Tablet Interface Discussion
Tablet interfaces will slowly begin to acquire a more complete gestural shorthand and cross-app vocabulary that will allow us to become more effective users of this technology. Things like Sywpe are part of this, but I think there are more.
This seems to be happening. A few idioms that are either well-established or widely emerging:
- Pinch to zoom (& its complement) -- probably the most universal.
- Pull down to refresh (not yet widely seen on Android, but ubiquitous on iOS and migrating to cross-platform Android apps)
- Swipe right to (multi) select. Used in K-9 mail and perhaps elsewhere; however, I've seen other apps use swipe right to mark read (e.g.)
- And of course, vertical swipe on the left side for brightness, as you mention. I've seen this not just in FBReaderJ, but also in Gentle Alarm, so it seems to have some legs.
I've tried out the Markdown note taker you recommended, Epistle, but it lacks what seems to me like the really important feature of Paragraft, which is gestural editing: dragging sections of text around, and promoting and demoting headlines.
-- jfm
Pinch to zoom, is the obvious example, but I don't think a single gesture standardized through shear will power (and advertising) on Apple's part. I've seen a little bit of the pull down to refresh on android, and I think that makes sense, but standardization takes time. I don't use K-9, but I really like the idea of something that isn't long-tap to get a virtual "right click," but I think this is the kind of thing that we'll have to stumble toward for a while.
The gestural editing sounds great, and I eagerly await it's emergence. Having said that, I think it would be really great if there were tools to edit on the small scale... move words around, buffer phrases, and so forth as well as larger structural editing, which is a nice trick, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that would constitute a large portion of my use pattern. I might be wrong.
-- tychoish
Don't forget the basics:
- Tap to select/activate.
- Swipe to scroll.
- Press (long tap) for alternate select/menu.
I'm surprised I haven't seen double-tap. It may be complicated to detect for technical reasons.
And the example in the post regarding brightness adjustment in FBReader:
- Varying gesture meaning based on screen location.
Obviously another function could be attached to a vertical swipe at the right edge of the screen as needed in FBReader.
Something that needs to be recognized when considering touch gestures in general is that there are sub-contexts that will behave differently. For example FBReader and a web browser are in mostly the same context of displaying a "page" of information, mustard and beyondpod are in another context of manipulating a list of items. Some of the gesture commands can be used in either context, and some may be better suited for one or the other. A really complex UI might have various elements that use different idioms for interacting with those idioms, and perhaps a meta-idiom for interacting with them collectively.
-- kevingranade
Perhaps, though I think you still need some sort of idiomatic consistency across all contexts. Kindle and FBReader can't have different gestures for changing screen brightness, the OS can't use long tap while half the apps have right-swipes.
I think double taps are harder to be consistent about, and really, I think it's possible to have consistent, even rich, vocabulary of gestures and idioms without compounding the complexity of the interface.
-- tychoish
Kevin's point about same gesture, different contexts is a good one. In many reader-type apps, swipe left/right is next/prev page, and I get annoyed when an otherwise good app doesn't implement it (I'm looking at you, jjcomics viewer). But I also kind of expect swiping left/right on a list item to unselect/select. That still leaves room for yet another behaviour in editing-type views.
Double tap is a little all over the place in Android. In a lot of places, it means zoom-to-fit, and it used to be used mainly to mean "show the on-screen zoom buttons".
-- jfm