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Triangular Buttons Make On-Screen Keyboards More Usable
As someone targeted for perpetual failure by the designers of most keyboards, I'm happy to read
The Register's report that "A British inventor has submitted a patent application for a wacky touchscreen keyboard design which, he claims, could spell the end for accidental key presses."
The Logitech wave keyboard has a little "moat" around Capslock and Numlock keys, making them far less easy to accidentally press.
You can also disable those keys in software, which I did straight away.
Best keyboard I've ever owned.
That's just a blog with a scaled down version of the image and linking back to The Register.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Next thing we know, someone will be inventing a "capacitive stylus" touting "higher precision" while using your iPhone. Well yes, but that's SO not the point of a capacitive, finger-friendly touchscreen.
You're late to the party: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/a31f/
Also, you can get gloves with capacitive tips on the fingers, for iPhone use when it's too damn cold outside (less relevant in summer...) http://www.tavoproducts.com/
You can also disable those keys in software, which I did straight away.
Both X and XP/Vista can do that with any keyboard.
They may make commercials about butt-dialing. But on the day after I got my iPhone, I hung up on a customer and dialed the veterinarian's office all without being aware I was doing it--with the side of my face. I therefore invented face-dialing. It took several days to get used to the keyboard, but it took longer to accustom myself to not mashing down on crucial icons while talking. I can use the keyboard efficiently now, but I suspect the learning curve would have been less with the keyboard described in the article. And it's not a mental learning curve. It's a physical skill like typing on a full sized keyboard.I'd also like to see them add a very slight lip around the perimeter of the screen where the silver metal is located. It would be a tactile reminder to keep the damned thing away from my face.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
FanFic? Heck, with text to speech you can stop calling those 900 numbers!
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Goog-411 anyone? Been around for years too...
The iPhone keyboard "pops up" the letter you are currently pressing so you can see it above your finger or thumb. You can move your finger around to different letters and the keypress won't register until you lift your finger.
Agree. Anyone who thinks this is a cool idea hasn't used an iPhone keypad much.
The inventor's still stuck on the notion that each keypress must map onto a single character somehow, but the iPhone is smarter than that. It resolves ambiguous keypresses based on the letters that came before, and *also* the ones that came after. For instance, typing "THI", it assumes I'm on my way to "this", "thin", or "thick", but if I follow it up with "MAS", it changes the I to an O for "THOMAS".
And if I really did want to type the unusual name "Thimas", I just hit the little cancel-autocorrect x-box on the screen.
That's exactly what the iPhone does. You can be really sloppy when typing common letters like "S", but you have to be more precise for nearby uncommon letters like "Z". Not that that's a problem, it'll autocorrect if you miss.
Supposedly the sizes of these sensitive areas can change based on what you're in the process of typing, but I can't tell if it's actually doing that.
It isn't totally worthless. Some data entry apps require that some or all fields are in all caps. It is simpler for the clerks to use a caps lock then hold down the shift.
Of course if the programmer wasn't an idiot they would just convert the field to all caps but sometimes people have to live with old software.
Or I guess somewhere somebody used a lower case entry to be a sentential value to end data input.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
PowerOff, Sleep and WakeUp are pretty much standard keys.
This is the standard.