Fennec on E-Ink – More progress

01.18.09 - 07:44pm

Jaya just dropped me a note about this video he posted of Fennec running on his gumstix device with an E-Ink display.

This is impressive progress to say the least. After watching the video I wonder if there are any interface changes we can make that would work better with the display and its refresh rate.

Category: mobile, Mozilla |

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The Buzz {7 trackbacks/pingbacks}

  1. Pingback: Fennec (aka Mobile Firefox) demonstrated on E-ink display device — Electronic Pulp on January 26, 2009
  2. Pingback: Free Gadget News » Firefox Mobile could run on eBook readers, other devices on January 29, 2009
  3. Pingback: Web Page Design For You » Blog Archive » Firefox Mobile could run on eBook readers, other devices on January 29, 2009
  4. Pingback: Firefox Mobile could run on eBook readers, other devices | CHARGED's Digital Lifestyle at Work or Play on January 30, 2009
  5. Pingback: Firefox mobile browser ‘Fennec’ could run on portable devices, eBook readers on January 30, 2009
  6. Pingback: Fennec en un Libro electrónico | Incubaweb on January 30, 2009
  7. Pingback: Fennec en un Libro electrónico : Blogografia on January 31, 2009

The Conversation {7 comments}

  1. Ami Ganguli {Monday January 19, 2009 @ 12:16 am}

    Since the display is large, you don’t need the cool sliding tricks to eliminate control areas.

    In fact, with the slow refresh rate, maybe the opposite approach is needed: find ways to keep all the frequently used controls, bookmarks, etc. available all the time, without making the whole thing feel horribly cluttered.

  2. Kerry {Monday January 19, 2009 @ 1:45 am}

    I think if the animations are actually removed from the UI, then it would work quite well. With a refresh rate thats so slow, it dosent really make any sense to slowly pull out all the panels when the display only refresh 2 or 3 times.

    Overall though, this is very awesome.

  3. Mark S {Monday January 19, 2009 @ 5:48 am}

    Agreed. With the high resolution but low refresh rate we’ll probably want to be more strategic about keeping UI on the screen as well as dialing back the rendering engine’s refresh rate on scrolling.
    Because of the screen real estate we might consider what other desktop Firefox elements might be appropriate to incorporate.

    Also, maybe in real life it’s more readable, but if not then we might consider a greater default zoom level? …or does that break the way we think about things?

  4. Christopher Blizzard {Monday January 19, 2009 @ 11:05 am}

    There’s a lot of things you can do:

    1. Add sound: A click when something a click is registered will give immediate feedback, which is what people will need. Once they know the computer has noticed the feedback they can wait for the refresh.

    2. Get rid of the swipes that require instant feedback. Move to a simple button-based system.

    3. Use an external notifier (LED? Progress strip?) on the outside of the screen to indicate progress/busy.

  5. Mark S {Monday January 19, 2009 @ 6:28 pm}

    Oh, I also meant to mention limiting the refreshes incurred by the rendering engine in other ways (incremental page rendering being the primary thing that comes to mind).

  6. Jared J. H. Catapano {Friday February 27, 2009 @ 1:44 pm}

    This epaper and e-ink technology is blowing my mind. The future is going to be pretty damn cool–

    http://gadget.ology.com/2009/02/27/email-capable-paper/

    -Jared J. H. Catapano

  7. chicken coop {Saturday June 6, 2009 @ 11:17 am}

    Great video folks, thanks a lot. Yours truly Mike

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