Poll: Most important screens to finger optimize

Which screens in Pleco on WM would you most like to see optimized for finger touchscreen use?

  • Main dictionary: larger toolbar buttons, larger input field, larger spacing between list items, larg

    Votes: 5 26.3%
  • Popup definition: larger buttons, occupy full screen (or most of it)

    Votes: 4 21.1%
  • Text input: larger buttons in the separate handwriting / keyboard screens, bigger characters in the

    Votes: 3 15.8%
  • Character Info: larger compounds buttons / list items, more space-filling stroke order layout (butto

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Document reader: bigger buttons, finger-scrolling gesture support

    Votes: 12 63.2%
  • Flashcard sessions: much bigger buttons, fullscreen interface for free-answer handwriting

    Votes: 7 36.8%
  • Flashcard configuration screens: larger vertical spacing between options

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Preferences configuration screens: larger vertical spacing between options

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    19

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We're hoping to make at least a couple of screens a bit more finger-friendly in the 2.0.5 update on Windows Mobile (though the biggest new feature in it will probably be the long-awaited full-text search for user dictionaries, now that we've left Palm OS behind), but since doing this in every screen would require more of an investment of time than we can afford to make at this point, we'd like to pick just a couple of heavily-used screens and make the optimizations there.

Hence this poll - you're also welcome to elaborate on your choices / name specific things that you'd like to see changed beyond those mentioned in the poll in this thread if you like.
 

mfcb

状元
as we can choose only 2 items, i selected the main-window (although not all points within this item are required to be improved, imho) and the reader UI. flashcards i use since 2 years without any problems (but that might be different for people with different test settings).

the single biggest problem is the reader, in fact many WM devices nowadays don't have a d-pad, so moving within the document is a real pain in the a**. even the d-pad on my device is "crippled", many times i "press" the wrong buttons, mostly it results in the "hangup" key, which in my case just closes pleco... so using the reader without defining some alternative navigation "buttons" or "gestures" (with the appropriate tools) is no fun.

the other one is the main window, i really could life with a lot less buttons, if they just were bigger... i could configure the toolbars, but i cant just remove the upper toolbar and increase the lower one with the input field in height (3 or 4 buttons on the lower bar would be enough for me)
 

sfrrr

状元
I agree with mfcb about the Reader. Otherwise, I don't really care about finger-friendly. I'm old-school--I love using the stylus and rarely need to do anything with my fingers except, perhaps to push an onscreen button with a left hand fingernail while I pet my cat with my right hand. It seems logical to me, though, that the input handwriting box should be a lot bigger if you're trying to write characters with your finger (unless, like me, you have long fingernails or, again, like me, you use the full screen input option).
 
I haven't actually gotten to play with the reader much yet, though it's my todo list this summer. But that's the only thing I voted for, largely because, as noted, most new WinMo devices don't have dpads.

Finger-friendly is trendy, but perhaps with the exception of HD2 users, not as expected among winmo users. What's more, I think winmo's reputation for finger-unfriendliness is oversold. The only time I bring out my stylus is to write (and even then, not every time). I have no trouble selecting buttons and menus designed for stylii years before anyone expected finger driven mobile UI. I rarely needed my stylus on my Palm TX either. And I'm a fairly hefty guy. I don't need two tickets to fly, but I do like my cheeseburgers.

What I might suggest rather than trying to finger-friendlize WinMo's version, you combine your UI efforts for desktop with WinMo efforts, and just allow the sort of user customization you'd probably already planned for desktop. Let a user toss some buttons and scale the others larger if that is important to them. I don't know if that would be easier than what you're planning, but if it is, then it makes sense to me to kill two birds with one stone.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interesting, I really wasn't expecting the document reader to be the top item on this list... we've got some nicer, newer document reading code from iPhone that we were planning to port over for the desktop version anyway, so the easiest bet might simply be to put it on WM too; that newer code should allow for much less awkward page scrolling, among other things, though at the cost of slightly slower load times for large files. Have you seen the reader interface from iPhone? (8th item down on the screenshots page, or the second half of the demo video) Would something like that fit the bill in terms of replacing the D-pad?

mfcb - so you're happy with the main dictionary screen aside from the difficulty of pressing buttons? We might actually be able to size those dynamically - let you set an arbitrary height for each row, say, the icons would just look a bit smaller within rows.

sui.generis - long-term, the efforts on WM and desktop Windows UIs aren't necessarily that similar, though; with desktop I'm envisioning something more like a) a web browser or b) the Office ribbon (now available for use by any application); the ribbon could be especially attractive for things like flashcard management. Neither of those is a sensible model on WM, though.
 

mfcb

状元
mikelove said:
Interesting, I really wasn't expecting the document reader to be the top item on this list...
...
Would something like that fit the bill in terms of replacing the D-pad?

mfcb - so you're happy with the main dictionary screen aside from the difficulty of pressing buttons? We might actually be able to size those dynamically - let you set an arbitrary height for each row, say, the icons would just look a bit smaller within rows.
i guess for most devices there is enough screen-real-estate to provide for an additional row of navigation buttons :D even i have the d-pad i would prefer not to have to use it, as its difficult to press the right buttons and i might go for a new device, that does not even have them...

with the main dictionary screen i am happy, the only thing i would like changed is the upper row of (small) buttons. i dont need it all the time, maybe could be switched with the second row when needed. the buttons i use most frequently are "rubber", "+" and "english/chinese", the other buttons are there, just eating screen space... switching dicts (my main activity on the main-dict screen) i do with the hardware-ok-button...
 

Alexis

状元
I voted for "Flashcard Sessions" since it's the only thing I ever try to use without the stylus on my iPaq210.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
mfcb - a dynamically-changing UI like that is tricky, unfortunately - it's extremely tricky to both change the buttons to fit what the user is doing and make them fully customizable. We already have the option to eliminate that row, and we could certainly add an option to make the remaining row bigger, but having the top row selectively appear and disappear (or just change which buttons it showed) based on what you were doing would be rather complicated, and to be honest it's unlikely we'll implement anything like that on WM; it wouldn't translate to other mobile platforms, since you generally can't stack 2 rows of buttons on top of each other on finger-driven touchscreens like the iPhone's, and with desktop there's so much space we might as well display everything at once.

Alexis - thanks. How much bigger do you think the buttons need to be (if at all), or do you just think we need to do a better job in the extremely un-finger-friendly free-answer mode?
 
I bought a HTC HD2 now and really, I can't imagine to use Pleco on a smaller screen.

Here is a little annoyance: Flashcard session

When pressing the "Door" key (door to the answer) one from time to time accidentally taps the 'right' or 'wrong' button.

Possible solution:

Move the right/wrong buttons to another location (screen is near empty anyway)

or

Block the right/wrong buttons for a certain time, maybe 250mS

The character writing box is a bit small too.

I am still getting used to using fingers and will report issues as I come across them. But generally it's working ok

PS: I use Pleco 2.0.4
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yikes, tapping on reveal and accidentally tapping on correct is still a problem? Feels like we've attempted to fix this about four times now... anyway I'll put it on the to-do list for the next update, we'll add some sort of super duper bulletproof check and hammer away on it heavily when debugging. Thanks.
 

mfcb

状元
hmmm, i also have that from time to time, but i blamed it on the software that slightly vibrates the phone when touching the screen. happens mostly (in my case) when there is an abnormally long vibration, but on a second thought, the long vibration and the accidental "correct" answer might be BOTH effects of something else...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
The long vibration could definitely be caused by a larger problem of the system getting bogged down with some sort of background task, yes. Though that still wouldn't really explain the button bump - even now it records the time of the last button press and checks to make sure that a suitable interval has passed before accepting the next one.
 
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