more legibly, when minimized to an active frame.

The other thing to remember is just what the function of the active frames screen is. Sure, it will be great if developers make the best use of it by specifying views for that screen, but to me the main reason it's there is so I can quickly see what I have running on the device and close programs I don't need. Your scheme of permanent thumbnail views interspersed through the app drawer makes that hard to do.

Yea, you are right it would defy the purpose of the use "active". And howarmat and marty you are right it is essentially what android widgets are, but I actually took the idea from live tiles on windows 8. I don't know, im using my friends android and find widgets sometimes extremely useful, but don't see the need for them to always be there. I was hoping BB could take good ideas from other platforms and make them better.

I do realize they wouldn't necessarily be active apps and would defy the purpose, and some developers wont use thumbnails as its not forced upon to use it (especially games, i don't think thumbnails would even be important) but i don't know, I kinda like the idea of using the app icons themselves for a quick access to data. I really hate having to wait for some apps to load (even if its only a second or two), even on the android and iOS especially when I need very little information at a really quick rate.

Is there any other ways you guys think we could do this without being androidish? or is it different enough to appeal to people?

Originally Posted by mrmartis

Yea, you are right it would defy the purpose of the use "active". And howarmat and marty you are right it is essentially what android widgets are, but I actually took the idea from live tiles on windows 8. I don't know, im using my friends android and find widgets sometimes extremely useful, but don't see the need for them to always be there. I was hoping BB could take good ideas from other platforms and make them better.

I do realize they wouldn't necessarily be active apps and would defy the purpose, and some developers wont use thumbnails as its not forced upon to use it (especially games, i don't think thumbnails would even be important) but i don't know, I kinda like the idea of using the app icons themselves for a quick access to data. I really hate having to wait for some apps to load (even if its only a second or two), even on the android and iOS especially when I need very little information at a really quick rate.

Is there any other ways you guys think we could do this without being androidish? or is it different enough to appeal to people?

I think you're off to a great start. I'm a huge fan of live tiles as well as widgets. I say let your imagination run wild. I like the design better than the current BB10 home screen.


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I think you're on the right track. I know in OS7 (and earlier) there is some "widgety" behavior for icons. For instance, the icon for the calendar app displays the current date).

I'm not sure how that is being implemented in BB10, but that might be one direction. I'm also not sure if the lock screen will be available to developers for use as a summary display.

One of the other concepts that RIM had been trying to do with BB10 is keep it ready for one-hand use. By adding pinch-to-zoom to active tiles, you turn it into a two-handed operation (unless you are very dexterious). The way it is now, you can control everything with just your thumb and a swipe/click or two.

Creative ideas! Some have usability issues, as others have noted, but I too think you should keep exploring and posting such ideas.

I like the idea of the Double Tapping but as someone already mentioned having to pinch to zoom is Two handed job and this phone is meant for one handed users so to speak. So to add on To his idea here is mine: After double tapping the app to view the thumbnail from His idea, The BB user than can Shake the phone ONCE to view the the given info, and then shake the phone Once more to Close the app. This still goes with the one handed use.

I was under the impression that one could have open up to 8 active frames on the home screen and would be different from one person to the next, in that, what is important to me would be open and ready. As far as what relevant information is shown isn't that up to the developer? You used a weather app as an example, I would have thought that would be info already shown if minimized

You are right, all the information is not what I was referring to. You guys brought up great points about 1 handed use, I think double tapping to open the active frame rather than pinch-to-zoom is better. I guess I think widgets on Android are a semi-decent idea because it allows for quick information viewing but with Active Frames, Blackberry has so much more potential than they are using at the moment. If I was in charge of the Active Frames UI at RIM what I would do is allow for interaction on the active frames, have the frames live and bigger. Essentially the Active Frames would be a mix between a widget on Android, a Live Tile on Windows, and what Active Frames are right now on Blackberry. Also, I would incorporate Crackberry Kevin's idea of pinning a frame.

For example: When you open a Music app and play a song, Then you go to the homescreen the Active Frame would show a the song being played a play button, a next button, and a previous button. If you touch any area within the Active Frame box, it will be a mini-app you can interact with. For example, say I jump to the browser and want to hit next on my playlist instead of jumping back into the app, i just simply hit next on the active frame. If you do want to launch the app, just click below the active frame where the name of the app is and it opens the app. Another use: say you have a memopad app and a browser app, if you are watching a video and want to take notes, leave the browser running the video, when you jump to the active frame view, you see the thumbnail video and you can type notes on the memo pad active frame.

There was a playbook glitch that happened on one of the previous builds that when you were multitasking, you could actually click the url bar in the browser and change the webpage in the thumbnail view without opening up the page. I used that glitch to the max, especially for music, movies, browser etc.

widgets in android can already do that. they are interactive just like describe. Skip a track on the music widget, delete and email from the mail widget etc

Now as for the video and such, i think they are not intending for active frames to be used like that. Pressing buttons is one thing on the frame but actually trying to "take notes" in a small little square like that is more than i think RIM intends.

All RIM has stated that the active frames would not be a burden on the battery and such so i think that if watching a video in the browser and then closing it will stop the video. Otherwise the frames will be using battery quite easily.

Is actually possible in OS6/OS7.
Obviously the "Calendar" app uses it.

Only other third-part I have seen use it is KitCo - a Gold/Silver live pricing site, where you can get the icon to display the live Gold price (hidden in the settings)

So I wonder if this can actually be done already in BB10, albeit for the single tile icon.

As howarmat says, right now the active frames don't even update more often than once every 30 seconds, to conserve battery (and perhaps for other reasons).

I did just try an experiment using one particular capability of them, and was able to hack something that was a bit more active than that... Abusing Active Frames in BB10 - YouTube (That's in my work-in-progress port of my White Noise app to Cascades, so you can safely ignore the crudeness of the UI. :-) )

It's pretty limited... really nothing more than a curiosity, and I could see them considering this a bit of a loophole actually, and at least considering doing something like this to be a reason not to grant the "Built for BlackBerry" certification.