EDGE 1050

The 1040 also has glances.

So does the edge 840

On a watch, up/down from the watch face take you to the glance loop, where depending on the watch, you see 2 or 3 glances at a time.  I don't have an edge with glances, so I'm not sure how you get to them, but probably something like how widgets are accessed on older edge devices..

Glances are only for "widgets". 

Above is one of my weather "widgets" on an 840.  They are used in a similar way glances are used on a watch, and include some native stuff, not just CIQ.

Glaces are shown with a "slide up" gesture from the bottom of the screen.

Default Glaces include: Compass, Training Calendar, Group Ride, History, Group Ride, Notifications, Weather, and Sunset.

Remove/Add option on the device - 11 additional available by default.

The use case for glances, for both watches and Edges, is to display several pieces of training info, health-related data or sensor information (such as the compass) “at a glance”. Glances are basically the new widgets.

Or as the Edge 1050 manual says:

Glances provide quick access to health data, activity information, built-in sensors, and more.

• From the home screen, swipe up.

DaveBrillhart said:

Interesting. I've never looked into Glances. At first look... these are only for Widgets (not data fields?). Also, I thought a Glance Event is triggered when you rotate your wrist toward your face (for a watch), right? So I'm not sure what would cause an EDGE device to trigger a Glance event. What is the use case for Glances on an EDGE?

In this context, “glances” have nothing to do with turning your wrist in order to turn on “high power mode” for a watchface or activate the backlight.

Glances are simply the modern form of Garmin’s old concept of full-screen widgets (for watches). (I have no idea how CIQ widgets worked for older Edges.)

Very old watches only supported full-screen widgets — i.e. native widgets and CIQ apps of type “widget”. Widgets were a way for users to quickly see training and health-related data (such as steps, heart rate and training status) by scrolling from the watchface. e.g. There would be a widget for steps, another widget for heart rate, etc. If the user pressed START while a widget was selected, then the widget could display additional information (like steps history). (For a CIQ widget, this would be accomplished by pushing a 2nd view when the user presses START.)

When the user scrolled up or down from the watchface, they’d navigate through a “carousel” of fullscreen widgets. Each widget would take up the entire screen, and for CIQ widgets, the user would see the app’s icon and name for a second or two until the app loaded fully (so that the app’s initial view could be displayed). Especially for CIQ widgets, this was not a great user experience. (Just to look at a CIQ widget, the user had to wait for the whole app to load, which defeats the purpose of giving the user the ability to view information quickly)

Glances were introduced to solve those problems with widgets, so that the user could quickly see more information “at a glance”:

- Glances are displayed 3 per screen, instead of 1 per screen, allowing the user to see more information than in the past (this is assuming that seeing more information from different glances is the goal, as opposed to more information from a single glance). Instead of referring to the “widget carousel”, we now refer to the “glance loop”, but it’s the same idea.

- CIQ widgets have a separate glance view which has a restricted memory footprint compared to the full app. This allows CIQ glances to load much faster, so you see the glance instantly, as opposed to looking at a “preview page” for 2 seconds. When the user taps on a glance (or presses the START button while the glance is selected), then the full app will be opened 

“glance” is actually a separate “app type” (in compiler.json), similar to “background”. Ofc you can’t literally compile a separate “glance” app just like you can’t compile a separate “background” app, but they each have their own entry under compiler.json > appTypes bc they have their own memory limits.

To be clear, just as “background” refers to the smaller part of a full app that provides background processing, “glance” refers to the smaller part of a full app that provides a glance view.

- If a CIQ widget does not implement a glance view, but it’s installed on a pre-CIQ 4 device (which doesn’t support super apps as described below), then the system would display a default glance view which consists of the app icon and name

With certain older devices, there was a transition stage where

- “widget” type apps were still supported

- the user could enable or disable glances. if glances were disabled, then CIQ and native widgets would be fullscreen, as before

- if glances were enabled, then a CIQ widget’s glance view would be displayed as the user scrolled through the glance loop

- if glances were disabled, then a CIQ widget’s glance view would not be used. As the user scrolled through the widget loop, the CIQ widget’s initial view would be displayed (as before)

For newer devices, the ability to disable glances has been removed.

With the advent of CIQ 4, “super apps” were introduced. The “super app” is the merging of the CIQ device-app and widget app types. (Unfortunately the CIQ doc for super apps has been removed for whatever reason.) But here’s the relevant info:

- Any app with “widget” as the app type in the manifest will be compiled as “device-app” in CIQ 4+

- Any device app is available from the activity/app launcher, as before

- Any device app can also be made available from the glance loop. A device app will be available from the glance loop if and only if a glance view is implemented (there isn’t a default CIQ glance view anymore). Note that this means that older widget apps which are upgraded to work with newer devices will not be available from the glance loop unless a glance view is implemented. It’s actually happened more than once that an older widget was made available for newer devices, but a glance view was not implemented, meaning from the user’s POV, it’s no longer a “widget” (which means it may not be available during an activity, for example)

This came up in another thread, but the newer Edges (including Edge 1040 and Edge 1050) absolutely support glances, and they absolutely use super apps (this can be confirmed by looking in the compiler.json device file and noting that “widget” is no longer listed under “appTypes”, but “glance” is.) Both Edge 1040 and Edge 1050 only list the following appTypes in compiler.json: “background”, “datafield”, “glance”, and “watchApp”. Again, “background” and “glance” aren’t separate app types from the POV of the end user, they’re just smaller components of other app types.

I don’t know much about Edges, but when I looked at the manual for Edge 1050, “widgets” and “glances” had separate sections in the manual. Based on the manual:

- the widget interface seems to be a page full of tiles which don’t necessarily take the full width of the screen (similar to the iPhone control center), for non-training related things like battery level, wi-fi, settings, etc. Most tiles don’t display any information beyond the name of a setting that will be changed when the user taps on the tile. This does not seem to correspond to the Garmin watch concept of “widgets”. The closest thing on a Garmin watch to this is the controls menu (on 5-button watches, a circular menu of settings that’s accessible by holding the LIGHT button)

- the glance interface seems to be a scrollable page of full-width informative tiles or pills. It’s very similar to the watch concept of glances, where each glance typically shows training data (like training status), health data or sensor info (like compass). I’m sure that CIQ glances belong here. The manual also says “tap on a glance to view more information” (the same way it works on a watch)

Edge 1050 Widgets: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-08ACA9FC-DEE6-4C8D-8A95-F62181C512E9/EN-US/GUID-E741F23E-5A41-4490-8D17-8CB05FA626CA.html

From the home screen or during a ride, swipe down from the top of the screen.

Edge 1050 Glances: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-08ACA9FC-DEE6-4C8D-8A95-F62181C512E9/EN-US/GUID-3B7DBF2A-1E1E-40A2-8CF6-84128AAA4230.html

Glances provide quick access to health data, activity information, built-in sensors, and more.

• From the home screen, swipe up.

This is very similar to what you’d see on a watch, except the watch only has room for 3 glances per page, and that the available resolution is obviously limited on a watch compared to an Edge