Friday, June 5, 2009

GriP 0.1-11m released

GriP 0.1-11m (r323) is released, and can be downloaded at

The biggest change in 11m is the support for "Modal Table View". You've Got Mail has been modified to support this. The new mail message now looks like:

Note that the "detail disclosure button" is not there. When you tap on the message a table will pop up:

You can click on each item to view the message (not as ideal as, but still readable):

Why is this change? My rationale is that, if you want to show the detail, you are focusing on the message, and stuffing that much information in that message is not good. If you're focusing on it, why not maximize the view? Hence it is shown as a "Modal Table View".

Does this contradict with the philosophy behind GriP (unobstructive)? No, because this modal thing already has user confirmation, while for alert boxes they just pop up with no prior consent.

(If you don't like this, you can always downgrade to 0.1-11k available in


  1. The idea is very cool kenny and grip looks very cool, but a modal view coming up doesnt fit that beautiful look. It would be nice if something like a black transparent hud would come up that takes almost all screen space and displays a list of new mails and when you tap them the mails.

  2. Yeah, sometimes I do just want to see a taster of the message to determine if it's worth reading the whole item.

    Can you make this optional? Or at least make the table popup appear like SBSettings, where there is a slight transparency.

  3. I think that this should be an alternate theme.

  4. So far I could make it look like:

    (image stolen from SBSetting's HUD theme :) )

    Do you think it's acceptable to keep the table white?

  5. Try one with out the white background ( kind of like the original GriP theme ) and see.

  6. Dark background:

    All these (tables) will be themable, and substantially easier than GriP themes because there will be much less options.

  7. That last screenshot looks much better!

  8. I agree, a black tableview looks so much better. I would like to see a theme like what the glasklart sbsettings theme has... Black, somewhat transparent, and minimalistic, like the current GriP theme.

  9. Kenny, nice new feature. Currently I like the themed one with the black background most. Of course a general theming possibility will be nice, because it's impossible to make it fit to any available theme. The glasklart guys could use a glasklart adaption and so on.

    Nevertheless keep up the good work. GriP was one of the first functions I missed after the 3.0 update.