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Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#561

Post by ghusto »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #324
ghusto wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The G1! (Or HTC Dream, depending on your locale.) It had a keyboard, touchscreen, and a trackball to boot. You weren't kidding about it being small, though—in hindsight the 320 x 480 screen resolution was a bit rough.

> 320 x 480 screen resolution was a bit rough

Meh. I remember thinking "but why?" when the "high res" screen phones came out. It did the job, and I didn't really see the point in a higher resolution back then. Honestly, if I had the choice, I'd go back to that device in a heartbeat, low-res and all.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#562

Post by Micoloth »

ceejayoz wrote: post #54
alexeldeib wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t this still exist? You Force Touch the space bar and get a cursor

It used to be pressure sensitive, which made it much faster to respond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Touch > Haptic Touch is a feature on the iPhone XR (but not the iPhone XS) and later iPhone models replacing 3D Touch. The touchscreen, which no longer has a pressure sensitive layer, distinguishes between a tap and a long-press using a timed delay to activate certain 3D Touch features (only ones for elements t…

3d touch is NOT simply "faster to respond".

The whole point is that, it enables a whole new type of interaction, that is: press to get into cursor mode -> hover over a word -> press again to select it. This is simply impossible without 3d Touch.

The fact that I've see this exchange many times ("But cant you long press to get a cursor?" / "Yes but 3d touch is faster"), even from people defending it, is so fun to me because it means the technology really was misunderstood, and explains a lot about why Apple killed it...

Idk if you can tell, I'm a fan of 3dTouch.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#563

Post by atq2119 »

Nition wrote: post #439
satvikpendem wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's just another example of how mobile UIs are bad due to their form factor: they lack discoverability.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#564

Post by jacobp100 »

yonatan8070 wrote: post #78
jacobp100 wrote: post #16

With the magnifier no longer being offset - does your finger now not completely cover it? Definitely does raise some good points though - it’s so difficult to get to the select all button on iOS when you actually need it

On current Android, you can drag the cursor directly without seeing the teardrop, so your finger is directly over the cursor, requiring the magnifier to see what you are doing With the demo shown here, you always tap on the teardrop, below the magnifier, so the magnification is more to help you see rather than show you what's under your finger

That makes sense. Thanks!

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#566

Post by edanm »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #458

People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile. I actively avoid having to type anything on mobile. If I have my laptop open, I'll use whatsapp or signal on that. I often wait replying on either of those until I get my laptop. Just way less frustrating to not have to correct >25% of my key presses. If I have to use the mobile keyboard, I'll often just send a message with typos, no capitals, and skip…

What I don't understand is why speech-to-text is so bad (on the iPhone at least), and it's related to this editing issue. Text to speech will never be a perfect replacement for other forms of text entry, because you're limited in when you can use it. But it's so close to being good.

The main issues are so easy to solve, they're just silly UI issues around editing. You can enter text verbally, it works surprisingly well at understanding what you're saying. But... you can't delete the words you just said if it was wrong. It's literally the first thing you run into - you're transcribing, it gets one word wrong, boom, you're stuck in normal tap-editing-land again. Trying to enter messages while driving? Good luck, unless you can transcribe the message perfectly on the first go, you have to use your hands.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#567

Post by geonnave »

> Selecting text

> (...) there is a completely new gesture, double tap. Wait, there is actually a third gesture long press, which also works.

TIL about the double tap -- always used the long press to select text. It is interesting that the author refers to long press as an alternative. Do most people use double tap for that?

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#568

Post by marzipanWhale »

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.

I know about this in Swiftkey, but since I'm using more than one language, this action is used to change languages instead. It's unfortunate because moving the cursor is very useful.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#569

Post by boxed »

earthboundkid wrote: post #498
n8cpdx wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D touch solves some problems for touch interfaces, but sadly Apple killed it (everywhere except Magic Trackpad, for some reason).

It never worked though. It would just pop in randomly at unexpected times. It sucked.

I LOVED it. I could move the text cursor with precision AND do text selection with the same precision and FAST. In some situations faster and with more precision than I would have been able to do with a mouse even.

Such a great loss that they dumped it.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#570

Post by FearNotDaniel »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #458

People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile. I actively avoid having to type anything on mobile. If I have my laptop open, I'll use whatsapp or signal on that. I often wait replying on either of those until I get my laptop. Just way less frustrating to not have to correct >25% of my key presses. If I have to use the mobile keyboard, I'll often just send a message with typos, no capitals, and skip…

Oh man, I long for the days of phones with T9 input and hardware keys you could physically feel. It was so easy to walk down the street and tap out a text message with results much more predictable than "predictive" text, only occasionally having to glance down at the phone to check what you wrote. You could do it all with one hand, it was very unlikely you would drop the phone in the process and even if you did, it would just bounce instead of smashing the whole precious touch screen.

Yeah, these days I only type on the touch screen if it's absolutely unavoidable - if I can't get to my laptop, but can still sit down, I much prefer a little flip out Bluetooth keyboard with the phone on a stand.

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