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> Kocienda’s first prototype was a ‘blob’ keyboard... [snip]… It was terrible No it wasn’t! Or rather, the idea wasn’t. CooTek made the TouchPal keyboard for W
by girvo 4y ago
> Kocienda’s first prototype was a ‘blob’ keyboard... [snip]… It was terrible
No it wasn’t! Or rather, the idea wasn’t. CooTek made the TouchPal keyboard for Windows Mobile with the same idea (ish), slide left for Q slide right for W slide down for a symbol (and slide left and up for a capital letter)
https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-12-cooteks-touchpal-brings-iphone-like-touchpad-to-windows-mobile.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS5hdS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAG3swDTowMOuXI2g-BRCytYJeMV7Gf8ZMzS_tLpHrccUJ0RUcQeBaXKtcu59zxd1AL2uqvXGU0iWQsqms8_3AAD563Q6ezta3CPErVCNuMWvJEWgUc-jgr1QhrhDluL2D6CdXRpWlIfJ6VecK4hhdMa63KVTrMCiKkpq_UyKGeKu https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-12-cooteks-touchpal-brings-...
It was fantastic!
Edit: and this was on crappy 2.8” resistive touch screens too
- lofaszvanitt 4y agoI always wondered why interfaces are terrible, so so terrible and why frontend designers are underpaid. And somehow good innovations like this falls to the bottom every time.
- jhanschoo 4y agoAlso, the dominant input method for phones used in Japan uses this concept with the old-school numpad layout (substituting repeated presses with flicks)
- girvo 4y agoYeah it’s the flick that made it work (and fast), so I’m not surprised others have found similar solutions. I wish this keyboard existed on modern phones today. TouchPal does but it’s just some emoji keyboard now as far as I can tell. A modern dictionary/autocorrect with the “T+” style key level swipe would be amazing. I kind of want to try and build it now!