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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

#541

Post by matricaria »

I feel like this is an Android specific problem. The author says iOS has the same issues but I don’t think this is entirely true.

I can move the cursor by pressing and holding the spacebar or 3D touching anywhere on the keyboard. I can then 3D touch harder in the same movement to select a word and drag to select more. One tap on that selecting brings up the menu. Double tapping selects a word, double tap and drag lets you select more. Here the menu appears instantly.

And the proficient users can even three finger pinch to copy and three finger zoom to paste. Or three finger tap to get a special menu.

——

This one might be specific to me but I can type on mobile nearly as fast as I can on my keyboard (I might just be a slow typer). I also sometimes feel like I’m the only one who highly appreciates autocorrect. It rarely makes mistakes (great, now I get roasted for every typo).

Still, editing on the computer is much better. I use a lot of shortcuts and vi modes where I can. But I don’t think this can be emulated on mobile. Please prove me wrong.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#542

Post by iainmerrick »

scottjenson wrote: post #517
iainmerrick wrote: post #326

Whenever I explain my research at Google into mobile text editing, I’m usually met with blank stares [...long and detailed description of the problems and how their research attempts to solve them...] Unfortunately, shipping something like Eloquent would be challenging. What a strange attitude to take! What’s the point of the research if it’s not aimed at shipping anything? Hopefully this is just a miscommunication a…

Passive agressive? (I'm the author) I did research to find a better solution. I did and discovered a wide range of market forces (e.g. people don't like to change) that will make it difficult to ship. But the last thing I intended was to imply giving up. I said very clearly in the post that my solution, Eloquent, was meant to be one possible solution. There are likely many others! My goal of this post was to clearly…

Aha, I’m glad to hear that! I did misinterpret it after all - thank you for the correction.

I think it was most likely the phrase “shipping something like Eloquent would be challenging”, implying it isn’t going to happen, that gave me that vibe.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#543

Post by kevinlinxc »

matricaria wrote: post #541

I feel like this is an Android specific problem. The author says iOS has the same issues but I don’t think this is entirely true. I can move the cursor by pressing and holding the spacebar or 3D touching anywhere on the keyboard. I can then 3D touch harder in the same movement to select a word and drag to select more. One tap on that selecting brings up the menu. Double tapping selects a word, double tap and drag let…

I can do the spacebar hold + drag on Android with the SwiftKey and Samsung keyboards.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#544

Post by biztos »

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…

I agree it’s awful, but I very much disagree that people are doing it “less” — think of the chat apps. I think more text passes between more humans on iOS/Android than ever before in the history of humanity.

It’s probably a pain, but a familiar one, and you mostly tune it out.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#545

Post by kaon123 »

About 15 years ago, in the era of dumbphones, I read an article in the news paper that in Japan's top 10 novels, 7 of them were written on a mobile phone.

It appeared as if writing and text editing (writing a novel is a lot of editing) for mobile phones was solved for Japanese, and it was a matter of time until it would arrive in Latin scripts.

Still waiting for that future. I wonder if things in Japane regressed too?

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#546

Post by pixelmonkey »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #528
awinter-py wrote: post #143

I typed 55wpm on my blackberry without looking. The fact that you have to constantly look at the screen keyboard and correct it is a huge attention suck and kills my input speed On blackberry, a mistake was one wrong character. On screen keyboards with swipe and autocorrect, a mistake can be inserting 1 or 2 random words Screen keyboard doesn't work in the rain while we're griping: - on an older android device the bu…

I was the same way. I only had a Blackberry for a short while -- a BlackBerry Bold 9000 (got it in 2009). It was my stop-gap between plain cell phones and my first Android phone (a Droid 4, got it in 2013). Then I moved to touch screens with the Samsung Galaxy S4. I'm currently a Pixel 7 user. Nothing ever matched the typing speed of the Blackberry Bold 9000. I was slowed down a bit by the slide-out on my Droid 4, an…

* correction, Droid 2 in 2010 was when I switched away from Blackberry. I then went to the Droid 4 in 2013.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#547

Post by inetknght »

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'm surprised more people don't know about this feature.

If only apps and phones had a manual to describe the functionality available...

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#548

Post by Bombinator »

twic wrote: post #112
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.

I saw Unexpected Keyboard recommended here, turns out it can do this as well among other things. Just tap Shift and drag left/right on spacebar. The main feature though is that you can enter the characters that aren't used commonly by swiping insted of holding on a key or switching to a different key view. You can also get Ctrl and Alt and you can like lock them as well which is useful in Termux.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#549

Post by matricaria »

kevinlinxc wrote: post #543
matricaria wrote: post #541

I feel like this is an Android specific problem. The author says iOS has the same issues but I don’t think this is entirely true. I can move the cursor by pressing and holding the spacebar or 3D touching anywhere on the keyboard. I can then 3D touch harder in the same movement to select a word and drag to select more. One tap on that selecting brings up the menu. Double tapping selects a word, double tap and drag let…

I can do the spacebar hold + drag on Android with the SwiftKey and Samsung keyboards.

I don’t see what problems the authors fixed.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#550

Post by withinboredom »

xp84 wrote: post #539
earthboundkid wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hmm. It worked fabulously for me, and spared me from waiting a beat every. Single. Time. that I want to get what we now know as a long-press menu.

How did you get it to work on bumpy car rides, or while jogging?
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