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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
that is what palm did at least. I wouldn't be surprised if apple did too.
we really have to ban patents on non physical inventions. they just cause more problems than they solve.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
In what bizarre app are you doing this. I've had one for a couple years and never heard of such a thing.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
In the USA we don't have todgers!
Have gnu, will travel.
Even issh for that matter (still haven't figured out how to consistently copy in that app)?
I'd say RDP, the program, has some of the gestures figured out. Two finger tap = right click. Double tap= double click. The problem is how to translate things like "click, hold and drag" or "Slide the slider". A lot of that might be the protocol itself (doesn't windows have accessibility hooks so things know "this widget should behave like a scrollbar"?
I dunno. It is one of the reasons flash is not supported—those were designed for a mouse. A touch interface is a whole new ballgame that is uncharted water. There is no mouse, but there are perhaps ten fingers that can control an interface.
I think the game makers will be the ones to figure out how to exploit the possibilities. I have tons of games that would never work with a mouse.
No, the only problems they seem to cause is that they make it harder for people to just rip something off and give it away when somebody else did the hard work of creating it already - which is actually the exact reason we have patents in the first place.
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
No, screens like the iPad are capacitance sensitive, and have a second inferred level of sensitivity via vibration/angular rate change. They are not even binary sensitive to pressure like resistive screens (binary being useless for this application)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I have hover on my tablet pc... if the stylus is within about 1cm of the screen, it moves the mouse cursor. I still contend that the stylus on an active digitizer is a far superior user interface than your fat greasy fingers. Hey tablet manufacturers, WAKE UP and give us active digitizers, styli, in combination with a capacitive touch screen, and high-resolution screens > 150 dpi, so we can replace PAPER!
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
It is really weird to think of touch gestures as 'inventions'. They're more akin to words in sign language. What's the purpose of language if it's not allowed to become universal. Apple has the best word for 'enlarge', Palm has the best word for 'delete', but nobody has a decent overall language, and patents will prevent any from emerging. It's nuts.
And how about this limitation: "there shall be no patents granted for simulations of existing real-world objects or inventions". It's the act of simulating something on a computer that's inventive - not the specific simulation. And computer simulations of the real world are old enough to be non-patentable. No more patents on 'tabbed folders', 'progress bars' and the like. Computer interfaces are just a way of mapping the world onto a 2D screen. Doing it in the first place was inventive, the specifics are uninteresting.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
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.
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.
Oh please! We aren't talking about some badass GUI to physics interface here, we are talking about patents on the GUI equivalent of the Wii Waggle! How would you have liked it if TexStar (or whomever did it first) had patented Ctrl+ for shortcuts? Then you might have Ctrl+C in Office, but Alt+h to do the same in your browser, or Shft+Alt+N to do the same in your camera program. does that SOUND like fun to you friend?
Because frankly we old farts have BEEN down that road, and it fucking sucks! programs in the 80s were a damned mess, with NO hotkeys matching squat, hell I knew folks that had to use several programs that had so damned many cheat sheets taped to their cubicles it looked like walls of code written by the insane!
I don't think anyone besides you would agree that some company should be able to patent whether I point up or down to move a web page, or whether I use one finger or two to open something. Any company that patents stupidity like that and hampers standards will get a "gesture" from me that has prior art going back centuries!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.