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Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#191

Post by somethingsidont »

Pxtl wrote: post #128
craighay1 wrote: post #14

I 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…

In gboard we've already got modal stuff for numerical keypad, emojis, special characters (2 different modal pages), etc. Adding one more modal keyboard page for cursor-editing (arrow keys, ctrl-arrow-keys, home/end, pgup/godown, select-toggle-button, delete, rclick menu) would just make sense. Would just be getting the rest of the desktop keyboard into the phone keyboard, nothing groundbreaking.

This exists on Android Gboard, though it's hidden in some menus by default. [0]

[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/gboard-v6-2-adds-cursor-contr... (2017)

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#192

Post by dredmorbius »

alanbernstein wrote: post #139
mrob wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are better for taking photographs simply because they're smaller, but for every other aspect of photo viewing, management, and editing, they are worse. They have a tiny screen, insufficient local storage and compute, and no keyboard or mouse. They're not better music players. Sound quality can be identical because phones support USB DACs, but again, everything else is worse. On a real computer I can easily searc…

I generally agree with you and the parent post. But touch screen is the best UI for photo cropping. This is awkward because it makes me want to split editing tasks between devices.

Better than a Wacom tablet?

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#193

Post by jprete »

ghaff wrote: post #184
plaidfuji wrote: post #57

1000% agree with this post, wow. I can’t believe this is controversial.. it’s a disaster. I dread opening the mobile version of google docs, sheets, or even Notes for anything more than a grocery list. The problem is the target audience for this is business customers, and particularly those in management, so it’s a small market. ICs aren’t up and down as much between meetings and can largely stick to their desktop se…

I generally agree and also disagree with a few aspects of both your comment and the OP. First of all, to the OP, maybe not for the leet kids, but I absolutely find large amounts of text input on a phone to be a pain. I can do it if I’m away from a computer and have to, but I don’t enjoy it and it takes more time and requires a lot of concentration. As for cursor positioning, holding down the space bar on iOS works pr…

> As for cursor positioning, holding down the space bar on iOS works pretty well — although it took me a few years to learn about it.

I did not know this and it’s a godsend. I have otherwise found iOS cursor positioning to be awful, especially when text selection is involved as well. Thank you.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#195

Post by walteweiss »

kibwen wrote: post #79
plaidfuji wrote: post #57

1000% agree with this post, wow. I can’t believe this is controversial.. it’s a disaster. I dread opening the mobile version of google docs, sheets, or even Notes for anything more than a grocery list. The problem is the target audience for this is business customers, and particularly those in management, so it’s a small market. ICs aren’t up and down as much between meetings and can largely stick to their desktop se…

> before you say “sounds like you just want a tablet” One of my friends uses a GPD Pocket 3, which is an 8-inch computer that's small enough to fit in your pocket, with a full keyboard, touchpad, and touchscreen that swivels to become a tablet. It's pretty nifty. https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3

I found even better laptop, if you don’t need any extra slots (most of the time I don’t):

GPD P2 Max 2022. The world's smallest Ultrabook: https://gpd.hk/gpdp2max2022

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#196

Post by shadowgovt »

As a side note, text editing on desktop also isn't okay. Especially in the browser era, the fact that the "do command" manipulation from text editors and the "do command" manipulation from control panels collided violently in the browser as an application mean that when I do a simple click and drag to select text, I have no idea what's going to happen. Will I select the text? Will I start dragging the link underneath the text? Is the text an image so I start dragging the image? Will I try to activate the button that the text is actually wrapped by?

Browsers could honestly use a modifier (additional mouse button or key held down) that put them in a "text selection mode," in which all other meanings of click and click-drag are switched off. That would give the user full control to excerpt text from the page regardless of its context.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#197

Post by spiderfarmer »

codeptualize wrote: post #194

Why does this not mention long press on the spacebar on ios? It largely solves this problem. Long press on spacebar, keep it down and move around to move the cursor. While dragging tap with a second finger to start selection mode.

Problem is that that feature is not very discoverable. But I agree. The author seems very Android focused because most issues don’t really exist for iOS users once you know how it works.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#198

Post by jprete »

iKlsR wrote: post #160
plaidfuji wrote: post #57

1000% agree with this post, wow. I can’t believe this is controversial.. it’s a disaster. I dread opening the mobile version of google docs, sheets, or even Notes for anything more than a grocery list. The problem is the target audience for this is business customers, and particularly those in management, so it’s a small market. ICs aren’t up and down as much between meetings and can largely stick to their desktop se…

The moment I opened the article and started reading an idea came to me before reaching the authors solution. Imagine if you could just double tap a word and suddenly it becomes focused and enlargened while slightly blurring the rest of the text. The word in question now has easily targetable tap targets that you can modify quickly, swipe up to delete, rearrange, select etc like a sliding puzzle game. Like everyone I'…

A lot of the problem (for me at least) is that phone text-selection UIs are way too stateful. It’s very easy to mistime a tap and get a word select instead of selecting a different spot. It’s also very easy to misposition a tap and select too much, or not enough.

Adding text-selection features is IMO not the best approach. I’d actually rather they reduced the feature set and made the effects of UI actions less dependent on the state of the text selection UI.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#200

Post by kmstout »

awinter-py wrote: post #143

I typed 55wpm on my blackberry without looking. The fact that you have to constantly look at the screen keyboard and correct it is a huge attention suck and kills my input speed On blackberry, a mistake was one wrong character. On screen keyboards with swipe and autocorrect, a mistake can be inserting 1 or 2 random words Screen keyboard doesn't work in the rain while we're griping: - on an older android device the bu…

Earlier this year I spent some time with a Unihertz Titan Pocket, which sports a physical keyboard. It gave a vastly better typing experience than any other smartphone I've interacted with.
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