Screen Rotation Behavior

[marshmn]

Hi,

I don't yet own a Z, though I'm thinking of getting a C860 in the new year. I am already however starting to think about writing apps for it.

One thing that I wondered about was how best to handle screen rotation. It would seem to me sensible that when in landscape mode you might want to have a completely different layout than in portrait mode. Is this something which apps tend to do? In other words, they detect that the screen has been rotated and move the widgets around appropriately.

For example, I could think of times where in portrait mode you might want a combo list drop down at the top of the screen, but then when switching to landscape mode I might want to swap it for a list box down the left hand side. Is this something that people do, or would it seem weird to Z users?

Thanks,
Matt

[nilch]

Normally, when you use layout managers in your app designs, the application will automatically resize the objects and re-place tthem accourdingly when you switch portriat/landscape modes.

But a combo box wont become a list box, or any such programatic changes won't take place normally.

In that case you have to trap programatically (I dont know how) if the mode is landscape or portrait and according change your object character and screen design thru your code. I am sure someone more knowledagebel will be able to help you with how to trap the screen mode thu QPE (must be some Qcop message).

[marshmn]

Thanks for the reply, and you're right, I'll be able to figure out that it's changed from landscape to portrait mode and change the widgets etc, I don't have any problems in understanding that it is possible.

My question really is whether that is the right sort of thing to be doing? Do users expect that sort of behavior? Do other apps do that sort of thing? Or will all users just think that my software is a bit bizarre?

Matt

[xenophobe]

IMHO you can detect screen rotation by change screen dimesion (from 480x640 to 640x480).

As for user expectations, I think it depends on application type.
For example media player on SL-6000 change layout on screen rotation. But I doubt what this is good behavior for text editor.