3 ms·

Major issue, velocity of the scroll seems to be consistent ignoring how fast you scroll/rotate the click wheel - I love the idea but it doesn't truly represent

Major issue, velocity of the scroll seems to be consistent ignoring how fast you scroll/rotate the click wheel - I love the idea but it doesn't truly represent the joy of using the original thing. On the iPod you could scroll incredibly fast but with incredible control, stopping at just the right place. The UI would give you a little scroll bar indicating your position and I think some versions gave you an alphabet to see where you were in the very long list. So, I like the idea and the homage to a beautiful and iconic piece of UX design (possibly the best bit of UX design ever), but the implementation is lacking the finesse of the real thing. Oh and that beautiful little "click" sound you would get through your earbuds, speeding up as you scrolled faster, really needs to be represented. I can hear it now, it's the sound of a iPod click wheel. (Also the demo really should show how you can use the buttons, there seems be be support in the library, they seem to do nothing)

admax88qqq 5y ago
Maybe my thumbs are too big but I was never able to stop "at just the right place" Invariably I was unable to remove my finger from the wheel without it scrolling a few more items.
- samwillis 5y ago
  Ah, but you got pretty dam close didn't you? And with a little "jig" back were on the one you want. Even with tens or hundreds of thousands of songs you could get to the right one in seconds.
  - admax88qqq 5y ago
    That little jig would often overshoot, again and again lol. But yes the switching from scrolling by item to scrolling by first letter was pretty clever, but I found making small adjustments to go forward only one item, took many tries. Maybe I was holding it wrong, but I don't think that the scroll wheel was as flawless as we're making it out to be.
jarrenae 5y ago
Agreed, I'd like to get the velocity working correctly. I think about how natural it feels on https://tannerv.com/ipod/ https://tannerv.com/ipod/ we still have a bit to go to get to that point. And I appreciate the mention about the button support, we're going to add a few more pages to show that functionality, as well as adding in the original click sound as you scroll. I think it could be something really fun if we get the UX right.
- kronks 5y ago
- samwillis 5y ago
  Do continue! I love these little projects, and it's a great start. Could I ask a question, I haven't done much React (much more Vue.js and loads of jQuery/plain js in the past). Why have you decided to use both React and jQuery in the implementation? Did React lack support for something you needed that jQuery made easer without just going for plain JS?
  - jarrenae 5y ago
    We definitely will. Great question - honestly we were moving really quickly for this one and got it out the door as a proof of concept. In a future version we'll move over to react completely.
    - spankalee 5y ago
      If you made it a web component it could work in Vue, Svelte, Angular, etc. too.
LASR 5y ago
One thing that's always blown me away about the TouchWheel iPod and the original iPhone is the mountain of design/engineering work beneath a very simple user experience. It's what competitors found hard to replicate when these products were first launched. Nobody ever talks about the kinetic scrolling behavior as a marketable feature on paper. But for the end customer, it builds the image of "it just works" very convincingly.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Scroll acceleration feeling unnatural in Android was the top reason I’ve never considered switching from iOS. Granted I don’t know if/how much it’s improved, but it was such a jarring experience I’ve never bothered to find out.
albertzeyer 5y ago
I never had an iPod, but I wonder, did it use some acceleration scheme? I.e. your physical scroll speed was not just linearly mapped to the virtual scroll speed but some quadratic or even exponential scheme? Because I know that they do the same on OSX for scrolling, i.e. scrolling has an acceleration scheme, which I very much enjoy, and always miss when I'm on other operating systems. For that reason, I implemented such scroll acceleration in user space. Some further details and references are in the README. https://github.com/albertz/mouse-scroll-wheel-acceleration-userspace https://github.com/albertz/mouse-scroll-wheel-acceleration-u...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

admax88qqq 5y ago

Maybe my thumbs are too big but I was never able to stop "at just the right place" Invariably I was unable to remove my finger from the wheel without it scrolling a few more items.

samwillis 5y ago
Ah, but you got pretty dam close didn't you? And with a little "jig" back were on the one you want. Even with tens or hundreds of thousands of songs you could get to the right one in seconds.
- admax88qqq 5y ago
  That little jig would often overshoot, again and again lol. But yes the switching from scrolling by item to scrolling by first letter was pretty clever, but I found making small adjustments to go forward only one item, took many tries. Maybe I was holding it wrong, but I don't think that the scroll wheel was as flawless as we're making it out to be.

jarrenae 5y ago

Agreed, I'd like to get the velocity working correctly. I think about how natural it feels on https://tannerv.com/ipod/ https://tannerv.com/ipod/ we still have a bit to go to get to that point. And I appreciate the mention about the button support, we're going to add a few more pages to show that functionality, as well as adding in the original click sound as you scroll. I think it could be something really fun if we get the UX right.

kronks 5y ago
samwillis 5y ago
Do continue! I love these little projects, and it's a great start. Could I ask a question, I haven't done much React (much more Vue.js and loads of jQuery/plain js in the past). Why have you decided to use both React and jQuery in the implementation? Did React lack support for something you needed that jQuery made easer without just going for plain JS?
- jarrenae 5y ago
  We definitely will. Great question - honestly we were moving really quickly for this one and got it out the door as a proof of concept. In a future version we'll move over to react completely.
  - spankalee 5y ago
    If you made it a web component it could work in Vue, Svelte, Angular, etc. too.

LASR 5y ago

One thing that's always blown me away about the TouchWheel iPod and the original iPhone is the mountain of design/engineering work beneath a very simple user experience. It's what competitors found hard to replicate when these products were first launched. Nobody ever talks about the kinetic scrolling behavior as a marketable feature on paper. But for the end customer, it builds the image of "it just works" very convincingly.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
Scroll acceleration feeling unnatural in Android was the top reason I’ve never considered switching from iOS. Granted I don’t know if/how much it’s improved, but it was such a jarring experience I’ve never bothered to find out.

albertzeyer 5y ago

I never had an iPod, but I wonder, did it use some acceleration scheme? I.e. your physical scroll speed was not just linearly mapped to the virtual scroll speed but some quadratic or even exponential scheme? Because I know that they do the same on OSX for scrolling, i.e. scrolling has an acceleration scheme, which I very much enjoy, and always miss when I'm on other operating systems. For that reason, I implemented such scroll acceleration in user space. Some further details and references are in the README. https://github.com/albertz/mouse-scroll-wheel-acceleration-userspace https://github.com/albertz/mouse-scroll-wheel-acceleration-u...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]