401–410 of 693 posts
No mention of "undo"? That's usually my biggest bug bear, no way to undo accidentally deleted/garbled edits. Oh and the fact that intended deletion of half a sentence via backspace often ends up deleting far more than intended.
Not sure about Android, but on iOS a three finger tap will bring up a contextual menu which allows undo and redo, among other actions.
Wholeheartedly agree with the author but don't think he's radical enough about solutions. Thumb-key takes a radical approach, and I've watched someone who has become comptetent at it (which i haven't) type elegantly on it. https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key But I always wonder why noone has tried building a hardware chord keyboard for a phone. It seems perfectly suited.
Multi-lingual support is problematic, the 9 most common letters differ per language, even if you stick to those based on a latin script. So either you end up learning multiple layouts for multiple languages, or end up doing way more touchswipes than should strictly be necessary.
Granted, I am a pretty fast and accurate two-thumb typer on a qwerty keyboard (AnySoftKeyboard) on my phone, so it might not be for me. Perhaps someone who struggles more with accurately hitting individuals keys would benefit more from this simplified keyboard
> We saw this in our user testing when users tried to place the text cursor accurately: they would miss by a few characters... One small thing: I don't know how it works on Android, but I used to have an N9 and then the Jolla phone and you could tap anywhere in text to place the cursor there. iOS doesn't let you, except confusingly on the very first tap that activates the cursor. For subsequent taps, you can tap exac…
Doing anything on a mobile device is far more painful than people assume. A generation of people are now unfamiliar with using a PC and although it has its problems, the use cases are far easier.
Are these really solved cases?
- multiple tabs in a browser. Why not put tabs/shortcuts on the desktop (errr mobile top?)
- apps in general, why do they exist at all? Most are just slightly better web pages--ok I know it's just to give Apple&Google gatekeeper status and create a way to get paid for the app. but at a cost to users that is more and more annoying. Why have a mobile aware NYTimes.com AND an app? Ditch the apps where not really needed and do a decent one-page web app instead. No need to update, no special gatekeeper for install. If the first issue was solved, it would make mobile devices easier. I have no sympathy for the Mush burdened x-twitter but if they have a gripe with Apple do a decent web page and no gatekeeper is involved.
- &^&%$#$$% passwords. Partly because of apps in general, all your passwords are hidden from your password manager, which is of dubious value on a mobile to begin with. Typing in that auto-generated password created by a password manager is HELL on a mobile device, text being hell as this article points out.
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I miss my Blackberry for typing. The tactile feedback of real keys was so much better than haptic screens.
Yes, a big part of the problem is that so so many words need editing. I updated to ios17 excited about the new transformer model, and it still predicts absolute BS words I’ve never used in my life. I definitely remember typing working better on my iPhone 5 which was 20% smaller so I don’t know what’s gone wrong, but it’s gone really wrong and the fixes also suck.
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Not sure about Android, but on iOS a three finger tap will bring up a contextual menu which allows undo and redo, among other actions.
Or just shaking your iPhone for undo.
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> 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.
> We saw this in our user testing when users tried to place the text cursor accurately: they would miss by a few characters... One small thing: I don't know how it works on Android, but I used to have an N9 and then the Jolla phone and you could tap anywhere in text to place the cursor there. iOS doesn't let you, except confusingly on the very first tap that activates the cursor. For subsequent taps, you can tap exac…
Hold down the space bar and you can move the cursor wherever you want, also on Android. I'm surprised more people don't know about this feature.
Edit: I just discovered now that if you long-press on the text to place the cursor, you get a little magnified view and it does let you place the cursor in the middle of a word. So that's probably the most efficient method currently available.
There was a company, Tactus, who developed a touch screen that had little physical bumps pop out of the screen to represent your keyboard. I’ve always wondered why it never caught on, but I’m sure the technology came with a host compromises. Anyhow, it always seemed like a neat idea. Perhaps it would even allow for a denser button arrangement, giving users their arrow keys back. In other news, I typed this on my phon…
Nothing on mobile is okay. I know everyone loves their smart phones but they really are terrible computers in every way except for portability. Use a computer when you actually want to do things. Smartphones are just for when you're literally unable to use a real computer.
Plenty of battery life, like 6 hours on full bright. Not hard to find ways to plug it in, draws like 20W from my Jackery 160 which is the smallest model yet big enough to charge it a few times. The computer is not much bigger than a big iPad. I just have a little backpack to carry it in, too small to look homeless (tho I am homeless).
Not that my experience will change the opinion of mobile addicts. It's an IYKYK kinda thing (if you know you know).