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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.
...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.)
And you could put little springs under the bumps, so that you could feel them move when you pressed them hard enough!
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.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
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
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
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.