Localisation and Multiple HomeScreens in the Symbian PDK

I wanted to share with you a couple of new features that have been added into the Symbian^3 release and that have a very visual impact in the emulator. These screenshots have been taken from PDK_3.0.f.

First of all is the Localisation support. Maintaining a UI in multiple languages is not an easy or cheap task. Nokia has contributed their localisation support, and it is a simple to set up as changing a digit in a text file (thanks to Mattd for the tip!).  I have changed my PDK to my native language: Spanish.

The second functionality is the support for multiple home-screens, which we have heard so much about.  At boot-up the emulator has 7 screens, all with the same setup. You know in which screen you are by looking at the small collection of dots at the bottom of the screen (I have added an orange arrow to the screenshot above to make it easier to spot them!).

As the current PDK emulator does not have touch screen simulation (contribute please! ), you have to use the keypad directional joystick to change from one screen to another one (thanks to Jaakko Haukipuro – HomeScreen PkO for the tip). You can also customised each home-screen. As you can see above, I removed the organiser widget from one of them. This is how to go about it:

Use the left soft-key  to get into the edit menu. This will bring up a version of the home screen where you can add and delete the displayed widgets. The empty boxes containing a “+”  are currently empty and you can add stuff by selecting them. If you select an box with a widget ,  a menu appears that allows you do stuff such as changing the background of the screen or deleting  (“Eliminar”) the selected item.  And that is how you do it with PDK3.0.f and later releases!

Nokia has recently released a video that shows how these Symbian^3 UI features are meant to work with a touch-screen enabled device, much more glamorous!