ergonomics of key preview

[jamesjl]

Hello Cyril,

Just bought smartkeyboardpro and it's excellent!

Here are two feature requests concerning key previews:

1. Currently, when one presses a key, the preview pops over rather far away with no visual connection to the location of the press itself. Contrast this with the Iphone preview where there's a clear visual connection to a pressed key as shown in this image:

http://images.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3 ... 090608.jpg

Can we have the same thing (or make this an option)?

2. When long pressing a key to get its alternate value, for example long pressing M to get a question mark, it would be better feedback if the preview would switch to the alternative value as soon as the press is considered long. In other words, when I first press M the preview shows an M, and then as I continue to hold down M, the preview would switch to a question mark the moment the press is registered as a long press.

Thanks!
James
SFR HTC Magic with Android 1.6

[cyril]

Hello
Actually I had the same ideas, and I plan to do it later!

[jamesjl]

Thanks for your reply, That's great news!
-James

[nycebo]

Touching back on this subject, is there a way to make the preview popup slightly larger so that it is more noticeable a la the iPhone keyboard or the Droid X standard multitouch keyboard? The previews are quite small and not always immediately noticeable.

[fekish]

I have asked the same exact question in other Android forums, as i really like the ipone pop up... It helps you understand where exactly you pressed...

[ZeD]

Hi all.

What happend with this feature request? I would also like a bit more stylish keypress popup since Android deafult does it a bit fugly.

[fekish]

can we have an option to have a custom pop up?

Maybe then we can do a similar to iphone keyboard...

[cyril]

Well, there are two different things:
- customizing the popup skin (should be possible, but I have other priorities at the moment)
- making the popup connected to the key, as on the iPhone. That would be easy if there was only one skin, but it's quite a challenge with the skin engine

[eolsgaard]

Perhaps the connecting popup could be accomplished in this way:

Starting with a key skin that looks like this:

(Should probably be a little bigger to match the bottom part of the popup, below)

You could then have the "popup skin" be large enough to cover the original key:

(The real version on the iPhone has a slight shadow behind the top part of the popup, as well, which creates a 3D effect.)

If skin-makers could edit the "popup skin," they could easily design their own popups, making sure that they have a similar design/shape/color as the original keys (like if they are thinner than normal, for example). Since it seems that the center of each key is immovable at the moment, the popups should be able to be set to cover only a specified area, giving the effect of the button and the popup connecting. If done seamlessly enough, it would only appear as if the letter "U" and the top line of the key disappears, and the button extends upwards into the popup.

[eolsgaard]

Here's what I imagined...

(if that doesn't work, go here: http://i.picasion.com/pic32/d15367f6483 ... 320bd5.gif)

The iPhone's keys are actually smaller than the bottom part of the popup, so if you want to copy that, it's like my previous post, with the smaller "U" key. This looked more fluid to me, though.