InterActive Frames for BlackBerry 11

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We're all counting down the days until BlackBerry 10 is in our hands (notice the nice new countdown clock on the CrackBerry homepage?!), but already our members are thinking ahead about how BlackBerry can further enhance the experience.

Cruising through the CrackBerry Forums this morning I stumbled upon this thread in our BlackBerry L-Series forum by member lucky-lad, which proposes enhancements to the current Active Frame layout in BlackBerry 10.

Instead of the vertical split screen 4x4 grid of BB10, lucky-lad's concept is to make the Active Frames wider and less tall, per his mockup above. He also proposes that the next generation of Active Frames could evolve to become InterActive Frames. Looking at the illustration above for example, instead of having to go into the Music app to control it, Play/Pause/Skip functions could be tapped within the InterActive Frame. In the calendar InterActive Frame, curling back on the edge would reveal the next calendar appointment. Tapping on non-action parts of the InterActive Frame would take you straight into the app, as is the case with the current BB10 Active Frame design.

With this layout lucky-lad managed to get 5 Active Frames on one view as well. On BlackBerry 10 the current max number of Active Frames to be displayed is eight, though it would be cool if this number could be expanded up to 10. 10 Active Frames for BlackBerry 10, right?

As noted on the forum thread by member Qaxl, with this type of layout you could even further enhance the experience by allowing users to dictate the size of an InterActive Frame.

Under this notion, InterActive Frames really become a mashup of Android-style widgets and Windows Phone 8 Live tiles in a way that is uniquely BlackBerry. In reality these are minimized running apps showing an alternate version of the full app display, and they are going to move around on you as you open and close apps (the most recently used at the top), but they become even more powerful than Active Frames to the user for that glance, control, or go functionality that's all part of the flow. Say that three times fast.

It's a fun thought. And we love Brainstorming BB10 around here. Maybe this is one for BlackBerry 10.1 or 10.2 or BlackBerry 11. What do you think? Sound off in the comments or jump in on the forum action at the link below.

More Discussion on InterActive Frames in the CrackBerry Forums

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