Acknowledged
CIQQA-3123

Vivoactive 6 Simulator problems

The Vivoactive 6 simulator does not seem to respond to a Menu command, and only responds to the buttons in a very tiny area along the edge of the button where it meets the body of the watch in the simulator. 

The Vivoactive 5 simulator operates as expected so it looks to me like this is a set of simulator bugs.

Parents
  • Someone with a real va6 tested an app I had modified in the way I talked about in the thread I mentioned, and it worked fine with a Menu2 instead of an ActionMenu.

    Again, nobody ever claimed it would not work. You can obviously do almost anything you want in onActionMenu(), same as you can in onMenu(). (A device app could take a lap in onMenu(), if the dev really wanted it to.)

    The claim is:

    - it's not what Garmin intends

    - it won't fit in with the native behaviour of left swiping on the action menu indicator (which is to open an action menu)

    There are many CIQ apps which do things differently than native Garmin apps wrt to input and UI, and ofc that's up to the dev. Especially since garmin often doesn't make it easy for devs to mimic the native UI. But in this case, they are trying to make it very easy for devs (out of necessity tho).

    I can't speak for anyone else, but as a user I definitely notice when CIQ apps behave differently from native apps. Yeah in this case I'm sure nobody will care.

Comment
  • Someone with a real va6 tested an app I had modified in the way I talked about in the thread I mentioned, and it worked fine with a Menu2 instead of an ActionMenu.

    Again, nobody ever claimed it would not work. You can obviously do almost anything you want in onActionMenu(), same as you can in onMenu(). (A device app could take a lap in onMenu(), if the dev really wanted it to.)

    The claim is:

    - it's not what Garmin intends

    - it won't fit in with the native behaviour of left swiping on the action menu indicator (which is to open an action menu)

    There are many CIQ apps which do things differently than native Garmin apps wrt to input and UI, and ofc that's up to the dev. Especially since garmin often doesn't make it easy for devs to mimic the native UI. But in this case, they are trying to make it very easy for devs (out of necessity tho).

    I can't speak for anyone else, but as a user I definitely notice when CIQ apps behave differently from native apps. Yeah in this case I'm sure nobody will care.

Children
  • Note that this does not happen every time you use the top right button. If you are on a standard view, the normal behaviour is seen and you can detect the button. This only happens on menus, e.g. on menu2 or I imagine, an action menu. I did not try the latter, but it would be consistent with the native behaviour.

  • I'd suggest that it should do nothing.

    The app does not immediately exit if you go to the activity loop. If you then press the bottom button or swipe right, you get back to your app where you were. But as soon as you do anything from the activity/app loop, your app then exits.

    I verified this by running an app which makes a BLE connection and looking at when the disconnect occurs.

  • Seems they need to do some work in the va6 sim to give an idea what pressing the upper right button does on the real device.  Right now, it acts the same as it does on other devices.  onSelect gets called, etc.

    I guess the the question is "what".  Sounds like exiting the app is one option, where on the real device, the app exits  and you go to activity loop.  Another option is to just do nothing, showing the app can't use it.

    I'm not sure either is ideal and either can be confusing.

  • As someone with a va6, it is a very strange UI experience.

    They have indeed removed the "menu button/key" functionality. Everything which was on the menu (that no longer exists) has been moved into the activity loop brought up by the top right button. And KEY_MENU is no longer available to CIQ. There is no menu key! e.g. changing watch face, and going into settings is now done from the activity/app loop brought up by the top right button.

    But what is even stranger, is that the top right button takes you into the activity/app loop in many unexpected places.

    Any time you have some kind of menu, or prompt or notification, you have to use touch to interact with it. If you press the top right button, you jump out of wherever you were into the activity loop! So, you get a notification on your watch, if you press the button to see the full notification, you don't you go to the activity loop. If you are in the watch settings, maybe to change the brightness, if you press the top right button to select the option, you jump to the activity loop. If an action menu is displayed, with some options on it, e.g. dismiss, if you use the top right button you jump to the activity loop.

    Basically, they are forcing you to use touch pretty much everywhere. You cannot generally (in some cases you can), use the top right button to select anything anymore.

    And, yes, this includes in your CIQ apps too. If you are buried multiple views into your app, and you push an menu2 or an action menu, you MUST use touch to interact with it. If you press the top right button, you guessed it, you get taken away from your app, and into the activity loop!

    For someone who is used to selecting things using the top right button, even on predominantly touch watches, I'm finding this behaviour very strange and hard to get used to. But I think this is the way Garmin is intending on going!