Qt on S60 5thEd inherits phone themes but Qt for Symbian^3 does not

milot.shala

You are right, but if you see also Nokia application examples such as "this one":http://betalabs.nokia.com/apps/nokia-feel you clearly see the theme is an application theme not a default theme. Sometimes I see applications also being transparent meaning that the default user wallpaper will be shown on the application as well, I see that as a bad practice because you should brand your application with your theme and style. But I see this more a personal choice.

vcsala

I agree with you, this is the reason I said it is twofold. I usually like to have well designed interface for my applications and I am not so happy to change the appearance according to the current theme. On the other hand as a regular phone user I expect my applications to follow my selected theme. So it is not an easy design question, for sure.

milot.shala

[quote author="VCsala" date="1293386701"]I agree with you, this is the reason I said it is twofold. I usually like to have well designed interface for my applications and I am not so happy to change the appearance according to the current theme. On the other hand as a regular phone user I expect my applications to follow my selected theme. So it is not an easy design question, for sure.[/quote]

Yes you were also right. But what I think it is more important that you keep the default behavior of the operating system in tact, what I mean with this is for example leave the Options and Back or Exit menu there, because Symbian users will expect that, also you must leave the clock and application title in place where they are. In other hand when you are designing and building an Android application, you should leave the basic platform features there, for example back button closes your application, menu button pops up the menu etc.

Here I am showing you one of my recent ready to be released application and see what I mean:

!http://imgur.com/s6DSf.jpg(ss1)!

You can see the basic Symbian functionality isn't missing there, but I've created my own general application look and feel.

vcsala

Agree, you should follow the platform conventions but you should somehow differentiate your application.

milot.shala

[quote author="VCsala" date="1293388468"]Agree, you should follow the platform conventions but you should somehow differentiate your application.[/quote]

Yes exactly, and that is what I was trying to achieve in the Boxee Remote application.

So after this long discussion I would suggest to grego to follow his own pattern of designing applications but keeping their user-expected behavior in tact.

P.S. I had a good designer to design my application (buttons, gradient, icon(s)), if you press one button it will turn to a very nice shiny blue color.

vcsala

[quote author="Milot Shala" date="1293388613"]P.S. I had a good designer to design my application (buttons, gradient, icon(s)), if you press one button it will turn to a very nice shiny blue color.[/quote]

I had one as well, it is the same how writes the code :D (no we went off-topic)

milot.shala

Yes, we are completely out of topic. "Here's the discussion":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2817/ on which we can continue this.

grego

Back to the topic then... ;-)

I actually consider the fact that it does not inherit themes a bug in Symbian^3 4.6.3. Coming to think of it, I seem to remember seeing RDA Symbian^3 devices inheriting the theme, but doing it somehow poorly, resulting for example in blackish text on dark background in combo-boxes, or similar. I'm not 100% sure though.

So perhaps the current behaviour is just a workaround to make it usable.

Do you know if Qt 4.7.x behaves differently?
The very least S60 and Symbian^3 should behave in uniform manner.

PS. of-course it is up to the designer/developer to decide how it should look and whether to respect themes.

grego

Ok, I found why the theme was not inherited on Symbian 3, although I had seen it working before.
I had added this documented hack in my code:
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/faq/answer/how_can_i_change_the_width_of_the_scrollbar_of_qwebview

Turns out that if that is used, Symbian 3 will not inherit the theme any longer, while S60 continues to do so.

My question remains, does 4.7 bring any improvements in this regard?

milot.shala

[quote author="grego" date="1293480769"]Ok, I found why the theme was not inherited on Symbian 3, although I had seen it working before.
I had added this documented hack in my code:
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/faq/answer/how_can_i_change_the_width_of_the_scrollbar_of_qwebview

Turns out that if that is used, Symbian 3 will not inherit the theme any longer, while S60 continues to do so.

My question remains, does 4.7 bring any improvements in this regard?
[/quote]

Whole Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3 isn't released yet, we have to wait until it happens, then see the changelog.

jonhanaley

This post is deleted!

jsulm

@jonhanaley You're writing software for S60/Symbian in 2019?!
This thread is 9 years old, I suggest you open a new one.