Concept Video Suggests Means to Vastly Improve Text Editing in iOS

[Starship77]

The current multi-touch keyboard in iOS is wasting a lot of potential. Multi-touch keyboards could and SHOULD do so much better than physical keyboards. This is a very good example of that. It's much faster to select using a swipe gesture than pressing arrow keys multiple times or even holding them.

I would love if Apple not only implemented this suggestion but also worked on developing even better ways to create, edit and interact with text.

I have great hopes for iOS 6!

 

[MrAppleseed]

You don't swipe up, you hold the key for a fraction longer and than the special characters appear.

But it isn't a swiping up gesture, is it?

You do swipe up—at least if you’re not into this even more annoying holding, waiting, releasing*. It will then only show one specific letter (the Ü on the U, the ß on the S, the Ö on the O and so on), though. Set your keyboard to German and try it yourselves. Or give it a try with the dot and the comma on the English keyboard, to get the idea.

(*I really think most things by Apple are well thought through, but typing in German is a pain. On the iPhone even more than on the iPad as this described swipe gesture isn’t available here, and you are forced to wait.)

This in itself is pretty much broken for languages like German where these characters are really common (and other languages I suspect). At least on the iPad there should be enough space for a standard German (or French or Turkish etc.) keyboard.

It’s even more weird when you consider a language like Swedish or Danish: they have three special characters each (different ones, though), and Apple managed to get them on the keyboard. German, with four, doesn’t have this. And on the Swedish keyboard, you can clearly see there would be enough space to add one more button if you’d put the lower row a bit to one side.

 

[Night Spring]

This is a very good example of that. It's much faster to select using a swipe gesture than pressing arrow keys multiple times or even holding them.

It may be faster to move the cursor by swiping, but what I want is more precision with cursor positioning. It's not clear to me from the video exactly how I would stop the cursor at the exact position I want it.

 

[fabian9]

The problem that many of you are describing is easily solved. In fact, the solution is already shown in the video.

As far as I'm aware, no international keyboard at the moment uses a two finger swipe to select any special characters (correct me if I'm wrong). In the video, one finger swipe moves the cursor slowly, two finger swipe moves the cursor quickly.

The solution is simple: only implement the two finger swipe to move the cursor!

It's not intuitive that two fingers should swipe quicker than one finger… the speed of cursor movement should be dependent on the speed of the swipe only, not on the number of fingers being used.

(Queue the "that's what she said" jokes…)

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It may be faster to move the cursor by swiping, but what I want is more precision with cursor positioning. It's not clear to me from the video exactly how I would stop the cursor at the exact position I want it.

The cursor moves as you swipe. When you stop swiping, the cursor stops moving… how is that not letting you control the exact position you want?

 

[Night Spring]

The cursor moves as you swipe. When you stop swiping, the cursor stops moving… how is that not letting you control the exact position you want?

I have problems with dragging the selection handles exactly where I want -- I always end up one or two characters away from where I want to be. I don't see how swiping gestures is gong to give me better control than dragging the selection handles.

 

[robotphood]

Seems like a killer feature even if it were only implemented as a tweak on jailbroken devices.

How would arrow keys slow down editing? It's what we use on physical keyboards, after all.

And no gesture is "simple," in the sense that they have to be explained and learned. The only gesture I've found simple and intuitive so far is the "pinch to zoom." All other gestures are arbitary and therefore unintuitive, and hard to discover and remember. Arrow keys, anyone who sees them will know how to use them without explanation. With the suggested gestures, I can see people getting confused when the cursor suddenly moves when they accidentally swipe over the keys without intending to.

I would suggest it being off by default. But with multi-touch gestures like on the ipad and OSX (over 10 distinct gestures?), users do pick them up pretty quickly.

I have problems with dragging the selection handles exactly where I want -- I always end up one or two characters away from where I want to be. I don't see how swiping gestures is gong to give me better control than dragging the selection handles.

Even if it was exactly the same it would still be faster since you don't have to move your fingers from the keyboard to tap & hold to initiate selection. But it seems to me that it may be more accurate for some people since a finger will no longer be blocking the text.

 

[BlueParadox]

Love the tune

The glory days of midi music of the C64...

 

[Night Spring]

Even if it was exactly the same it would still be faster since you don't have to move your fingers from the keyboard to tap & hold to initiate selection. But it seems to me that it may be more accurate for some people since a finger will no longer be blocking the text.

Maybe. But when we have a tried and true method for accurately positioning the cursor, namely arrow keys, why not just use it? No need to go hunting for a new method when a perfectly good method already exists.

 

[Sylon]

A lot of you guys that are complaining about this feature obstructing the current tap-hold-special character feature on the iPad keyboard are missing the point. I don't think this will affect that at all. If you watch his fingers closely, he isn't taping and holding on any of the letters anywhere. He is simply swiping his hand across the keyboard. Now I know he stops and hold for a brief second, over some letters as he is moving the cursor. I still don't think that'll be an issue either, as once the ability to move the cursor is engaged, the ability to tap-hold on a letter is disengaged. In order to reengage the tap-hold-special-character again, briefly take your finger off the keyboard and then tap down on a letter.

I think this will possibly affect speed typers a little bit, but if you think about it, you can't be fast and using the tap-hold-special-characters anyway, the UI just doesn't allow it. You will still need to pause on a letter to get the menu to pop up. This new feature is very similar to brushing your fingers across the touchpad on a Macbook.


I think its a great feature, it would make editing larger documents, especially those that go beyond the limits of the screen (like very long documents) a lot easier to highlight and change. Bring it on Apple! So weird that this guy isn't sending this to Cydia. You would think it would do great in the JB community.

 

[robotphood]

Maybe. But when we have a tried and true method for accurately positioning the cursor, namely arrow keys, why not just use it? No need to go hunting for a new method when a perfectly good method already exists.

I would guess because any real estate saved is crucial for touchscreen keyboards. Arrow keys would probably have to fit on a secondary keyboard screen and that just adds another step to getting to it. It is also slow to use arrow keys if you are jumping multiple words. In cases like that you would just use the magnifier and skip the arrow keys altogether. Personally I rarely even use the arrow keys on my laptop/desktop except for keyboard shortcuts. Even keyboard shortcuts are getting less use the more I figure out ways to assign them to trackpad gestures. I just find gestures very natural but that's my preference. I'm so used to tweaks like zephyr on my phone and the multi-touch ipad gestures that I get frustrated when I use an iOS device without them.

 

[Night Spring]

Personally I rarely even use the arrow keys on my laptop/desktop except for keyboard shortcuts.

Ah, that might be the difference, I use arrow keys exclusively to move the cursor on my laptop/desktop. I mean, how do you select text on a computer without arrow keys -- I imagine with the mouse? I've always found trying to do that frustatingly clumsy and not very accurate. You say moving the cursor around with the arrow keys is slow, but I don't mind pressing down on the arrow keys and waiting. It feels quite spiffy to me, and certainly feels faster than fumbling around with the mouse. You are right that for iOS, especially on the iPhone, it'd take a separate keyboard screen to show the arrows, but I don't mind the extra step to switch keyboard layout if it'll give me accurate and precise control over the cursor movement.

 

[shurcooL]

I have a degree in Computer Science and have studied usability and interface design for over a decade.
I'm going to tell you right now that more options is NEVER bad.
(As you imply, it's the organization (or lack thereof) that can be bad.)

Give the options. ALWAYS give the user the options.
If someone doesn't want to use them, they don't have to. That's what defaults are for.
Just be sure to spend PLENTY of time to organize them.
The best settings options I've seen on a mobile device (private internal implementation) had a search feature for the settings so the user didn't need to know where a setting was, but could easily search for it.

Dumbing down a piece of software or a device is bad.
Removing options that allow users to use the software or device how they please is bad.
Forcing everyone to use it exactly the same is bad.
Defining use-cases by the most LIMITED purpose is bad.

If you had read the article I linked, you'd see that I agree that having more options/power/flexibility is good when the user wants them.

However, given how each option today is presented as a checkbox, the more of them there are, the harder it becomes to find something you want (unless there's some search, like you said). But it also becomes harder to tell when something has been changed from defaults. That means reinstalling the program on another computer requires you to manually compare the settings and see what's been changed.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Clever.
Well done.

It'd be great if apple actually considered this. ...though it seems to me the original jailbreakers had devised a better copy/paste as well, which apple ignored, using the slower & less consistent method we have today.

 

[kockgunner]

Use the Space Bar!

Instead of messing with the main part of the keyboard and language input, just swipe on the space bar.

The user will be required to swipe a preset number of pixels on the space bar after which the colour will change or something to denote the space bar is being used to move the cursor. The space bar itself could kind of shift in it's place to add more visual feedback.

If only I could make these neat videos, I would be rich.

 

[fabian9]

Maybe. But when we have a tried and true method for accurately positioning the cursor, namely arrow keys, why not just use it? No need to go hunting for a new method when a perfectly good method already exists.

That's the kind of argument that's currently killing RIM... "why change? People have been using physical keys forever, they love them, nothing else will work!",

 

[MattInOz]

But, it could be implemented without upward swipes, surely? I use upward swipe for things like quote characters. But, sideways to move cursor, shift sideways to select would be a good start, then maybe a dedicated area of keyboard not used for character shortcuts for up and down?

The gesture system is more than sophisticated enough to add this this system without effecting the additional character support.

I think it would be a great addition. I saw it and though it just seemed so natural. Steve did say touch screens were something the user had to be trained in to

 

[tylerxp]

You do swipe up—at least if you’re not into this even more annoying holding, waiting, releasing*. It will then only show one specific letter (the Ü on the U, the ß on the S, the Ö on the O and so on), though. Set your keyboard to German and try it yourselves. Or give it a try with the dot and the comma on the English keyboard, to get the idea.

(*I really think most things by Apple are well thought through, but typing in German is a pain. On the iPhone even more than on the iPad as this described swipe gesture isn’t available here, and you are forced to wait.)



It’s even more weird when you consider a language like Swedish or Danish: they have three special characters each (different ones, though), and Apple managed to get them on the keyboard. German, with four, doesn’t have this. And on the Swedish keyboard, you can clearly see there would be enough space to add one more button if you’d put the lower row a bit to one side.

This could all be fixed if the new edit feature were a two-finger gesture. Then single finger gestures or hold on keys will access the additional characters and two fingers will navigate the cursor.

 

[MrAppleseed]

This could all be fixed if the new edit feature were a two-finger gesture. Then single finger gestures or hold on keys will access the additional characters and two fingers will navigate the cursor.

That might work, indeed. But then, Apple would have to remove the spread gesture for the keyboard or make it less sensitive. That shouldn’t be a problem, though.

 

[Boghog]

It's not intuitive that two fingers should swipe quicker than one finger… the speed of cursor movement should be dependent on the speed of the swipe only, not on the number of fingers being used.

If you look closely the cursor does not really move faster when dragged with two fingers, it just jumps from word to word thus making positioning really easy. I'd love to have a mode like this (doesn't have to be a two finger swipe).

 

[springerj]

The method described is quite exactly how you move and select were handled in WebOS from the very beginning.*

Uh oh. Then I bet it's already patented. May make it unusable.

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I really like this, but I'd like to toss out another thing that would be really helpful. When I tap on text, a lot of times I want to select the word, and the Select choice does that. But very often I want to select the line or the entire paragraph, and those are both hard to do. I'd love to have a choice after tapping of "Select word", "line", or "paragraph".

 

[Night Spring]

That's the kind of argument that's currently killing RIM... "why change? People have been using physical keys forever, they love them, nothing else will work!",

The iPhone blew away the Blackberry because it was vastly better in so many different ways. The cursor movement method in this proposal seems at best to be a slight improvement over the current one -- I'm just not convinced it's that much easier to use than what we have now, and I feel like people are jumping on it just because it's different. Truth is, nobody will know how well it really works unless and until it's implemented. I just feel like this method isn't addressing the main problem I have with the current system, which is, how do I get the cursor to stop exactly on the character I want, instead of one or two spaces over? Dragging vs swiping = same imprecision of movement. Also, the video only demos selecting one line of text. How does this method work if we want to select big chunks of text that fill more than one screen?

I really like this, but I'd like to toss out another thing that would be really helpful. When I tap on text, a lot of times I want to select the word, and the Select choice does that. But very often I want to select the line or the entire paragraph, and those are both hard to do. I'd love to have a choice after tapping of "Select word", "line", or "paragraph".

Yes, exactly! That's the kind of thinking that's not so fancy and eye-catching but could vastly improve our workflow. And currently Apple has gone for fancy, with I think it's double-tap to select line and triple-to to select paragraph, and I can never do the double and triple tapping properly.

 

[robotphood]

Looks like it's now a reality for those of us that are jailbroken:

http://www.imore.com/2012/05/05/swipeselection-jailbreak-brings-ios-text-editing-concept-video-life/

 

[Moonjumper]

As usual, some people seem to really want this feature, and some people really don't.

There's a nice compromise: be able to turn the feature on or off in the Keyboard settings.


Boom. Everyone wins.

There are quite a few things that Apple should allow the user the option to turn off. The iOS features in Lion for example.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

I really like this, but I'd like to toss out another thing that would be really helpful. When I tap on text, a lot of times I want to select the word, and the Select choice does that. But very often I want to select the line or the entire paragraph, and those are both hard to do. I'd love to have a choice after tapping of "Select word", "line", or "paragraph".

Yes, exactly! That's the kind of thinking that's not so fancy and eye-catching but could vastly improve our workflow. And currently Apple has gone for fancy, with I think it's double-tap to select line and triple-to to select paragraph, and I can never do the double and triple tapping properly.

Use two fingers when tapping on a sentence. You'll get that entire line.

 

[fernan]

Awesome

APPLE REALLY MUST PUT THIS METHOD INTO IOS5 FOR ALL IDEVICES NOT ONLY FOR iPAD.

THIS VIDEO IS STUNNING. REALLY CLEVER GUY.