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Nyancat on the touchbar

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Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#141

Post by oliv__ »

awalGarg wrote: post #48

So... just about the touchbar and not this particular project: The touchbar is on the keyboard, almost perpendicularly (and many times at an obtuse angle) opposite to the screen. So I have to move my head up and down all the time. This is not an issue with the regular keyboard because it has physical buttons which don't change their meaning, so I have memorized the layout and I can use my muscle memory. To avoid movi…

    >and while they were at that, they could make the entire screen a touch-screen instead of just a small bar. Just imagine... a touchscreen laptop. Now that would be amazing, right?
Ummm..Gravity begs to differ. Adding touch to your laptop's screen is the worse possible thing you could do to it. It just makes zero sense ergonomically: try holding your hand up to your screen for 30s and tell me how that goes.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#142

Post by 72deluxe »

monkmartinez wrote: post #27
hanief wrote: post #22

Apple's HIG[1] on the Touch bar is actually great. You can sort of understand the reason Apple put it on the Macbook. You can at least envision two interesting things: - Touch UI for scrubbing/scrolling contents faster. - Dynamic shortcuts for most used commands that previously only accessible by using the keyboard. [1] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...

You mean like the ginormous trackpad directly beneath the keyboard? Wouldn't it be cool if they built scrubbing/scrolling right into that? Also, dynamic shortcuts! Like the kind you get with BetterTouchTool[1]? [1] https://www.boastr.net/

I thought this whilst watching Apple's event. All of the functionality they demonstrated on the TouchBar basically duplicated functionality already in each app via a shortcut. Eg. safari - you can open a new tab! (cmd-T). There's an address bar! (cmd-L). You can go to each tab! (cmd-number, eg. cmd-1).

And all of the gestures were what the excellent touchpad was built to do anyway. Scrubbing? Gestures will do that.

It's like they put two giant touch interfaces on the device so that they could fight for attention, and the poor developer has to write two handlers for the two event sources, whilst it does the same thing at the end of it.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#143

Post by grzm »

cel1ne wrote: post #109
grzm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reference to the HIG. To be clear, I was using Undo/⌘-Z as an example of how I think about keyboard shortcuts as command rather than the specific keystrokes. I wasn't suggesting that Undo should have a place on the Touch Bar. Besides providing the reference, was there something you intended to convey with the quote?

> Besides providing the reference, was there something you intended to convey with the quote? Only that Touchbar seems intended to be very dynamic and have constantly changing mappings. So there will not be much consistency across apps, especially since common shortcuts shouldn't be put there. This is very different from a keyboard.

Gotcha. I agree that there will not be much consistency across apps, and I think that's the beauty of it. And yeah, what's available on the Touch Bar can potentially be very context dependent.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#144

Post by grzm »

blktiger wrote: post #131
vacri wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the 'physical feedback' component. People don't need to look at labels on keys, because they can feel the keys. A smooth bit of touchscreen has no 'landmarks' to orient yourself with. > I completely agree that it is a new input device. Just not completely new Yep. Lenovo introduced one a couple of years ago in their X1 Carbons. It was hated so much that it was stripped out of the next gen. Ultimately,…

In theory, you wouldn't need landmarks because the keys below are the landmarks. Unfortunately, the dynamic actions don't seem to line up with the number keys so I don't know how that will work in practice.

The size and location of the dynamic actions/custom keys isn't fixed (unlike, say physical keys each with its own display), so I'm not sure if alignment makes sense in this case. Or am I misinterpreting what you mean?

That said, I think they can have the same "fixed" location for a given use case. Just like you can remap a keyboard so Caps Lock can mean Control, once you do that, Control will be at the same location (the Caps Lock key). Once you're used to that location, things work fine.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#146

Post by Razengan »

awalGarg wrote: post #48

So... just about the touchbar and not this particular project: The touchbar is on the keyboard, almost perpendicularly (and many times at an obtuse angle) opposite to the screen. So I have to move my head up and down all the time. This is not an issue with the regular keyboard because it has physical buttons which don't change their meaning, so I have memorized the layout and I can use my muscle memory. To avoid movi…

> a touchscreen laptop. Now that would be amazing, right?

No, not without a made-for-touch-from-the-ground-up OS, which neither macOS nor Windows is.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#147

Post by bcoates »

idlewords wrote: post #57
awalGarg wrote: post #48

So... just about the touchbar and not this particular project: The touchbar is on the keyboard, almost perpendicularly (and many times at an obtuse angle) opposite to the screen. So I have to move my head up and down all the time. This is not an issue with the regular keyboard because it has physical buttons which don't change their meaning, so I have memorized the layout and I can use my muscle memory. To avoid movi…

It should be legal to murder someone for touching your laptop screen. I can't think of a bigger co-worker foul than that. Making a screen that people are supposed to touch would be an unthinkable crime.

It works the opposite way; by having a touch laptop touchers have this hilarious public shaming moment when the UI recoils away from them pawing at my display.

What's particularly weird are involuntary touchers who are physically incapable of gesturing at something on the laptop screen without touching it. Watching them lock up as they attempt to control their arms while talking is amazing, it's like they're learning to ride a bike for the first time.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#148

Post by S4M »

stephenc_c_ wrote: post #124
madaxe_again wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it'll be done. Here I am with an iPhone 6s, and on the average site I see less content than I did on WAP - many sites are 80/20 or worse on mobile. How long until hardware manufacturers include dedicated advertising displays in exchange for cheaper up-front hardware?

Amazon Kindle with ads on the lock screen is already offered as cheaper hardware than without ads.

Why would you need the wifi turned on on a Kindle? One should just buy that version and turn off the wifi, thus getting rid of the ads.

Re: Nyancat on the touchbar

#149

Post by chris_wot »

antishatter wrote: post #39
garrettgrimsley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charitable interpretation of their comment is not that Nyan Cat is useful, but that this is a creative use for a new medium/input device, and that we will likely see more uses developed for it that we had not previously envisioned.

That is what I was thinking about.

I can only imagine the opportunities that arise for Cialis and Viagra "marketers".
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