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Re: How make Maverick usable with Touch ?

 

On 16/08/10 15:42, Mathieu Virbel wrote:
* Duncan McGreggor<duncan.mcgreggor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>  [2010-08-16 15:27:59]:

On 08/16/2010 02:16 PM, Mathieu Virbel wrote:
Hello everyone,

I've been talking to Dunkan, and he ask me to write my concerns/wishes
for future development and user interaction. So here we are.

I don't known exactly how canonical see the future of Maverick, but if
we want ubuntu usable for Tablet, lot of things must be done :)

- Unity: under development ? what are the plan on that ? What feedback
   did you planned ?

- Florence: i've read that florence is going to be the default keyboard
   for ubuntu. Am i wrong ? If yes, florence is really not usable.
   Really. Once good thing we must learn coming from our beloved Apple..
   When you open the keyboard, the application window is adjusted to not
   hide the focused text input. Maybe an integration between unity /
   florence is required here.

- Florence: prediction. Boulabiar said that they are lot of patent on
   that, but still, be productive = introduce algorithm to enhance people
   writing. In PyMT, we've got spelling keyboard... and it's not
   sufficient. Library like enchant (mean aspell/ispell) is doing
   auto-correction and suggestion, but don't care about the context. And
   that's make thing just unusable.

- Theming: having a touch-usable GTK theme is required. I don't remember
   where i got the microsoft document about UI, but they are designing UI
   like a button require 10mm height, spacing between elements should be
   7mm.. Whatever is the screen size. Your finger are not smaller if you
   increase your resolution :)

- GTK: patch to add some new behavior ? Like list, it would be nice to
   remove that ugly scrollbar, and permit scroll just by touching.

- Firefox plugin: ubuntu have already a plugin installed by default for
   firefox. Is it possible to enhance it ? Like adding scrolling with
   touch by default, better theming for tabs (specially the cross button
   to close a tab..)

- All app: even if GTK is not ready for MT, it should be ok to do
   alternative UI for touch no ? One thing we've learn with PyMT is that
   classical UI is really not good for touch (for eg: Rhythmbox can b
   enhanced to add plugin for custom touch UI)

It's just some ideas. Feel free to comment !

--
Mathieu
http://pymt.eu/
http://movid.org/
Thanks, Mathieu!

I will be updating our UDS-N brainstorming plans with these notes.

As for the MS document, perhaps John Lea can provide us with a link;
I believe he mentioned that paper to me last week at our MT sprint.

Thanks again,

d

All the links are at the end of this blog post :
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1071

Mathieu



Regarding button sizes see the following links:

http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1691-what-is-the-optimal-size-of-an-iphone-touch-target/

Or this other post from LukeW's blog: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1085

The MS document is available @  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252

Note that a touch target can be larger that it's visual representation. The important thing is not to make the visual elements themselves large, but to create a design that leaves adequate spacing for the invisible touch target to extend outwards and meet the minimum target size requirements.

cheers,
John

--
John Lea | User Experience Architect
Canonical  www.canonical.com | Ubuntu  www.ubuntu.com
27th Floor, 21-24 Millbank Tower, London, SW1P 4QP
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7630 2455 | Email: john.lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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