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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."
Illt maek wruting furst psost easzier
Is to get rid of the damned, usless, pain in the ass keycaps key.
As for the keyboard itself, seems I've seen that in some si-fi movie.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
From the article:
Baker told Register Hardware today that each triangular key has significantly more dead space around it than youâ(TM)d find on a standard Qwerty layout.
Assuming the keys have the same pitch, then that means the active triangular zones are SMALLER than normal keys occupying the same overall keyboard area, making it even HARDER to type accurately, or, in other words, this trains the user to be more careful with their finger placements. It isn't magic (like standard rollover logic in keyboards), it's behavioral modification.
Funny, I was always taught that programs and computers should be designed to make things easier for the user, not harder.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I'll wait to upgrade to a touch screen when my Model M ceases to function. Seeing as that will be never, I suppose touch screens will be an upgrade that just won't be happening for me.
Actually it misses the point, since "significanty more dead space between keys" is only a feasible solution if you have a physically larger screen. He's effectively making the keys smaller, thus harder to hit, and the "dead space" is just space where nothing happens = confused users.
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.
Just add unique bumps/shapes to the edges of the triangles, and you don't have to look while texting either. It would be quite a bit better than rectangular buttons, because as you slide your thumb around, the triangular gaps would make the shapes rather easy to "read" by feel. There - now if anyone wants prior art on the inevitable patent dispute over this basic idea, this post is the prior art you can say you derived your product from. Ryan Fenton
...based on the IP they acquired from FingerWorks. You can do really sophisticated error-correction if you're getting not only a stream of characters, but the exact location of the press, contact area, dwell time, and possibly more. So, with a virtual multi-touch keyboard, you can say "Okay, that looked like an R, but the contact was actually most of the way over toward E, and the previous two letters were T-H, so I'm going to go ahead and make it an E."
I know it'll rankle the manual-transmission crowd, but I've been using a FingerWorks keyboard for years, and most of the time, it's absolutely spooky how well the autocorrect works. (Just don't try high-intensity vi work.)
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?
For a physical keyboard, this seems reasonable - if you eliminate edges where the keys touch, each other, then you're less likely to accidentally press two keys at once. But for a virtual keyboard like on the iPod, it doesn't matter if you "touch" two keys at once with your finger - the software can determine which one you were actually closer to, and only register that.
While there are certainly drawbacks to a touchscreen, such as lack of tactile feedback, this is one area where they have an advantage - a larger percentage of usuable surface area, as touches that would be a multiple button mash on physical keyboards can be unambiguously mapped to a single key in software.
Is the area designated as a button always the same size as the graphic of the button ? .. why couldn't you do the same thing showing square buttons but sensing triangular or smaller circular areas ? .. You could also use color in the button graphic to target the hotspot, fading to the buttton edges.
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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
With all that space between the keys, there's room for even more buttons!
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.
This reminds me of the klingon displays from startrek
I made the image fit the screen (CTRL + [+]) and, well that was it. It felt no different. It looked no different.
Surely it's just a matter of practice when using large on screen keyboards?
Aim for the top of the triangle? Why bother outlining the keyboard letters at all?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
As a programmer, any time I hear hype like this ". . .could spell the end for accidental key presses." I laugh a little.
We will NEVER spell the end for accidental use of technology by using more technology.
It kind of falls into the old maxim "Try to make anything idiot proof, and the world with generate bigger idiots".
-JWR
I'm more upset that he got a patent for changing the shapes from square to a triangle. This doesn't show any real creativity to even constitute a design patent. Its like a themed keyboard. Like if someone decided to make a keyboard using various shapes just for style. I doubt that could be patented either.
Interesting idea until a lazy programmer decides that detecting a triangular shaped area from a set of coordinates is too fussy and just divides the key areas up into boxes.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
This has nothing to do with the main reasons that people like me cannot use tiny keyboards.
0. When I press down, my finger pad overlaps way more than one key. therefore, I am prone to make mistakes.
1. I can't see through my finger to the keyboard if my finger covers 2 or more keys, therefore I am prone to make some more mistakes.
2. No, I don't need to see the keys, but I at least need to be able to feel their delineations in lieu of that, and since the thing has no tactile measurable quality like a real keyboard, I am prone to make yet more mistakes.
I can work a blackberry keyboard a little because at least i can feel the difference in the keys vs. spaces. Without some physical delineation or press-from-behind type capacity, I don't think any tiny touchscreen keyboard will be any more for me usable than any other one.
stuff |
Does using such an auto-correcting keyboard make it harder to type correctly when you move to a "normal" keyboard? Something bothers me about devices that train me to make more unaware mistakes.
Some might find this interesting. This is the moderation email I got for the orginal comment. Not a political comment, not calling anyone names. Sure as hell not dissing Linux or Macs or Windows or Obama.
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Just as sure as I say I don't really care someone will say I obviously do. But WTF ever.
What is reallying interesting is that some people appear to have some serious emotional investment in the caps lock key.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
PowerOff, Sleep and WakeUp are pretty much standard keys.
This is the standard.