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How do you suggest they begin to address it? I have reached the point where I believe it is a fundamental flaw in _all_ touch-screen interfaces. I would certai

by rocmcd 2y ago

How do you suggest they begin to address it? I have reached the point where I believe it is a fundamental flaw in _all_ touch-screen interfaces. I would certainly love to see better alternatives.

gcanyon 2y ago
That's a fair question to ask. The cheeky answer is that it's not my problem to solve, it's theirs. But I am a product manager, so I'll take a shot. None of these replace what we have. Some of them conflict. 1. Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it, and make it immediately position the cursor. 2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor. Spread them and the selection widens. 3. Allow double-tap to select a word. 4. Double-tap and drag to select word by word. 5. Pinch on a selection to cut. 6. Deep press on a selection and drag-swipe in different directions to copy, cut, and formatting options. 7. Deep press on an unselected spot and drag-swipe in different directions to paste and other options.
- samldev 2y ago
  FWIW I use 3 and 4 on iOS all the time for fixing typos etc
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    Ha, yes, I knew that 3 was a thing (4 was new to me) and just forgot it as I was stream-of-conscious-ing my way through that list.
- maccard 2y ago
  I like your thinking, a few thoughts (I'm on iOS) > Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it. Apple does this with many gestures already. Double tap to select a word for example. I think bringing back deep press would be a great move, and agree with everything else you've said here on that. > 2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor. Long press will put the cursor where your finger is, and will give you a magnified bubble for finer selection (did you really mean to select before or after the hyphen?) > Spread them and the selection widen ... Pinch on a selection to... these pinch style gestures would be unusable on a 5" screen I think, and incredibly fiddly even on a 10.1" iPad screen. I work in games, and even though our controllers can handle multiple inputs, we generally tend to avoid chorded inputs because the average person's dexterity is not as good as you would think.
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    Yeah, the pinch stuff probably wouldn't work well on a phone. I don't know for certain that the problem is even solvable. But it could be made better, and it's clear Apple either doesn't care to try, or thinks that the tools are so frozen in peoples' minds that innovation wouldn't be accepted.
    - maccard 2y ago
      Yeah I think you're right. I think deep press was a very intuitive feeling gesture that should come back and would give some freedom in this space.
antipurist 2y ago
You might find Eloquent[1] (and a related HN discussion[2]) interesting. [1] https://www.32al.io/projects/eloquent/ https://www.32al.io/projects/eloquent/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37630804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37630804
makeitdouble 2y ago
A full on-screen keyboard that can be summoned anywhere helps a lot. On a 13" device there's no excuse to not have Ctrl, Cmd, Alt, Tab and Shift keys, complete with escape and the arrow keys. It can be reduced in portrait mode, but should be there in landscape at least. That gives intuitive and ultra precise navigation, standard copy/paste, word by word navigation, fast and precise selection etc. And it's also super helpful for selection even outside of text fields.

by rocmcd 2y ago

How do you suggest they begin to address it? I have reached the point where I believe it is a fundamental flaw in _all_ touch-screen interfaces. I would certainly love to see better alternatives.

gcanyon 2y ago

That's a fair question to ask. The cheeky answer is that it's not my problem to solve, it's theirs. But I am a product manager, so I'll take a shot. None of these replace what we have. Some of them conflict. 1. Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it, and make it immediately position the cursor. 2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor. Spread them and the selection widens. 3. Allow double-tap to select a word. 4. Double-tap and drag to select word by word. 5. Pinch on a selection to cut. 6. Deep press on a selection and drag-swipe in different directions to copy, cut, and formatting options. 7. Deep press on an unselected spot and drag-swipe in different directions to paste and other options.

samldev 2y ago
FWIW I use 3 and 4 on iOS all the time for fixing typos etc
- gcanyon 2y ago
  Ha, yes, I knew that 3 was a thing (4 was new to me) and just forgot it as I was stream-of-conscious-ing my way through that list.
maccard 2y ago
I like your thinking, a few thoughts (I'm on iOS) > Bring back deep presses, which isn't very discoverable, but it's memorable once you get used to it. Apple does this with many gestures already. Double tap to select a word for example. I think bringing back deep press would be a great move, and agree with everything else you've said here on that. > 2. Allow touching with two fingers. If they're next to each other, immediately position the cursor. Long press will put the cursor where your finger is, and will give you a magnified bubble for finer selection (did you really mean to select before or after the hyphen?) > Spread them and the selection widen ... Pinch on a selection to... these pinch style gestures would be unusable on a 5" screen I think, and incredibly fiddly even on a 10.1" iPad screen. I work in games, and even though our controllers can handle multiple inputs, we generally tend to avoid chorded inputs because the average person's dexterity is not as good as you would think.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  Yeah, the pinch stuff probably wouldn't work well on a phone. I don't know for certain that the problem is even solvable. But it could be made better, and it's clear Apple either doesn't care to try, or thinks that the tools are so frozen in peoples' minds that innovation wouldn't be accepted.
  - maccard 2y ago
    Yeah I think you're right. I think deep press was a very intuitive feeling gesture that should come back and would give some freedom in this space.

antipurist 2y ago

You might find Eloquent[1] (and a related HN discussion[2]) interesting. [1] https://www.32al.io/projects/eloquent/ https://www.32al.io/projects/eloquent/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37630804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37630804

makeitdouble 2y ago

A full on-screen keyboard that can be summoned anywhere helps a lot. On a 13" device there's no excuse to not have Ctrl, Cmd, Alt, Tab and Shift keys, complete with escape and the arrow keys. It can be reduced in portrait mode, but should be there in landscape at least. That gives intuitive and ultra precise navigation, standard copy/paste, word by word navigation, fast and precise selection etc. And it's also super helpful for selection even outside of text fields.