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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.
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.
All I want is this two finger salute.
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'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
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.
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
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.
I think you meant OSX loves to override the close buttons. While I have seen a few apps in windows that do this, they always the small apps that are specifically designed to be long running in the background like torrent software and instant messengers. It is still bad behavior, but it is limited, and usually the behavior can be set in a configuration file. OSX on the other hand, you get things like word processors that decide close means minimize. It is a total hodge podge of inconsistency. Even worse is that when this poor UI is pointed out, you get a stream of OSX fanboys claiming that it makes sense. That it is a feature, not a bug. The bad behavior is not only allowed by the OS, it is endorsed by the OS manufacturer, so there is little hope that it will ever be fixed to work in a sane way.
Gesture? How about the middle finger Apple is giving you for being stupid enough to buy their overpriced, locked-down garbage?
I've never seen an OS-X application minimize when you click the close button. Neither Pages nor Word work that way. Which word processors are you referring to?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I've never seen any OS X apps behave very far from Apple's user interface guidelines.
On Windows OTOH I've seen way too many applications that behave unpredictably when it comes to minimize and close. Some "minimize" but remain running with an icon visible, others use the close button this way with minimize simply minimizing to the taskbar. Some will shut down but also start an "agent" application that runs minimized to the tray and so on...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
What about a jump to the left?
Or a step to the right?
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 believe he is referring to the Apple convention of leaving applications running even when there are no visible windows. If I remember correctly all apps are intended to have this behavior. In practice not all apps do. Apps that are not document based often quit when the last window is closed. An example of that is the System Preferences app.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
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.
Actually, my two year old son can operate our iPad with no problems whatsoever, so I think it's a classic "Problem exists between Pad and Sofa" kind of situation...
iTunes minimizes. App Store closes. These are both Apple applications on an Apple OS.
Not even Apples applications work this way. The 'Document' excuse is frequently used, but it doesn't change the fact that it is a crap shoot on which stay open, and which close. Even with applications written by Apple themselves.
TextEdit. The word processor that Apple supplies as default on the Mac does this.
That is some pretty hard core rationalization you have there. iTunes and OSX App Store are equivalent application that are both written by Apple. iTunes, with no 'Documents' open will continue to run as an icon in the task bar if you press the red X. OSX App Store with no 'Documents' open will shut down if you press the red X. The 'Document' excuse is just that. An excuse for inconsistent behavior. Really trying to claim that an application isn't minimized if it is running without any open windows, and is represented by an icon in the task bar, is just bizarre.
So, while you may not be trying to sound like some fanboy, it is happening anyway.
I can't claim to have read Apples guidelines, but since pressing the red X has less consistent behavior in OSX than Windows, the point still stands. Maybe Apple's guidelines say "Do whatever you want when the red x is pressed.", but that doesn't make it consistent.
Pressing "the red X" generally results in the document or window that is open closing but the application staying active. The exception to this is smaller "single-purpose" applications where the window pretty much is the application but these are quite rare.
And no, your point does not "still stand" because it doesn't make any sense.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
iTunes has a reason to keep running even without its window. It plays music and communicates with iOS devices and can do so even when the window is gone.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Does not matter. The excuse for continuing to run was that all 'Documents' are closed. Clearly that is not the case. If I wanted iTunes to continue running minimized in the task bar, I would have pressed the minimize button. This is what the minimize button is for. Claiming that it makes any kind of sense to keep a music player open after I specifically tell it to close is simply making excuses for a crappy UI.
More excuses. Apple themselves cannot get the close button to have consistent behavior. It does not "genrally" result in the document or window that is open closing but the application staying active. It is a total crap shoot. OSX is like The Emperors New Clothes.
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've alrady pointed out that it's not quite as simple as merely "documents" although the term "documents" is often used when addressing people who don't understand computers very well because it makes it easy to give them a general idea.
That said, there is to my knowledge not a perfect adherence to a single standard in this area but I still find it fascinating that you criticize Apple and OS X applications for these perceived inconsistencies while defending Windows and the countless apps for that platform that behave seemingly at random...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
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
The problem is not that other people "don't understand computers very well". It is that OSX has some serious UI deficiencies that Mac fanboys continuously try to defend. I specifically said that over riding the close behavior in Windows "It is still bad behavior".
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.
Closing the window closes the window. It doesn't minimize it, it doesn't quit the application.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
it doesn't quit the application.
Except when it does close the application. Which there is no rhyme or reason in determining which applications that will be.