Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

Yes, sorry I didn't mention the haptic touch thing in my article. I turned it off right away for similar reasons to ysss (bzzt! bzzt! every time you touch the screen!), but I've been told that the implementation is constantly improving, and the final version may be enjoyable to use.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

Yeah, the skins on the tip of my fingers still work. So I don't need constant reminder that it's touching the screen.

What it needs to 'feel' though, are the (graphic) elements on screen that I can only see but not 'touch': Boundaries of screen elements.. widgets, borders, buttons, and whatnot. But I think there has to be a sense of directionality for this to be useful.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

That would be nice; a little haptic "bump" when you reach the end of a list or try to drag something past a hard boundary, for example.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

Works really well on my 5800. Very subtle, just enough to tell you it saw the touch. Think one or two rotations of the vibra motor.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

There is a nice sensitivity adjustment for the haptic on the 5800 which I have adjusted to the lowest setting, I would hope that there is one on the n900. Once you get used to it its hard to use a non vibration screen, part of the reason I hate typing on my iPod touch.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

The thing which annoyed me about the N900's bzzt (and the screen clicks on any other Maemo device) is that they always go off when you touch the screen, whether you've touched an element which does something or not.

So, as a feedback indicator it's useless: it tells me my touch had been registered. Fine, but the N900's screen is so sensitive, I don't have any concerns it wouldn't be. What I'm interested in is has my touch been picked up as doing what I wanted to do.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

If I understood correctly, I don't really see the problem :p
If you touched at a certain spot (where you really want), and it registered your touch, it's sure that you'll get what you clicked for... I think its purpose is exactly that: tell the user that the click has been registered or not, to avoid him waiting like "is the application launching a bit slowly or didn't it register my touch?". Good that the sensibility of the screen is high, but a feedback like that is always useful imho.
If you test touching on points where it does nothing, then it's exactly that, a test; its target is real use where you're supposed to know where you're touching. :)
Anyway, I'm speaking having never used a Maemo device, so may just be assumptions.

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

very interesting thought. - could this be done on an OS level so it automagically works for all applications? (or at least applications that use the standard gtk/hildon framework - same way text input handled?)

or would the application have to provide a clue that this was an active element and will trigger an event?


there's no way - currently ;) - the N900 can tell what you wanted to do :D
(although i have to agree that this would be the ideal UI)

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

Right, but it's not registering a click, it's registering a touch. Some UI elements are still quite small (checkboxes in a web page, links etc.); sometimes your touch might be misinterpreted as a drag event (which doesn't do anything on a button). I'm glad that when you touch the screen you know you've hit what you want, but that doesn't correspond to my experience.

Have you ever used any mobile device on the move (say a plane, train, standing still after a raucous Nokia World party)? ;-)

Re: Easter egg in the RX-51?
 

It certainly could be done at the framework level for "normal" UIs. Anything which did anything a bit differently (web browser being the prime example) would have to trigger it manually (checkboxes, buttons and links on web sites would be fantastic).

The app usually gives those hints to the framework anyway, e.g. so a button can be rendered as disabled.