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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!
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
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
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.
dictionary says that both spined and spineless animals have them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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.