Left Handed Support for PDA's?

Skuld-Chan asks: "I'm left handed - so is about 10%-15% of America (depending on what statistic you look at). Is there a PDA out there that has left handed support? I have a Compaq Ipaq and the problem is I have to reach over the screen to grab scroll bars - thus obstructing what I am viewing. My brother has a Palm 7 and he says it doesn't have left handed support either. I think it would be easy to impliment - just reverse all the scroll bars and I'd be happy (the menu items happen to be on the left - just the right place)." You would thing things like this would come out in the usability tests. For those of you lefty's out there who work with PDAs on a semi-daily basis, what do you do to work around this problem?

Comments

LeftHack for Palm

[matthewg]

There is a hack for the Palm that moves the scrollbars to the left. Get it here.

Not quite what you seem to be asking, but...

[babbage]

...you seem to be talking more about messing around with the software in order to better support left-handed usage, but it's worth noting that the hardware is at least as important.

When I was shopping around for a PDA a couple of years ago, I ended up going with the Palm V primarily because at the time it was the only one that seemed friendly to ambidextrous usage. All of the other Palms -- and all of the assorted WINCE devices -- were very heavily biased towards right-handed usage.

On the Palms, the issue was mainly that the stylus had to go on the right (which I could deal with, but being able to put it on the left is a nice touch that at the time only the Palm V offered; now many of the Palms are using that form factor). On the Windows ones though, damn near every one of them had various hardware buttons that were designed to be tapped with your fingers while being held in your right hand, and holding the device in your left hand would cause you to accidentally tap them regularly.

Why such a basic ergonomic issue as handedness gets ignored for PALMtop computers, especially among the WinCE ones, is a total mystery to me. It isn't really much of an issue with other formats (desktops, laptops), but it seems critical with PDAs, and a glaring oversight that continues to be ignored.

But, like I say, this doesn't seem to be quite what you're asking about -- it sounds like you already have a PDA. Still, if you're shopping for a new one, it's worth having handedness in mind when trying new ones -- unless things have changed drastically in the past couple of months, the hardware makers still seem to be screwing this one up.

"I am left-handed" preference

[gwyrdd benyw]

"Lefty" is a hack for the PalmOS that sets a flag saying "I prefer left-handed GUI elements". Lefty-savvy applications will see this flag and adjust their screen rendering accordingly.

Re:Lefthanded

[Carpathius]

I do development for the Palm. I'm not sure I believe that a hack to move the scrollbar to the left side could work consistantly.

In the programs I write, I place the scrollbar exactly where I want it onscreen, then I place some additional stuff close to the scroll bar to look as it they were all part of the same thing. In other words, there's very little automatic about the placement of scrollbars.

If my scrollbars got moved to the left, it'd look extremely ugly and result in a loss of functionality.

I don't quite have the guts to try lefthack on my personal PDA. I'm afraid of what might happen. (Will try it on a test PDA when I get home. I am curious.)

Sean.

Re:what about mice?

[josepha48]

There are lefthanded mice. Some mice are actually no handed.

Try http://www.thelefthand.com/thelefthand/

I never really thoguth my palm piliot was left or right handed. You can hold it in your right hand and use the stylus, so what is so 'right handed' about it?

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