My takeaway is tacit irritation at the size of the screen. If it were larger then it would be easier to position a cursor and edit a word. With a keyboard and mouse, of course, it would be very easy. Our fingers are pretty large compared to smartphone screens, and regrettably that can only be helped with a stylus you'll lose.
Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#12Arrow and modifier keys, problem solved. If we’re going to keep making the screens ridiculously huge, use the space for functionality instead of gimmicks.
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#13My takeaway is tacit irritation at the size of the screen. If it were larger then it would be easier to position a cursor and edit a word. With a keyboard and mouse, of course, it would be very easy. Our fingers are pretty large compared to smartphone screens, and regrettably that can only be helped with a stylus you'll lose.
Could have a track pad on the back of the phone
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#14I sometimes wonder if modal editing (like vim uses) might be a good approach for navigating/editing longform text on touch devices.
It does seem like a missed opportunity to have taken the keyboard/mouse approach and then transferred it to touch devices. Even the keyboard layout has no real advantage for two thumb typing on a screen.
Approaches that adapt the interface whilst leaning heavily on letter based inference could be interesting for one handed / single digit entry of letters. Something like dasher: https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/dashersummary.html
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#15I was slightly surprised by the author’s example experiments. Deleting x from the middle of a word does not sound like a common editing task to me and I think it would be much more common to just select the whole word and retype it. If that means the UI is more optimised for other interactions than deleting letters from the middle of words, I think that’s fine. It seems pretty important to have the tests be realistic…
I just realised you can long press space to enable moving the cursor, then tap the keyboard with another finger to toggle selection mode on.
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#16With the magnifier no longer being offset - does your finger now not completely cover it? Definitely does raise some good points though - it’s so difficult to get to the select all button on iOS when you actually need it
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#17I wonder if the author is aware of the cursor positioning gestures on iOS (hold space, then drag)
I’m also not sure that the inline magnifier is such a good idea, he never gives an example with a fat finger overlaid, I think that would immediately show it’s just not feasible.
I’m also sure that Apple has dozens of user tests with all type of text editing strategies, Ken Kocienda even wrote a book about his process developing text input and auto-correct.
https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Selection-Inside-Apples-Proc...
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#18It'd be interesting if there's a demo that everyone can try on the web. Not only in videos.
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#19I wonder if the author is aware of the cursor positioning gestures on iOS (hold space, then drag) I’m also not sure that the inline magnifier is such a good idea, he never gives an example with a fat finger overlaid, I think that would immediately show it’s just not feasible. I’m also sure that Apple has dozens of user tests with all type of text editing strategies, Ken Kocienda even wrote a book about his process de…
He probably is aware, Android has the same gesture.
Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
#20Arrow and modifier keys, problem solved. If we’re going to keep making the screens ridiculously huge, use the space for functionality instead of gimmicks.
I've been using Hacker's Keyboard in compact mode for years now for this reason. (And my screen is pretty small for today's standards.)
It's just so much easier to edit text with arrow keys, shift-select, ctrl-c/x/v, etc. than getting that teardrop handle to behave, even on a touchscreen.