One of the main goals of the project is to improve the mobile experience in GTK+ by contribution upstream rather than creating another library. The Hildon library contains several widgets and features that could be ported or integrated into GTK+: HildonLiveSearch, HildonPannableArea, GtkEntry:hint-text property, GtkWidget::tap-and-hold signal.
HildonPannableArea
This is a scrollable widget, similar to GtkScrolledWindow, that allows the user to tap on any part of the widget and drag it. It also implements kinetic scrolling which is a feature currently present in most of the mobile platforms.
During this week I have focused on HildonPannableArea, trying to understand the code (there are several tricky parts) and thinking about how it could be integrated into GtkScrolledWindow. My initial idea was to port HildonPannableArea as a standalone widget deriving from GtkScrolledWindow, but there are use cases where switching between normal and touch mode makes sense, like with laptops that can work as tablets as Bastien pointed out. So, the idea is to integrate HildonPannableArea code into GtkScrolledWindow to add a kinetic mode. I started porting HildonPannableArea to GTK+3 and cleaning up the code a bit to make the integration easier. Next week I’ll focus on the real integration.