Adobe AIR Development

[jffurlan]

Just watched this video from MWC. Shows a bit of the gaming chops of the PlayBook, but you'll notice that when he goes to exit Tetris (a portrait game) he still swipes up from the bezel with the logo (technically the left bezel of the app). Obviously this isn't final hardware or software but video proof that so far bezel's don't re orient.

EDIT: Usually helps if I post the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y49l0J6VUqk&feature=player_embedded

[peter9477]

Saw that too, and replayed it a half dozen times without being able to decide what I was actually seeing.

Is he able to swipe from the "side" because the bezel gestures don't reorient?  

Or is he just swiping from the bottom because he (as you can see) actually flipped the tablet back on its side so quickly that you hardly notice it, and it was just a regular bottom-swipe?

And in any case, is what we're seeing relevant to understanding how the released product will work?  (Though I believe it was in the same video that I heard something about it being effectively the final code that is on those units now, not that a statement like that really means anything in that context.)

[jffurlan]

I saw him flip and took it as he has to flip for it to work, and they're trained to just do it quickly.

[TheDarkIn1978]

i also have concerns about this issue, especially after attempting to test the issue on the simulator.

my application is landscape-only.  in the simulator i opened my application and then opened Browser.  while Browser was the focused app i shifted the simulator into portrait mode (swiping inward from bottom right corner).  now in portrait mode when i swiped back to my landscape-only application it had become unproportionately scaled to fit the screen in portrait mode, then the simulator had a seizure and totally died.

i'll assume that this is not how the release device will function. 

[nobleRobot]

Woah, I didn't even think of this.

My app is portrait-only. When I was testing it before submitting, and I launched the app from landscape mode, the simulator switched to portrait then loaded the app, so I didn't give it a second thought. Versions 0.9.2 of the simulator did not scale my splashscreen correctly, which is why I was paying attention to it.

But I just now tested switching from the browser in landscape mode to my game (which was already running) and my game just squished itself to fit landscape mode and ran as if nothing happens :-D The thumbnail gets squished, too. Other times, I experiences similar rendering errors that others reported, but a swipe up resets everything (although app thumbnails are still awkwardly squished).

I've been noticing that all the videos coming out of MWC this week show a slightly different UI for the Playbook homescreen (for example, switching app categories in the launcher has a different animation), so I assume there will be a lot of cosmetic changes/updates in the shipping device that the simulator may never reflect, even after the next few releases.

However, I am surprised (and a little nervous) that the app thumbnails don't scale correctly, and hope it's just a non-critical quirk of the simulator.

[peter9477]

@TheDarkIn1978, no, I'm pretty sure I heard one of the RIM people in a past video say "and when you switch away from a portrait-mode app the tablet will have a seizure and totally die".

Or maybe I mis-heard it. ;-)

[jtegen]

We also have to think that this is a pretty big deal to get right for BB and that they are working hard to resolve it.  So trying to test it with a half working simulator will only cause frustration for all of us.  I would wait till we get a simulator that is closer to 1.0 than we are currently at.

[jffurlan]

Here is another video - notice he is playing tetris in landscape mode and swipes in from the right to switch apps (at the beginning). This is a EA demo though as you can hear the demonstrator mention that they are working to complete the games for when blackberry launches the PlayBook.

(Oh, and the hdmi out to play games looks wicked)

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/blackberry-playbook-to-ship-with-full-versions-of-tetris-and-nee/

[peter9477]

Good find... interesting.  So at least in this case, the bezel orientation appears to follow the PlayBook itself, not  the orientation that a fixed-orientation app chooses.

That certainly makes sense for the side-swiping, I suppose... and bottom swipe.

It would be quite interesting to see how the top-swipe works in a case like that... if they even support it.  Note that later on when demoing NFS he uses a two-finger down-swipe to show a pop-up on-screen menu, rather than a top-swipe that shows a slide-down menu.

Still leaves a few parts of the question open... thanks though!

[jffurlan]

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It would be quite interesting to see how the top-swipe works in a case like that... if they even support it.  Note that later on when demoing NFS he uses a two-finger down-swipe to show a pop-up on-screen menu, rather than a top-swipe that shows a slide-down menu.

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I noticed that too. It's a two finger tap on the iPhone, so I know that is an EA thing. It was funny though because it almost looked like he went to swipe from the top, then changed is mind. Or maybe I was just assuming he would. Either way, I think we're a long ways away from seeing a unified standard for interacting with apps. And we're still not sure how the device responds to orientation changes.