[maemo-users] OS2008 on n800 - Nice Job

[From: Laurent GUERBY]

On Thu, 2007-11-29 at 22:25 +0100, Jesper Cheetah wrote:
> Eero Tamminen wrote:
> >>>> Also lot of scrolling in launch menu will need getting used to. Is 
> >>>> there some secret gconf setting to bring old stylus optimized menu 
> >>>> layout with small items back?
> >>> AFAIK no. The good side is that you can use it with thumb.
> >> This was posible in OS2007 too, thumb hit popped up large menu, stylus 
> >> hit smaller menu which was consistent with behaviour or virtual 
> >> keyboard. Looks like small menu just silently went away. I will miss that.
> > 
> > AFAIK it was not possible to make thumb detection reliable enough.
> > The detection was based on "pressure" information, but strong press
> > with stylus gives as much pressure as light press with thumb (=larger
> > area) and the touchscreen sensitivity might differ a bit between
> > devices, different parts of the screen and that changes over time too.
> 
> I don't use OS2008, but I know I'll miss the stylus-sized menus. 

About the menus I really don't think you'll miss the stylus.

With the control panel / panel customization / organise
you can put 5x6 or 6x6 applications in the menu all
accessible in three thumb presses requiring zero finger agility,
with everything seen on the screen, and with 6 applications accessible
in two thumb presses since the first menu "my selection" is
automatically opened. For more you just have to thumb press the big
scroll buttons a few times.

This is for me a really great usability improvement: I hope more parts
of OS2008 will be moved to the same concept (follow the PDF reader
example :) and that third party software will adopt it too.

I trained myself not to get the stylus out like I was used to do and
after two days I'm just able to use everything (but Sketch :) without
stylus.

> If automatic detection isn't reliable enough, then I really think
> there  should be an option somewhere to set choose either one or the
> other.  It's all about giving the user the choice.

As I said the workaround is just pressing the Home button to get the
virtual thumb keyboard, it's not that bad if thumb detection in thin
text entries cannot be fixed.

Laurent