Re: Treo 680 and the 5-way

Hello, Chris Antos.

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 14:25:03 -0800 you said:

> > My normal view, and I suspect most people's normal view, because it
> > allows me to see the most icons at once (130), is in the "full page"
> > view. There is no way to select anything other than the top row
> > without using a stylus. This is broken behavior.
> 
> If you read the directions, it states that pressing the Select button on the five way navigation pad selects an icon.  And then using the direction pad moves the selection.  You said "there is no way", which is simply false -- so I assume that what you meant is you find it awkward to press Select (the official name for the center button of the direction pads) and then move the direction pad.

The docs say that "down or right" move the selection to the right and
"up or left" move the selection to the left.  And so it does.  What it
does not do is allow you to move the selection up or down.

With nothing selected, pressing the Select button selects the top-left
icon.  You can then move to the right and back to the left, but not
down.  If you tap on an icon elsewhere on the page, you can go left or
right, but not up or down.  The only way to select an icon in a
different row is to select that row with the stylus.

There is nothing awkward about using the controls.  The controls work
exactly as the docs describe.  And which are functionally broken for
use with a five-way navigator because it is not possible to select up
or down.

And in the list view (one icon per row), the 5-way scrolls the list one
page at a time.

> Suppose that I removed the need to first press Select to select an icon:  if instead moving the direction pad automatically selected an icon, then people would give the opposite complaint that there is "no way" (meaning they find it awkward) to scroll the list.  So while that would solve your specific complaint, it would generate a new and similarly awkward problem, so it doesn't seem like much of a solution at all.

It's not the act of first selecting an icon that is the problem.  It's
the fact that you cannot then navigate properly within the icon page(s)
without using a stylus, in which case you may as well just use the
stylus and ignore the hardware navigation buttons.

> > There is no way to select the "new" or "close" buttons at the bottom of
> > the screen without using the stylus. (Yes, I know Menu \ File has New
> > and Close, but I'm talking about the buttons right there in the primary
> > UI.) This is broken behavior.
> 
> You know what?  I agree.  You know what else?  Palm and the other handheld companies totally botched up how the direction pads work across the various devices.  You have no idea how badly they botched it all up.  I'm not going to spend tons of time making significant changes to the navigation capabilities when (1) it would make the navigation pad work very differently on some devices thus complicating the documentation and also making the application behave inconsistently, (2) it would actually make it much HARDER for users to scroll the view or select icons and the only benefit it would provide would be the ability to press New and Close without using a stylus, but as soon as you press the New button you need to pull out the stylus anyway.  And no...I am not going to even attempt to make the icon editor screen usable without a stylus.

I'll take your word on most of that.  However, every other Palm
application that I use that has both static control buttons and a list
of elements (and supports the use of the 5-Way) has the ability to move
from one area of the UI to the other without a stylus.  For a setup
like this one, where the list items and the buttons below don't have
anything to do with each other, this is usually accomplished by just
moving the cursor down off the list and into the row of buttons.

Granted, my experience with this navigation method is limited to just
the Treo 650 and 680, but from what others have said for other software
on other devices, the UI (from the user's end, at least) is the same
regardless of which device, be it an original Tungsten, a Zire, or the
newest PalmOS Treo.

> The bottom line is that Icon Manager is not intended to be usable without using the stylus, and I even contend that the application works quite reasonably.  I won't be offended if that makes you remove it from your device.

Other than this, Icon Manager works great.  If it's not supposed to
really support the use of the 5-Way, then it's a stylus-only program
and I can deal with that, no problem.  It's just that the navigation
within the icon listing is inconsistent with what is expected.

Besides, Icon Manager is the only icon editor/manager out there for
hi-res devices... :)

-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled             Send personal mail to gordol

Peter's Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord, #201.
All giant serpents acting as guardians in underground lakes will be
fitted with sports goggles to prevent eye injuries.


 
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