maemo.org - Talk - Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

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- - Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind! (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=15004)

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghoonk (Post 127214)

I very much concur with the rant. I do so miss the 'smart' UI which would detect if the user was navigating with his/her thumb or the stylus and display menu and entries accordingly.

It would be nice if the OS2008 team worked on this a bit to get things back to the way it was in OS2007 (at least)

I thought this feature was fantastic, a real sign of an "intelligent" ui that put usability and user choice to the fore.

I love the look of the new big finger icons etc, but then it's ruined by the virtual inability to call up the thumboard on screen. I still think this is deliberate as a 810-led thing, ie that if you want to use a thumboard you'll use the physical one, and if you're typing onscreen you'll be using a stylus. Obviously not so for 800 owners.

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

You're right on that. Once they get this sorted out, things will be so much better :)

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

I've had the N800 for a year and never use the thumboard, no matter what OS. I rarely use my bt keyboard, either.

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

- i use a BT keyboard when the n800 sits on the desktop....

- but not when on the go... and then i usually use the stylus...

- but i do like the idea of a secret fingernail society...

:-)

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 127255)

However, I guess you can certainly interpret the first changes as the signal towards the developments that will continue in the future. :)

Umm.. does that mean everything will be big and us stylus users will be cursing forever more?

Please please make it user selectable. Intelligent selection based on what you are actually using would be wonderful, but I'll settle for a control panel whatsit that means I can turn all finger-sized menus and such off.

I would also love for the FBReader scrolling to be standard everywhere.

Zebee

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

I am sorry, cant help but tell you all, reading the title made me giggle.

bun

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 127255)

For the OS2008 release, compared to OS2007, we added a lot of support for finger usability. Due to many reasons, not really design-related but mostly pragmatic, we couldn't go and change every application and every widget to be finger-usable. But then again, I personally think it's better to start somewhere and think in the long term. The alternative to the realization that we couldn't change everything at once would have been not to do anything.

However, I guess you can certainly interpret the first changes as the signal towards the developments that will continue in the future. :)

It worries me that more and more of the precious screen estate will be taken up with fat finger scrollbars, my suggestion chimes with Milhouse's (as discussed in #2564): a small scrollbar or other visual indicator and page/widget-level scrolling through dragging.

Certainly, the fat scrollbars are usable. But they're fugly, and waste space.

If drag-to-scroll is implemented properly, at the Gtk+ widget level, almost everything will get it for free; and the OS will have a unified field out-of-the box.

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benz145 (Post 126983)

I'm really disappointed about the interface on OS2008, mainly because it has so much wasted potential.

This is just a short list of examples of contradictory finger/stylus oriented applications, I wish developers would just pick one, or maybe give us options for what we'd like to use. It really is a shame because the N810 has such a nice touch screen. The pressure needed to interpret an input is so little, it almost feels like active touch. With such a good screen its unfortunate that half of our applications are still using stylus input which was originally made to help a person make one point of input, which we can now easily do with the finger.

Can I get an amen?

EDIT: AMEN!

Great commentary. I must say I liked very much the concept of the menus and input derived from the touch sensitivity 'recognition' that would give you an appropriate menu based on your finger or pen input. That worked decently enough in OS2007, why not now and better in this OS2008?
This new OS zips along quite fast and from my fairly newb view, has more flexibility for programming. It should have been easy to carry on with the either/or recognition for the main menu and the virtual keyboard.

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

I can't say here much, but don't worry: No to fat scrollbars or fat scroll buttons.

Re: Finger or stylus, PLEASE make up your mind!

on my Palm Treo/centro the program Snapper mail has a small scroll bar but when you touch it with your finger it expands to a fat finger scroll bar but when you hit it with the stylus it remains small.
kind of like the old os2007 when you touched the screen with your finger it brought up the thumbboard and with the stylus it brought up the small keyboard.
the touch screen senses a wide area pressed versus a small area and the program adjusts accordingly.

also I would like to see the 4way d switch used more for scrolling and such.