ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Michael Zanetti <michael.zanetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 26 March 2014 06:59:47 Martin Pitt wrote:
> Alberto Mardegan [2014-03-25 22:21 +0200]:
> > Just brainstorming: what if sliding left from the lower part of the
> > right edge triggered the "back" action?
> 
> I had pretty much the same proposal yesterday on IRC: E. g. in the
> scopes, swiping (anywhere) to the right doesn't currently do anything.
> That felt like a natural "back" action to me, i. e. move the page that
> I see to the right so that I get back to the previous one. The
> intuition is certainly the other way around in Israel or Japan where
> books are being read from right to left :-), but that could be taken
> into account (support both or look at locale?)
> 
> But regardless of how it's done, consistency is the key. I really
> consider the abolishing of hardware back and menu buttons a bad move
> (I hope my old Xperia with proper buttons still lasts a while..),
> which created all these design problems of hoping all developers in
> the world would consistently create back buttons in the UI, or
> otherwise create an undiscoverable inconsistency. So from that POV
> putting it in the current location on the top left title bar is a good
> decision.
> 

Hmm, I don't think the hardware button is that much required. I've been using 
phones without hardware back button for many years now and never really missed 
it. I do agree with Oli tho, that I miss the back button in a reachable place 
now.

What I'm not sure about (and thats purely my opinion) is if it was a good idea 
to give the bottom edge to app developers. As the proposal says, its the most 
important and easily reachable edge. Imo it should be consistent across the 
phone experience and be the place where the most important controls for the 
current context are placed (e.g. the back button). What we'll get now is a 
random surprise whenever you use the bottom edge.

I personally hoped we'd keep the panel as it was, but lock it to be always 
visible, and if the OSK is visible, move the panel on top of the OSK, instead 
of hiding it behind it. I think that would have solved the discoverability 
issue too without being that disruptive for the overall phone experience.

Note aside: The reason why the Launcher on the phone is inverted, is because 
it was too hard to reach the home button in the top left corner.

Br,
Michael