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]

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.

 

[PlayRadioPlay]

Great idea!

I would love to see "Letter Shortcuts". Example: I could press and hold the letter "P", and a small window could come up where I could select "PlayRadioPlay@yahoo.com" to be inputed into the text field, instead of having to type the whole thing.

Similar to the way you can currently press and hold down a vowel's key to be able to select alternate accented vowels.

It would save so much time to have things like your email address, or other words/phrases saved in submenus of different letters.

Just a thought I had late one night Steal my idea Apple!

 

[coolfactor]

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.

This is a fantastic idea, I agree completely! I sure hope these come to fruition.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Awesome... good to see them still improving upon the already greatly improved. Most companies release something awesome (think Moto RAZR and how it is faring today) and just make a huge deal about it and never make it better. I hope they can have this out when I buy my iPhone next Jan/Feb.

 

[ajbrehm]

Great. Gestures are back.

Remember when one had to invent something to get a patent?

 

[Luke1robb]

Awesome... good to see them still improving upon the already greatly improved. Most companies release something awesome (think Moto RAZR and how it is faring today) and just make a huge deal about it and never make it better. I hope they can have this out when I buy my iPhone next Jan/Feb.

I think this is the greatest thing about the iphone, its one of the only consumer electronics products that continually gets better.

 

[wheezy]

Multi-touch is what separates the iPhone from the other 'touch' phones; all they can muster is one finger point and click. I hope Apple doesn't stop at the patent house on these, it seems that laptops have more multi-touch features than the iPhone does now and it's time to bring in some new gestures!

I do like the idea of a shortcut menu for often-used long text strings; email address, web address, the secret 26 word combination quote for having top secret conversations with illegal nationalists.

 

[PlayRadioPlay]

I think this is the greatest thing about the iphone, its one of the only consumer electronics products that continually gets better.

I think most products are expected to improve over time, from version to version. The iPhone is just improving so fast. It's a completely different phone now than when I bought it the week it came out a year and a half ago (I think that's when it came out.)

If Apple had already delivered copy/paste, push notifications, video, and a few other simple additions, they would be golden.

 

[queshy]

woo! more gestures! bring them on!!

 

[Rojo]

Oooh, I like!

I still, to this day, press the delete key whenever I mean to press the return key -- so the "swipe down for return" shortcut will be nice for me.

 

[NewSc2]

Whole Foods??

 

[Bubba Satori]

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

They've got their work cut out for them.

 

[jincongz]

Ya...

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!

 

[Cleve]

Looks like Apple has growing number of Embedded devices

like tablets that this type of control could use. Not just iPhone and touch...
http://9to5mac.com/ipad-embedded-coming

 

[MarkMS]

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!

 

[KingYaba]

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

Matted screens used to be optional.

 

[QCassidy352]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

wow. Yes please. I already type faster on my iPhone than on my bb (for work... Hate it) and this would speed things up even more. Sounds wonderful.

 

[leandromp]

That's great!
Cmon apple, bring those gestures ASAP. . Can't Wait.

I would like to have some of the icons (when my phone is lock) so i wouldnt have to be unlocking my phone every 2 minutes, specially when i get a new email.

 

[gwilli]

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)