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Ask Slashdot: Where Is the Universal Gesture Navigation Set?
dstates writes "As a mostly happy new iPad owner, I love having lots of apps, but I have got to ask, where is the universal set of gestures for navigation? Pinch and open mostly mean zoom out and in, but sometimes you tap to open, sometimes double tap. Sometimes right swipe is back, sometimes there is a back button, sometimes you just have to go to home and navigate back down. Reminds me of the early days of GUIs when every application had its own menu set with different top-level menus and different placement of various functions. Made life chaos for users. We have been there, done that, and gestures are much worse. At least with a menu, you had a printed tag you could read. Gestures are all magic handshakes until you know them. Seems like the tablet community should not have to learn the value of consistency all over again." What gestures would you like to see made standard in touch-based interfaces?
i want to be able to flick off my tablet and have it grant root access to me. or at least make me a sandwich.
Sometimes I poke her and get a giggle. Other times, a slap.
Just right click!
when I first got into computer science my interest was at its all time high, years later the lack of standards (especially web development), have annoyed me so much I really don't want to code at all or look at code outside of work. Why can't we code once for all browsers? why can't database queries be more standardized? Why couldn't ms / *nix use common EOF and other attributes since they have known about each other for decades now? why do I need a 68 in 1 card reader ( I suspect to get more money out of me than a 5-1 in card reader) Why does every electronic device needs its own adapter? I could go on and on as it seems everything invented has to have its own connectors and way of doing things. Seriously coding would be so easy with some real standards
I think it's too early to tell...or to have a Universal anything on gestures. "Traditional" GUIs were refined over time, by trial-and-error and improvements over previous attemps. Designers, programmers, and users are still getting used to the gestured world in terms of what can be done to get things done. So I guess for right now were in a sort of platypus stage.
--ODL
Isn't one of the problems patents? Apple has patented their whole gesture model so thus nobody else can use it and so everybody else comes up with something else.
Sure, it'd be great to see a universal standard being agreed upon... and then see Microsoft's botched up version of it with their proprietary seven finger gestures for "additional functionality".
As a mostly happy new iPad owner, I love having lots of apps
Too gay; didn't read
Not a particularly useful gesture but when they understand it and cuss back we'll know the iPad has achieved an important milestone on the path to passing the Turing test.
In what bizarre app are you doing this. I've had one for a couple years and never heard of such a thing.
What about the problems of translating touch gestures to the "old-fashioned" mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts? For VNC, RDP, etc?
Navigation on a tablet (or smartphone) OS across all the major ecosystems is leaps and bounds better than it is on the PC. Take the common action of opening a Control Panel for an application, for example. For many Windows applications, you'll find it underneath a "Tools" context menu. However, some applications that use alternative GUI toolkits (Qt, Gtk, etc.) will put it in the "Edit" context menu to stay consistent with Linux/OS X tradition. Then there are the applications that put it in weird places like "File" or something. An even better example is Firefox; one presses Backspace in Windows to go to the last page visited. The same action in Linux is ALT+left arrow. I think it's different in OS X too.
on some other planet.
They're coming, just have patience. You have to go through the Apple version of nurturing and maturity. First wait until a young startup company builds the UGI and throughly debugs it. Next step is simple. Sue the startup, claim it as your own IP and enjoy life as a successful CEO. Ain't it cool?
All I want is this two finger salute.
Reminds me of the early days of GUIs when every application had its own menu set with different top-level menus and different placement of various functions
That's not the situation today?
gedit : 'Close without Saving' 'Cancel' 'Save As'
gnumeric : 'Discard' 'Don't Close' 'Save'
Add/Remove Software : 'Cancel' 'Clear' 'Apply'
Most other GNOME dialogs : 'Close'
Windows apps love to override the minimize and close buttons on the title bar. Drives me crazy when I click close and it goes to the system tray.
What about a way to display tooltips?
You can't really hover a finger over a device (though it would be rather neat if the screen was sensitive to pressure, or to a finger nearly touching it).
Also, why do so few devices implement long-press to get a (right-click) menu.
The standard UIControl set that Apple provides for developers has standard behavior already built in. There are a few gestures that may be optionally enabled, but most are on by default. If a developer goes out of their way to create some custom gesture I don't know that there's much Apple could do to stop them.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
My two year old niece figured it out fine, dude. I'll see if I can't get her to explain it all to you.
giving your iXXX the middle finger because you couldn't figure out the gesture you REALLY wanted. You may need to strap a Kinect to the device so it can interpret the touch-free nature of your gesture tho :)
I use a deck of punched cards and an IBM card reader as my user interface.
I'd love American Sign Language to become the universal hand gesture library for interacting with computers. People who are deaf already fluent in ASL would become much more productive than they might be now. Many more people who aren't already communicating with people who are deaf would learn ASL and become fluent in communicating with people who are deaf.
There's already quite a lot of infrastructure for ASL right now, both in communicating with it and in learning it. There's a whole literature, a whole culture, a whole lingo with consumable artifacts.
What would be really cool would be software translating between ASL gestures, English and Chinese. Everyone should get into the whole handwaving party.
--
make install -not war
Yes, We.Are.The.Tablet.Community. You.must.initiate.the.secret.handshake.
But.Since.You.Don't.Know.It ahem
I can't give you the universal Gesture Guidebook.
Next. Not A Reference to Our Lord's previous brainchild. I meant, next question please.
The one thing I'd like to see changed is autocorrect behavior. Seriously, who thought hitting "space" after an autocorrect word comes up would correct it, but tapping the corrected word would dismiss it? Really?
I admit, I haven't tried it on an Android device (the nook being my only one), but on iOS it's annoying as hell.
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
... face palm.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, it's called "iOS Human Interface Guidelines" and it starts right here. Next question.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
It's very difficult to intuit the right gesture if the screen response is slow. Which one worked? The iPod app always gets me double clicking, triple clicking, and swiping furioulsy at the album cover when a song is playing because I can't tell what's right to get it to flip. I'm sure everyone else in the world "knows" the rightngesture. How did the learn? Does anyone know of a source of "standard" gestures for OS4 apps?
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
In the USA we don't have todgers!
Have gnu, will travel.
means f*ck the developer whom I paid for this POS app.
pelvic thrust should immediately open porn in the browser
I think that there is going to come at some point a next generation of touchless pads. These will be able to sense the positions of fingers above the pad. THis will give a more rich potential for gestures.
While it obviously enlarges the potential pallette I think it will actually lead to a simplification. This is because you will be able to use these gestures on vertically oriented desktop screens and also because gestures can be less abstract and more like what they are gesturing about. That is whole hand positions not just finget tips.
I would bet that is about 5 years away then a few years for market penetration. so there may be time to create 2-D touch gesture sets now but they will be gone in 10 years.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They have gone down the drain when idiots who are not aware that a "page down" key exists on your keyboard were allowed to make flash controls displaying long texts in the web.
Honestly i curse always when i am presented with a really nice looking UI in the web which behaves exactly like the programer always believed an interface should behave and forgets to implement half of the expected semantics. Things i hate:
a) ESC does not finish dialogs
b) Return does not OK inputs
c) Tab does not jump between input fields
d) Links dont do anything
e) Deactivated options are not marked (of marked in a way you only understand after trial-and-error)
In that sense, the inconsistency we have with touchscreens only fits in.
Since when did Slashdot start posting FUD from companies looking to tarnish a competitor's product?
This is exactly the kind of planted review I expect to see in an App Store comment section. 50% from the developers, 50% from the competition.
Listen, I have 3 kids who all love to use the iPad and not one of them can't figure out how to navigate in and between apps. They are ages 10, 6 and 1.5 respectively. I'd call that intuitive.
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
What gestures would you like to see made standard in touch-based interfaces?
Well from a design perspective I'd like the standards to use the ones that are most intuitive for us to learn, most ergonomic so we don't mess up our meatspace bodies, and most quick and efficient so that we can get things done in short order on our fancy new computer devices.
One of the biggest impediments to standards in this space is patents on both the hardware underlying multi-touch (or whatever user interface comes out next year) as well as all of the software that drives the interface.
If you want to improve the state of standardization, convince either the companies to stop getting or wielding these patents, or convince your government to eliminate/defang them. They are hurting the standardization process.
coding is life
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Regarding the broader tablet/mobile market, many gestures are now patented. Apple has at least 15 gesture-related patents, Some others have suggested that other interface designers are reluctant to implement identical gestures, for fear of Apple's patent portfolio.
http://www.cracked.com/article_16335_7-innocent-gestures-that-can-get-you-killed-overseas.html
This is not the sig you're looking for.
The FingerWorks keyboard was a good start, but even that was limited in ways. Apple bought them, and now multitouch has been confined to phones and toys, and innovation has ceased.
Anyway, it is far too early to standardize on a set of gestures. There is a tremendous amount of potential with multitouch, and the current devices have only scratched the surface. Rather than crippling innovation, we need configurable devices with which developers can explore that potential. I'd also argue that gestures should not be hidden in some standards document, but presented by the user interface, and contextual for each application.
Gesture? How about the middle finger Apple is giving you for being stupid enough to buy their overpriced, locked-down garbage?
This is more along the lines of a PC, however, I've been trying out the magic trackpad on my main development machine and here's what I've figured out so far that makes the most sense:
1 finger (mouse cursor)
Single click
Two finger scroll up/down (standard scrolling)
Three finger swipe left/right (forward/back in documents, i.e., browser history, emacs buffers, etc.)
Three finger swipe up/down (forward/back in windows, i.e., browser tabs)
Pinch in/out (zoom, window sizing as max/restore)
4 finger swipe down (minimize)
5 finger swipe down (minimize all)
Rotate (similar to alt-tab)
Alt + Three fingers (move window under the cursor)
Alt + 2 fingers (page up/down)
That's about the most gestures I can handle reasonably on the trackpad so far. I'm in the process of trying to squeeze in another 5 or so with some gestures of sorts, but, that's about the most gestures I can imagine being reasonable and common idiom-wise (without involving a 2nd trackpad). Otherwise you end up tripping over yourself, so to speak. These also happen to be similar to the keyboard macros that I usually bind first without the trackpad.
A nice small side benefit is most gestures only require 2 or 3 fingers, so if you're right handed, and have a smaller keyboard (like apple wireless) your thumb and index can remain on the keyboard.
Incidentally, the other most common "gestures" would be line control, i.e., next line, next word, home, end, etc., but those seem best to be handled on the keyboard (with binds similar to emacs, i.e., ctrl+n, ctrl+a, etc). Most of those, not by chance, only require the left hand.
Even with all that though, I'm still struggling to figure out a good substitute for right-click that doesn't interfere with the other gestures. I'm thinking maybe a click where your thumb remains in lower left corner and then your ring finger taps in the upper right corner---seems easy and quick. The default click-and-hold-for-2-seconds as the right-click is terrible.
The next step is to add a 2nd trackpad on the other side of the keyboard, and use that or the combo of both for more complex and uncommon gestures. Not sure how to handle that though in a way that doesn't suck, but, I'd assume the 2nd trackpad would function similar to ctrl/alt/option keys where you're only moving one trackpad at a time with the other as control (and vice versa).
The last step would be to integrate it into gaming but I doubt it's precise and quick enough for that.
i thought iphone os was supposed to be the perfect example of consistency and intuitiveness? why this complaint now? and if the ui is such a pain in the ass then why don't people buy better spec'ed tablets from samsung instead?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I was under the impression that Apple could do no wrong and the ipads & iphones are perfect. Maybe your just holding it wrong?
Be seeing you...
can the tablet tell when i'm giving it the finger. all of these products are overhyped and place undue demand on the environment. you have a phone. you have a laptop. YOU DO NOT NEED A TABLET.
Touch the screen in any way you prefer - this should bring the command line and keyboard.
Everything else should be done in command line like in the real OS. Problem solved.
Punch cards are for wimps I use a lot of rocks
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I searched this document and the word maximise/maximize does not appear anywhere, or any information about how to change between full screen/partial screen in one application, and there doesn't seem to be any description of how to switch between applications. There seems to be some large and very basic holes somewhere.
Korma: Good
One concern I didn't see with a quick scan through the comments: How do you make universal and intuitive gestures across cultures that read left-to-right vs. right-to-left. Off the top of my head, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew are some right-to-left languages/cultures. A significant chunk of the planet's population. Should a left-to-right swipe go back or forward? Depends on where you grew up.
Coffee is my drug of choice.
Apple has applied for a patent on many (if not all) of their gestures (patent application number 20060026535). I can't tell from the application whether or not the patent was approved, rejected, or even reviewed yet. If this has already been approved or becomes approved in the future, this could mean that every other mobile OS would be at risk of a lawsuit from Apple if their gestures were too similar to the ones outlined in this patent. Apple would probably allow third party application developers to use these gestures for the sake of consistency on iOS devices, but cross-platform mobile apps would become a pain to develop since every platform would have its own set of gestures.
My hope is that if this were to happen, all of the other mobile OS companies would create an open standard for non-patented gestures to create a consistent experience for all devices. Apple could then choose whether or not they would like to abandon their patented gestures to adopt the open standard or become the only company using non-standardized gestures.