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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

#111

Post by enragedcacti »

I wonder if there is a way to unboil the frog and introduce features in a backwards compatible way.

One way could be to implement some or all of this along with changes to Android's "spacebar drag" cursor movement mode. Currently it can only move left and right unlike Apple's touchpad approach. Maybe I'm missing something but it feels like you could implement a lot of the features through a keyboard touchpad while keeping regular editing clunky but familiar. By expanding on an otherwise very limited feature it might be welcomed by power users without depriving anyone of their existing workflow and muscle memory.

One problem that comes to mind is that people are used to selecting from beginning to end and triggering the interaction from the bottom of the screen gives very little area go down while keeping 1:1 movement of the cursor. It could be solved by having the cursor hit the "roof" until the users finger matches the translated position then switch to a scrolling mode at the edges.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#112

Post by twic »

skyboo wrote: post #72

Ever tried editing the URL in the URL bar in iOS Safari? It's even worse than just editing as it involves horizontal scrolling in a tiny box. Why don't they expand the URL address bar to be a large text box when selected is beyond me.

My peeve with the URL bar in Firefox on Android is that there's no way to partially select. A tap places the cursor, and a long press selects the whole URL. There's no way to select the domain, or a value from a query string, etc. Simply supporting the normal text editing gestures here would allow this, but the developers have gone out of their way to make it impossible.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#113

Post by bruh2 »

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 so cool

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#115

Post by syndicatedjelly »

This problem was solved 20 years ago when devices like the Blackberry popularized the miniature physical keyboard. Those interfaces were much easier to type on than these crap touch keyboards we've been given. Phone manufacturers told us these are better, but in reality it's just cheaper to make a software keyboard interface than it is to make a bunch of tiny buttons.

The original IPhone "un-solved" the problem and then every phone company copied Apple because that's what they all do. And here we all are complaining about this like it's 2010 all over again.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#116

Post by screye »

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

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

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#117

Post by ceejayoz »

Schiendelman wrote: post #109
ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As of this week, they made it fast again.

It can never be as fast as with the real pressure sensors; it still has to be able to determine between a tap and a hold.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#118

Post by Pxtl »

This wouldn't even be hard to fix. Give me a modal button on the keyboard for cursor mode, like how we've the numerical keyboard mode. When pressed, shows arrow-keys, ctrl-arrow-keys, pageup/pagedown, home/end, a delete (not backspace) key, a shift-toggle, and a button that shows the longpress copy/paste menu.

There. No need to reinvent the wheel, just do the same stuff desktop does but with the actual keys desktop has.

The spacebar-drag trick is cool, but it's not enough.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#119

Post by dredmorbius »

Grimburger wrote: post #106
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…

> business customers, and particularly those in management, so it’s a small market Is it really that small? It sounds like a massive market to me.

It's substantial both in size (total people) and in impact and economic impact.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#120

Post by rjh29 »

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...

Samsung keyboard has a hard to find "Text editing" tab with arrows.
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