ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Matthew Exon <mat.ubuntu@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2015-10-19 17:31 , Michael Zanetti wrote:
> Currently the edge with is 2 grid units. It cannot be changed by a
> config flag atm but the values are hardcoded in the code. Please
> report a bug on Launchpad if they prove to be too small for a
> particular device. Thanks, Michael

I have this problem constantly with the MX4.  It's not the screen that's
the problem, it's the bezel.  The MX4 has practically no bezel on the
left and right.  So "swipe in from the side" is really hard since the
only place to swipe in from is thin air.  Occasionally this results in
deleting an email when I meant to change apps, so that's no good (+1 for
undelete in Dekko).

That makes me think that that whole gesture is a problem.  Sure you
could allocate a few more mm on either side, but that space will
sometimes be filled with content and the user will want to left/right
scroll that content.  Or it might be a drawing application, where that
much margin would be unreachable because drawing on it triggers the gesture.

There are at least three gestures that involve swiping horizontally:
long swipe in, short swipe in, and horizontal scroll.  It's really not
clear to me what the thresholds are for each gesture and I find I'm not
learning through trial and error.  Maybe there needs to be some kind of
"training wheels" mode where the margin is made visible as an overlay
somehow?

I can think of a radical alternative.  My phone has a button: that can
bring up the left-hand menu.  Then dragging the left-hand menu to the
right would drag in a concertina of apps.  That way I could dump the
whole swipe in from the side gesture.  Downside of that is, it'll fall
apart on the day a phone comes out with no buttons or bezels on any side
at all :-)