Multi-Touch Swipe Gestures for iPhone Keyboard

[MacRumors]

Despite the Christmas holiday, the U.S. Patent Office continues to be churning away and has revealed this interesting new patent application from Apple called Swipe Gestures for Touch Screen Keyboards. The patent application is authored by Wayne Westerman. While we always enjoy reading research from the former Fingerworks founder, his multi-touch patent applications always seem to be more ambitious than practical. This latest document, however, details some very useful additions to the iPhone's on screen keyboard.

Apple suggests the use of swipe gestures to be used on top of the iPhone's on screen keyboard in order to provide the user with quick access to common keys.

For example, erasing and basic punctuation insertion, directional swipes (also referred to herein as "swipe gestures") over the alphabetic keys can be used as an alternative to striking certain keys. Because the Space and Backspace keys are quite frequently used, they are logical candidates for the rightward and leftward swipes, respectively. Leftward and rightward swipes intuitively match the cursor travel caused by these symbols. Following this cursor movement analogy, the Enter/Return may be invoked by a downward swipe, and a Shift/Caps may be invoked by an upward swipe. Alternatively, as the Enter and Shift functions may be less frequently invoked, these may be substituted for other functions as well. One alternative mapping for the upward swipe, for example, could be to activate an alternative numeric and punctuation keypad or a particular punctuation symbol like an apostrophe or period.

A few sample gestures are depicted in the document:




Swipe down = return



Swipe left = delete

Aside from these single swipe gestures, multi-touch swipes (two fingers) could invoke other special functions. While a single finger left-swipe might delete a letter, a two finger left-swipe could delete a whole word, and a three finger left-swipe could delete a line. Similarly, a single finger right-swipe could add a space, while a two finger right-swipe could add a period. Up swipes and down swipes could also invoke different functions based on the number of fingers used.

Like with Apple's multi-touch notebook trackpads, these optional functions could provide advanced users with many useful shortcuts while not steepening the learning curve for novice users.

Article Link: Multi-Touch Swipe Gestures for iPhone Keyboard

[Freelancer]

Maybe some of this gestures could be useful for some missing basic functions...
(Yeah cut/copy/paste, you're the one it's all about!)

[dagamer34]

Apple has to make sure that these gestures don't get too complicated.

[arn]

Originally Posted by dagamer34

Apple has to make sure that these gestures don't get too complicated.

they are all optional. if you don't remember the gesture for return. just hit the return key

arn

[alexbates]

This looks awesome! I have never liked how hard it is to type on my iPod.

[Luke1robb]

I'm loving this idea, I think there's a lot of potential to speed up typing emails/texting on the iPhone. Here's to hoping these features come in the near future.

[KingYaba]

Originally Posted by arn

they are all optional. if you don't remember the gesture for return. just hit the return key

Matted screens used to be optional.

[Bubba Satori]

Originally Posted by dagamer34

Apple has to make sure that these gestures don't get too complicated.

They've got their work cut out for them.

[jincongz]

My WM6 has been having this forever. As well, by using the stylus, I get accurate taps. I drag up from any letter for Shift that letter, drag down for enter, left for backspace and right for space. Innovation? What innovation?

[Phat_Pat]

down for some sweet gestures... update!

[likemyorbs]

Originally Posted by dagamer34

Apple has to make sure that these gestures don't get too complicated.

think about it this way, the chinese have to learn hundreds of different symbols in order to be able to read and write. that's how it might be with multi-touch, users will just have to know their devices and vica versa

[wizard]

Really unless this delivers something needed, like Copy & Paste, then to me it is a waste. It has the big negative of making the keyboard even more sesitive to inadvertant swipes and touches. Worst the are adding gestures for keys already on the keyboard.

Frankly I'm with some others here, Apple have a lot of other things they need to fix or implement. Like the auto correction feature for text input which does lots of stupid things. For example always changing thus to this. Shutting auto correct off isn't right either as it can be helpful. But really Apple is "thus" that uncommon of a word in English?

Dave

[Luke1robb]

Originally Posted by wizard

It has the big negative of making the keyboard even more sensitive to inadvertent swipes and touches. Worst the are adding gestures for keys already on the keyboard.

I think Apple has done and will continue to do a good job of recognizing inadvertent touches and improving the multi-touch of the iphone and macbooks. Look at the Unibody Macbook trackpad, its amazing with recognizing inadvertent touches.

[sjo]

Originally Posted by likemyorbs

think about it this way, the chinese have to learn hundreds of different symbols in order to be able to read and write. that's how it might be with multi-touch, users will just have to know their devices and vica versa

it's thousands of symbols chinese have to learn, and they have to start studying them at age 3 in order to ever master them sufficiently to be considered well educated.

in addition, lots of the signs have become obsolete, making the learning even more tedious. 200 years ago it probably made sense that fish + sheep = fresh, but nowadays no-one understands the connection without learning it first.

chinese symbols are fascinating, but i really don't think that's the way mobile phone usage should go...

[MarkMS]

Originally Posted by Freelancer

Maybe some of this gestures could be useful for some missing basic functions...
(Yeah cut/copy/paste, you're the one it's all about!)

Exactly the same thing I was about to say. C'mon Apple!

[gwilli]

Originally Posted by Freelancer

Maybe some of this gestures could be useful for some missing basic functions...
(Yeah cut/copy/paste, you're the one it's all about!)

My sentiments exactly, with the amount of time they're taking to implement this, it better have some super fabulous gesture to copy and paste, like... smashing your head against the screen (I do this with every update they don't include this in)

[Djcyder]

better yet why don't we see accelerometer based functions like smack the side of the ipod/phone for return as a throwback to the typewriter days complete with a ding sound...

[Dreamer2go]

I wonder if they work with current iphone

[GoneFishing]

Am I getting too old

You guys still remember the Palm gestures just a decade ago? Swipe left is delete, swipe down then left is return, etc.

great that Apple is looking into it, but nothing that we shouldn't have already expected.

(Forget all the gestures apple, give me UNIVERSAL HORIZONTAL KEYBOARD like in mobile safari)

[alphaod]

For some reason these "gestures" seam rather familiar with the graffiti shortcuts on the Palm OS. I wouldn't be surprise if they decided to implement some sort of gestures for the other commonly used keys.

[SFStateStudent]

These added gestures can only help out those of us that are challenged. I'm holding my breath for an app that can type my voice commands and send an email or TM to someone in my contacts w/o any swipes or touchscreen operations...

[CocoaPuffs]

Stealing ideas from jailbroken apps huh?

[tjcampbell]

This is great, but where is copy/paste? And could it be ANY more difficult to share a contacts number etc...

[hdm42]

to all of the "apple should be working on X, Y, or Z improvement, not wasting time with this extra stuff thats cool but we dont need":

this is a patent. apple is (probably) not working on this, at all. not trying to develop it. they just had an idea in a brainstorming session, and want to make sure that IF in the distant future they ever want to use it, nobody else got to it first. so they wrote up a patent. but the actual developers doing software for these things likely never even were consulted. I doubt that we will see this for a long, LONG time to come, and rightly so. Cupertino's got its' priorities straight.

[Luke1robb]

Originally Posted by hdm42

I doubt that we will see this for a long, LONG time to come, and rightly so. Cupertino's got its' priorities straight.

I would beg to differ, I foresee this being put into one of the next couple firmwares.