Testing Unity8 Full Shell Rotation

In order to deliver a more rick and usable Unity8 experience, we want to enable full shell rotation. We need to make sure that all the shell components rotate and are accessible by the user. Likewise, we need to stay put in cases where the application has a fixed orientation. Also, thought it's low risk, it would be good to make sure we do not regress our Unity8 desktop experience.

The key areas to scrutinize: Does the shell follow what you as a user would think with respect to application orientation ? Is it animating nicely ? Does it behave properly with respect to orientation locking ?

Don't forget to help us determine how many people participated by simply listing your name and test environment here at FullShellRotationTesterList

How do I know I'm running Full Shell Rotation ?

Currently the easiest way to determine if you are running Full Shell Rotation besides checking the packages is to open the Browser or System Settings, rotate the device 90 degrees. If the indicator panel rotates with the application then you are running Full shell Rotation.

Known Limitations

The code is actively being worked, this section will continue to be updated as the state of the code improves.

Results so far

To be updated, will track thru

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity8/+bugs?field.tag=fullshellrotation

Nexus 4

TBD

Unity8 Desktop Session

TBD

Note, unity8 desktop can take an unusual amount of time to completely boot.

Nexus 10

TBD

Nexus 7

TBD

krillin

TBD

How To Test

We're using a ppa based on vivid https://launchpad.net/~unity-team/+archive/ubuntu/demo-stuff

note: we will continue to polish & fix bugs we find on the branches, so the packages may update. And there may be a need to rebuild them to work with the very latest.

Steps to install

1. flash your device with the latest devel-proposed image, assuming you're already setup, connect your host machine to device usb

   • host-computer$ ubuntu-device-flash --channel=devel-proposed --wipe --developer-mode --password=1111 

for more information on devices, flashing & setup see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install

NOTE After flashing you'll probably want to give the image a test drive before proceeding to adding the PPA. Especially if you're not familiar with the applications and what how rotation currently operates.

1. Don't forget to connect to the network & make writable

   • host-computer$ phablet-network 

     host-computer$ phablet-config writable-image 

2. Add the PPA to your device

   • host-computer$ phablet-shell 

     device$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:unity-team/demo-stuff 

respond to the prompt.

• device$ sudo apt-update 

  device$ sudo apt-dist upgrade 

respond to the prompt.

• host-computer$ adb reboot 

1. In the instance you are testing the Unity8-desktop-session, you would follow similar installation like so

   • desktop$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:unity-team/demo-stuff

follow the prompt,

• desktop$ apt-get update 

and then do:

• desktop$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

Don't forget to use ppa-purge to remove and downgrade unwanted packages after testing. Note, failing to do so could pull in unknown packages in the future as silos are reused for other package landings. To install and use ppa-purge

• desktop$ sudo apt-get install ppa-purge 

  desktop$ sudo ppa-purge ppa:unity-team/demo-stuff 

follow any prompts.

What to test

Just about anything. But primarily, this is a change on Ubuntu phone pertains to orientation changes. Good things to test are rotating various applications, selecting/unselecting the orientation lock with System Settings, application switching, interacting with the right hand spread, interaction with the ubuntu-keyboard/OSK, interaction with the indicator panel, bottom edge interactions within applications, and general shell interaction.

Currently, in this ppa only the Browser and System Settings application are rotating with full shell.

In the instance of Unity8 desktop session it is primarily testing to ensure no regression creeps in. So general shell and application interaction that is possible today on the Unity8 desktop session.

We would expect all behaviors of the applications to remain the same as before introducing this change.

For those that want a little more

To make other applications that typically rotate support this rotation case (e.g. messaging-app), log on to the device shell and modify

 /usr/share/application/<app-of-choice>.desktop 

to include this line

 X-Ubuntu-Supported-Orientations=landscape;portrait;inverted-landscape 

Specifically for the Camera App add

 X-Ubuntu-Supported-Orientations=portrait;landscape;inverted-portrait;inverted-landscape 

 X-Ubuntu-Rotates-Window-Contents=true 

to this file  /usr/share/click/preinstalled/com.ubuntu.camera/current/camera-app.desktop 

Logging Bugs

If you find what you think is a bug potentially due to this change, please check the known bugs for this silo first. You can check here FullShellrotationBugList. Please use the tag "fullshellrotation". Please note the applications you've launched, in order, specific application visual issues or interactions. Also, please note the version of the packages you tested since we plan to be updating those as we fix bugs. You can do this by noting in the bug output from

• device-phablet$  apt-cache policy unity8 qtmir-android qtubuntu-android 

Or in the case of Unity8 desktop session bugs

• device-phablet$  apt-cache policy unity8 qtmir-desktop qtubuntu-desktop 

You can note the image number for Ubuntu phone from

• host-machine$  adb shell system-image-cli -i

Contact us

If you're not sure if something is a bug or need help for any reason on directions. Feel free to hit any of us up on IRC freenode #ubuntu-unity at kgunn, greyback, dandrader, mzanetti, josharenson . Or feel free to email the ubuntu-phone mailing list (ubuntu-phone@lists.launchpad.net).