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
