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Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#261

Post by ghusto »

superkuh wrote: post #185
crazygringo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smartphones are just for when you're literally unable to use a real computer. Which is literally extremely frequent, since we often need to do stuff on the go. Which is why an article like this is so important -- we should improve, not give up. There's no reason to think text editing on a phone has reached its final form.

The reason I think it won't get much better is that the size of smart phones will not change. It is size that's really the issue for text editing. No space for a real keyboard, no space for a real display.

I remember the first Android phone. It was small, and had a real keyboard. It's not that it can't be done, it's that it's cheaper to not have one, and they can get away with it because of the lowest common denominator consumer.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#262

Post by civilitty »

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #243
kibwen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 love the concept... but in that price range, I'm no longer comfortable just carrying it around with me, which partially negates the reason for getting it.

Given the (really cool) KVM module with HDMI input and USB keyboard/mouse output, it really feels like an enterprise datacenter product.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#263

Post by happymellon »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #203
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…

> It’s just not your typical consumer. My only disagreement. I think many people don't know they want something better because they've never used something better. The video in the link describes how the users do short texts to get around the problem [0], including deleting whole blocks of text instead of editing. Teenagers, parents, and many others communicate heavily through texts and are often "up and down" like m…

I miss my Blackberry for typing.

The tactile feedback of real keys was so much better than haptic screens.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#265

Post by screye »

Someone1234 wrote: post #187
screye wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say purchase a folding phone. It's great.

It doesn't address this editing issue at all. It somewhat attempts to address multi-tasking, but this thread is specifically about how poor the text editing experience is, and I'd like to hear how a folding phone fixes that? I have an iPad and even there without a mouse plugged in, the editing experience is poor.

You're correct. It isn't a direct solution. For the most part, it makes the selection experience easier, which then makes the editing experience easier.

But I wouldn't underestimate how big a difference it is. One difference between a folding phone and an iPad, is that I can reach every part of my screen with my thumbs still in their resting position. It feels a lot more ergonomic to have an 8 inch 4:3 screen than a larger 16:10 screen that requires hands gymnastics to touch type.

Hold to select word. Drag to extend selection. Drag pops up the edit menu by default, which takes little screen real estate and zero additional clicks to do a cut/copy. Lastly, a cut/copy automatically puts the snippet as the top recommendation on my auto complete bar on the keyboard. So paste doesn't need triggering the edit menu again.

Samsung doesn't have a double tap experience. So it removes that ambiguity.

I have the stubbiest fingers I know and I type a lot ; as my HN profile bears witness. So I have heavily user-tested this experience that I claim to love so much.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#266

Post by failuser »

jameshart wrote: post #216
failuser wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair you can't drop a caret (the edit cursor) into non-editable text in most desktop applications as well. And that's a missed opportunity there too. I think Chrome got less agreesive in changing your selection to match word bounaries, but it was very annyone for a while. I think you could void it by holding Shift, but that had some other side-effects in some pages.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#267

Post by b112 »

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

Sadly, the .hk kills it. I can't even look at the page, my corp network geoip blocks China's IP addresses completely.

Corp would never let a Chinese created device on network.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#268

Post by dheera »

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 dread opening the mobile version of google docs, sheets, or even Notes for anything more than a grocery list.

I dread it even for grocery lists. For one the apps (Notion, Google Docs, you name it) all give me a stupid splash screen when I tap them, and I have to wait 5-10 seconds to see content. We're in 2023. Splash screens should be unnecessary. Opening a piece of text should take no more than 50ms after the tap on the app icon.

About half the grocery stores I frequent have no cell phone signal. Why the HELL can't a device in 2023, with all the machine learning we have today, deduce from my GPS track and time/day deduce that I'm probably headed to one of several grocery stores, record that the last time said grocery store had no signal, and pre-download anything that looks like a grocery list, or hell, labelled explicitly as one? And do whatever rendering it needs off screen so that it's no more than 25ms from tapping the app icon to viewing it? It has a GHz+ processor, 90Hz screen, 25ms isn't a tall ask to render some text. 5-10 seconds? What are engineers busy doing?

And this is why I still use post-its for grocery lists.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#269

Post by justin_oaks »

miniupuchaty wrote: post #169
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…

I've been using nvim in termux on foldable phone since I've bought phone in that form factor. It works great, I'm using "unexpected keyboard" as input method for faster special symbols access. It works pretty well. Good enough for me to program on the go.

Thanks for letting me know about the Unexpected Keyboard app. It'll take some getting used to, but having arrow keys and punctuation available without changing modes is pretty awesome.

I can even hit Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy, etc. This alone will help text editing on my phone.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#270

Post by dredmorbius »

ctenb wrote: post #52
bmacho wrote: post #43

Use a keyboard app with arrows. My choice is "Hacker's keyboard" [0] but I think there are others. (Search reddit for best keyboards with arrows.) I can't say more about it, text editing is not a problem on mobile. It's ok. I installed, then I forgot. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketwork...

Can't run it on newer Android versions

Which, specifically?

I'm still using Hacker's Keyboard on Android 10.

Though I'm also largely relying on F-Droid for apps. Is Hacker's Keyboard not installable via Google Play, or not runnable?

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