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Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

jenson.org

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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#211

Post by eastbound »

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.

No, the force-touch spacebar is awful.

It’s only a few characters wide, so you can’t edit large text in small input, such as… the URL, the most frequent usage of editing text on mobile. Along with tasks in the TODO app, typing a text message.

It’s only awful BECAUSE Apple is persuaded that we have fat fingers.

But I have kept a very old iPad from the pre-force space bar, and lightly touching any word would simply put the cursor between letters. Modern-day iOS selects the full word as if I had fat fingers.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#212

Post by jzb »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #197
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.

It's not discoverable. I learned about it through some "things you should know about iOS" listicle or something. Once I picked it up, I've used it a lot.

I loathe when apps interrupt usage to say "did you know you can?" but... this is one of those things where Apple should point the feature out on upgrade, or something.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#213

Post by mdp2021 »

adithyassekhar wrote: post #76
mabbo wrote: post #62

When my wife was super pregnant and overdue, friends were consistently asking for updates. I made a website called "is stillpregnant.com" and put a very very minimal website there. It was literally just route53 and cloudfront in front of an S3 bucket. But that meant I needed to make updates from the hospital with my phone. I mean yes there were probably better options but I was a bit busy at the time to think of them…

This is the kind of stuff you read on 4chan as memes about orange site. While going through all that you decided to create a website of all things and update it by hand editing html. Normal people, and I hate saying that, would create a facebook/WhatsApp group or something like that. I'm not making fun of you or anything, not everyone has the same lives, I'm just amazed by the hn crowd.

I was about to comment that using an LLM to update a static site can be seen as overkill like using napalm bombing against mosquitoes,

and you post about those considering odd to have your own services to publish basic information...

> amazed by the hn crowd ... [whereas] Normal people...

I have seen members of the "madding crowd" amazed by people reading a book. And not one: many, in different increasingly bewildering capacities. (Including "law enforcement", calling it "suspicious behaviour".)

Be careful of what can be called "normalcy" nowadays.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#214

Post by xxs »

deely3 wrote: post #69
fisian wrote: post #8

My biggest problem in editing on mobile is changing a text selection (for example a long URL or long text paragraphs) that don't fit on screen at once. Once I have to scroll (vertically or, even worse, horizontally) in addition to moving the selection handles the UX is just terrible.

I don't know about IPhone but on Android its simply impossible to Paste text between two words. You can't paste text into cursor position you can only replace selected text with Pasted text. Thats my main biggest issue. Also, why the fuck there no Copy/Paste buttons on mobile keyboard??

On android you need a bit better keyboard that has 'paste' as part of the keyboard. It does paste at the caret position

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#215

Post by LinAGKar »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #197
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.

Gboard has the spacebar drag too, though not the tap to select.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#216

Post by jameshart »

failuser wrote: post #125
lachlan_gray wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On an iPhone if you hold the space bar down the whole keyboard becomes a kind of trackpad which you can use to move the cursor. Since all the keys disappear, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to add something that works like mouse buttons so you could select text or paste in a specific spot in that “mode”. Right now it’s so frustrating to do any kind of selecting.

You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard. Used to be even better with 3D Touch, you did not have to wait for the long press to register.

Unfortunately this affordance isn’t available when trying to make a selection in noneditable text.

Since often on mobile devices I am responding to comment threads (in slack or gitlab or Jira, or indeed right now on HN, for example) the challenges I have in copy-pasting are often in grabbing text from a prior comment to quote, rather than in selecting my own text.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#218

Post by DebtDeflation »

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…

Surprised it didn't mention the lack of a "Delete" key (at least in the standard Android keyboard). All that is provided is Backspace. On the desktop, I use Delete and Backspace equally, depending on where my cursor happens to be.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#219

Post by jzb »

I 100% agree with this. My teen, OTOH, refuses to use a keyboard to write papers or do anything. She finds it completely normal and preferable to write on her phone. To me this feels like using a hammer to chop wood, but it's her native input method.

Allegedly this is standard in her age group. Makes me wonder about the next few waves of people entering the workforce and whether they're going to hate using keyboards for input.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#220

Post by cratermoon »

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 consider my phone devices mostly read only. I do have an iPad and text editing is better, but still there are still stumbling blocks. Entering text is pretty easy, and making large scale cut/copy/paste edits is OK. It's the smaller edits, adding or changing punctuation, fixing typos, transposing words, or changing small words (‘the’ to ‘a’, for example), where I find difficulty with the behavior of the selection function.
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