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Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#431

Post by satvikpendem »

kagevf wrote: post #429
satvikpendem wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm surprised more people don't know about this feature. I have an iPad without that feature, and it's maybe 5 years old? I think it's a newer feature. Also, in the past you could tap and hold on text and it would magnify the view around where you were tapping, but that feature was dropped at some point.

> Also, in the past you could tap and hold on text and it would magnify the view around where you were tapping, but that feature was dropped at some point.

This is back in iOS/iPadOS 15.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#432

Post by bombela »

dan-robertson wrote: post #309
failuser wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think internet explorer did this selection thing at one point years ago. I don’t recall chrome doing it. Firefox used to have a ‘caret browsing’ feature but people didn’t use it so it was eventually removed. So I don’t really think it’s a missed opportunity so much as a feature people didn’t sufficiently love.

Press F6 in firefox for caret browsing.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#433

Post by justsomehnguy »

dan-robertson wrote: post #300
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 don’t understand why a tablet requires lugging a briefcase around? Just carry it raw between meetings and put it down if you need two hands for something. If you already carry papers around, get a folding keyboard case. Maybe we’re just thinking of different working environments and I’m imagining an office whereas you’re imagining a job site or something. The actual reason that a tablet isn’t the answer is that the…

I used Acer Iconia W4-821, a 8" tablet on Win8 for some time.

It was great for my use case, to tinker with PwSh/CentOS VM while commuting or ocassional meetings as a notetaking app. Sadly it wasn't the device even I (a big, tall guy with big hands) could haul around with ease. It really wanted some sort of case/minibag or whatever. It was perfectly fine with a backpack or a messenger bag, but how often do you see people with a messenger bag in the office or meeting?

EDIT: the best case for it would had been some sort of a pistol holster or a leg tacticool holster... even I would mutter 'Nerd' on sight of this.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#434

Post by davidinosauro »

somethingsidont wrote: post #191
Pxtl wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Wow, indeed it's still there in GBoard!

Thank you for sharing, I could never have found it before knowing it exists.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#435

Post by bombela »

satvikpendem wrote: post #403
Nition wrote: post #398

> 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.

On Android it often stutters, the cursor jumps across the characters at random speeds, sometimes it teleports sometimes it moves one character at a time smoothly. When you lift your thumb it often registers as an extra motion in an unexpected direction. And this is on a flagship Google phone. And it only allows left-right motion, not up-down.

So even if you know about it. It's more an exercise in frustration than anything.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#436

Post by satvikpendem »

Nition wrote: post #408
satvikpendem wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know about it, but that's a second action (moving it after tapping), or a more difficult one (moving it all the way there via the spacebar touchpad). Most of the time if a tap would put the cursor where I tapped, it'd already be there. 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 t…

> 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.

I chuckled a little at this as this is one of the oldest features of iOS, probably even from back in the pre-iPhone 4 days.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#437

Post by satvikpendem »

bombela wrote: post #435
satvikpendem wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On Android it often stutters, the cursor jumps across the characters at random speeds, sometimes it teleports sometimes it moves one character at a time smoothly. When you lift your thumb it often registers as an extra motion in an unexpected direction. And this is on a flagship Google phone. And it only allows left-right motion, not up-down. So even if you know about it. It's more an exercise in frustration than any…

That's not been my experience on Android, I can go left right up down just fine. I've tried this on SwiftKey keyboard however but I'm sure it's the same in GBoard.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#438

Post by awesomeMilou »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #257

This is absolutely a problem, but I'm not convinced the author has found a solution. I'd have to try it to know for sure, but from the description, it still sounds finicky. I believe touch screens are fundamentally a bad interface for productivity. Consider the range of actions provided by a mouse: You can hover without clicking, you can left click, or you can right click, all with nearly pixel-level precision. Add i…

> This is a hardware problem, not a software problem.

This is a UI validation problem.

Apple proved in 2007 that you can port tons of applications over to the smartphone. They had to invent their own language for interactions though ("pinch-to-zoom" etc) and it took them two weeks of focus with all their software development staff involved to fix keyboards on capacitive touch.

It may not be possible to reach the same kind of flexibility on a mobile device when it comes to rich text editing, but it's certainly possible to port over a lot of functionality from the desktop.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#439

Post by Nition »

satvikpendem wrote: post #436
Nition wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about it, but that's a second action (moving it after tapping), or a more difficult one (moving it all the way there via the spacebar touchpad). Most of the time if a tap would put the cursor where I tapped, it'd already be there. 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 t…

> 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. I chuckled a little at this as this is one of the oldest features of iOS, probably even from back in the pre-iPhone 4 days.

:(

In my defence apparently it was removed in iOS 13 and only recently came back.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#440

Post by verve_rat »

satvikpendem wrote: post #403
Nition wrote: post #398

> 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.

How is anyone supposed to discover that?
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