[SenseUI] Contacts App : missing 'X' button - very irritating - Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General

Hi All,
One thing that has consistently irritated me about the new SenseUI is what I see as an inconsistent "Back" button in the contact app to exit the application! It goes completely against the general established way in winmo devices to exit an application. The general practice in the windows world to use the 'x' at the top to come out of an application. That is just plain intuitive when using a winmo device.
In the SenseUI contacts app, there is no 'X' at the top right corner !! why?? However bad and dated the UI is of windows is, going against the general UI rules of the OS makes using an app even more confusing and plain frustrating.. Especially for the contact app which is one of the more (if not most) heavily used app if not the most.
Also all the ROMs seem to continue that same philosophy.. why is that ??
Is it only me that sees this as inconsistent and counter intuitive ?
Dhanvi

kapiladhanvi said:
Hi All,
One thing that has consistently irritated me about the new SenseUI is what I see as an inconsistent "Back" button in the contact app to exit the application! It goes completely against the general established way in winmo devices to exit an application. The general practice in the windows world to use the 'x' at the top to come out of an application. That is just plain intuitive when using a winmo device.
In the SenseUI contacts app, there is no 'X' at the top right corner !! why?? However bad and dated the UI is of windows is, going against the general UI rules of the OS makes using an app even more confusing and plain frustrating.. Especially for the contact app which is one of the more (if not most) heavily used app if not the most.
Also all the ROMs seem to continue that same philosophy.. why is that ??
Is it only me that sees this as inconsistent and counter intuitive ?
Dhanvi
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On my phone the 2nd HARDWARE button from the right goes back to the home screen.

Sorry I wasnt clear in my original post. I was talking about the soft buttons in the UI. The "back" button in the lower left corner of the contact application - the application where you can browse through your contacts.
The "back" button there goes back to the previous screen you were on. This becomes more of a problem when I have to go back to the home screen or some other screen after or during a call. for e.g. after a call, if I started the call from the contacts app, I am dropped back on the detail page of the contact . no wi have to click back twice or more time ( if I started from the call history page) to come back to the home screen..
This I think is a waste of time.. A simple 'x' button at the top should allow me to exit the application and come back to the home screen..
Dhanvi
PS: All buttons I speak of are soft UI buttons and not the h/w buttons on the phone.

Related

101 idiot questions!!!

How to turn off the device off (not just standby mode)?
How to stop an application, other than going start->settings->system->memory->running programs->stop?
How to bring up running applications, other than Start->programs->click on application again?
How to add sort cuts into the today window?
Well that’s all i'v got for now but im sure i will have more, feel free to ask some more questions on my idiot questions thread
Thanx
robboy said:
How to turn off the device off (not just standby mode)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can cope with that one Tap opn the signal icon in the top, when the boc drops down, there is an option to turn on 'flight mode'. This stops it receiving a reception.
robboy said:
How to add sort cuts into the today window?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe this is only done by adding third party software. I bought Pocket Plus and can highly recommend it. I think this also solves your 'stopping programs' problem too.
I wondered the one about switching apps myself actually. With my iPaq there was a iTask button, or something like that.
if you have pocket plus (can highly recommend as well) tap and hold in the top right hand corner and it will have a list of whats running, select from there.
This a great little tool for closing all your running programmes - and it's free. (doesn't close activesync though)
http://www.freewareppc.com/utilities/closeall.shtml
for closing and switching tasks i'm using DTSysview.
Assigned the IE h/w button to it, makes things easy to manage
there are many task apps you can use. it really comes down to which app you prefer, freeware or shareware. i use wisbar advance because of the pretty skins, the option to minimize or completely close any running apps from the taskbar. i am also a fan of cascading start menu.
i use psShutXP to restart my unit, turn off the back light, and shut down the unit.
lastly, i use HandyLauncher for quick access to my Top 10 apps.
HandySwitcher
I am using HandySwitcher to switch from application to application and closing the active applications... It works perfect for mel....

where's my dialer ?!

I don't have a dialer on my TP2 ! is that possible ?
also - no call-in-progress screen, only the white slide-to-answer screen when a call comes in, but when I answer the call the screen goes back to the last app. I used.
any solutions ?
When you go to the "Home" screen in touch-flo, there is a little "Phone" text on left-hand side, and "Camera" text on right-hand side. If you press on phone with stylus/finger, you will get a dialer there ...
This appears to be the 2nd thread started by you on the same question.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=538756
Plus it looks like from your previous posts in this forum that you've messed up your device pretty bad. Your zoom bar doesn't work and now you've messed up the phone app.
Here's my advice: don't start duplicate threads like this. Start your thread if you've really exhausted other options (ie, search, etc). If no one responds to your thread, just post in it to bump it to the top again.
Also, regarding your device, stop installing stuff if you're not aware of all its features and if you're not comfortable doing troubleshooting. Like people in your other thread regarding the zoom bar said, just do a hard reset.
you're right, sorry.
BTW- give me some credit - i tried the "phone" button & "phone" option in Settings>personal>phone. still doesn't work.

Fullscreen problem (selecting behind the active window)

I've had this problem for a while, but I'm pretty much fed up with it to this point that I've decided to ask about it. I don't know if this is restricted to the TP2, but I'd imagine it's probably a Windows 6 problem more than the device.
The issue is that when I play any full screen application (one that covers the top and bottom menu bars), typically games, sometimes it loses it's status as the active window but still remains in front of everything else. This means that where ever I pres on the screen, it will select whatever is behind the game and therefore gives me no ability to select the game itself.
This is most prominent with the keyboard button in the bottom bar. It's not uncommon for me to have to press something on the edge of the screen in one of these applications only to have the keyboard pop up and garble all of the graphics. Once this occurs, there is no real easy way to go back. I have to open up task manager and either close the full screen app or activate it again. Another time this becomes a big issue is if I'm on the program tab of TF3D (which frequently you are after you've opened an app) and basically anywhere I press just starts opening applications left and right.
Does anyone know why this occurs and is there a fix for it?

App issues - Help??

Hi all,
I've a Samsung SGS and I got the offical 2.2 update then rooted with z4root and installed OCLF. What a difference, the phone absolutely flies along.
Since then I've replaced the stock dialer with "Dialer One" which works really well (I tried aTAKEphONE but didn't like it), installed the Whatsapp IM client as a lot of my contacts have BlackBerry's and Whatsapp is a cross platform IM client and also installed the PhoneUseage app to keep track of my VF plan and not allow them to screw me each month for out of plan useage.
I now have two problems which I feel are related to installation of the above apps but have no way of proving it.
1. From time to time when I hit the "Home" icon the phone returns to the home screen but only displays the bottom four apps and it takes up to 20 seconds to refresh the home screens (I have a total of 5 home screens) with the other icons and widgets. This is a serious Lag which seems to be preceeded very briefly by the aplication I am exiting blowing up in size by a huge magnitude i.e. if I am running the Internet app and I hit the home screen for an instant the internet page I was looking at appears to zoom in to the maximum amount (literally a split second) then it switches to the main home screen with just the four bottom apps and then up to 20 seconds later the rest of the homescreen icons and widgets appear. During the 20 seconds the phone seems 'hung' but afterwards it flies along again. This only happens intermittently and not on exiting any one particular application as far as I can tell. Thoughts anyone?
2. I am unable to remove the missed calls notification from either the drop down notification area (when I tap on the notification it doesn't bring me to the missed calls list on Dialer One) and the same applies to the orange jigsaw notification if the phone is locked i.e. if I unlock by moving the orange jigsaw piece with the number of missed calls on it to the appropriate spot when I lock the screen again and go to unlock it I am still presented with the missed calls jigsaw. I suspect this has something to do with the notification actions looking for the stock dialer app whereas I'm running Dialer One but I'd appreciate your thougths if you've had a similar issue and how you resolved it. The only way I'm able to remove the missed calls notifications is by doing a battery pull which is a royal pain in the ass.
Lastly, I'd appreciate it if someone can tell me why certain apps show up in the list of apps displayed by the Automatic Task Killer app and others don't? Dialer One being a good example. I've installed the app and it's now my default dialer but it doesn't show up in the Automatic Task Killer list of apps, same with the Whatsapp IM app.
I look forward to getting your thoughts.
Ben
try replacing oclf with z4mod...
Well you do use apps that's mess with you system.
You don't need an other task killer.
I don't think its Oclf fault.
But you can always try a custom kernel and a better lagfix.
Sent from GT-I9000 jpo. My own kernel for z4mod and with 342MB Ram

Back button and Mango

I find there are a number times when navigation is problematic on WP7, caused by a few design issues:
- there being a back button but no forward button
- apps always start from home page when loaded from the home screen
- IE relies on the hardware back button and you can lose your navigation history if you leave IE, go back in and try to navigate back.
I think most WP7 users will know what I'm talking about.
My question is - do people think the Mango update with multitasking will solve this? I can't see enough detail in the online demos to be sure, but I would hope that it does get around these issues.
I'm sure that with Mango's fast app switcher (the new tap-and-hold back button) you will have much more flexibility than today.
But, I'm not sure what you mean by "you lose your navigation history" in IE. Even if I back out of IE, when I go back in, tap the favorites icon, and flick to the History pivot, I still see all of the pages I visited in the list. Maybe I am doing something different, or else I am misunderstanding your problem.
i think he meant...
1: go browse using ie, and visit several pages by following links
2: press windows key to go back to homescreen
3: launch ie again (through its tile, not the back button)
4: history gone. you'll be back to the last page you were visiting, but that's it. if you press the back button, it'll take you out of ie and into the homescreen.
this annoys me as well.
Website A,
click link to B,
check emails,
return to IE (via back button),
on website B,
want to go back to A: not possible via back button
It is unintuitive to open favorites(!) then change to history only to go one site backwards.
Yep that's the scenario exactly.
I checked what Android does because it has a very similar setup of a hardware back button. However, they get it right and the solution is very simple.
On Android when you go back into the browser, the hardware back button takes you back through browser history until there is no more history. Then the next press takes you back in the application screen history. I only tried it quickly but it seems to solve the problem that WP7 exhibits.
I think the only foolproof option is like iOS where the back button is onscreen and part of the application. The downside is that it clutters up the display a lot. When I use an iPhone now the actual screen space for the application seems very small.
BlitterTwisted said:
- apps always start from home page when loaded from the home screen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's changing in Mango. Developers will be able to allow users to pin pages in their app to the home screen not just the app itself.
The example shown at MIX11 was that if we create a News app which has a world news page, a country specific news page and a financial page (for example); the user could then pin the financial page to the start screen.
There is no limit on the amount of tiles per app, so the user could chose to pin all three pages to their start screen. Clicking on any of these tiles would take them straight to the page of interest not the main page.
Of course, this requires app developers to implement the new tiles in their app (but it's not difficult).
Casey
That is interesting, although you're talking more about linking within an app, where sometimes the issue is more about remembering state i.e. reloading an app and it being back on the page you were on.
To be fair, support for this on iOS is patchy, some apps do it and some don't. And the MS guidelines specifically say that the app must restart from home when loaded from a tile. I wonder if this was in preparation for the multitasking features, although I will still like to be able to use a tile to launch an already-running (tombstoned) app and have it take me back to where I was when I left it. From what I've seen of Android, it does this.
Not sure what everyone is complaining about the back button and IE since it's actually pretty consistent with desktop browser experience. When you close your browser and open it up again, you don't get to press back.
digger1985 said:
Not sure what everyone is complaining about the back button and IE since it's actually pretty consistent with desktop browser experience. When you close your browser and open it up again, you don't get to press back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's the point. in your phone you don't close your brower (by pressing back back until you're at the homescreen, you just press the middle button to pull up the home screen). in my desktop I can have 10 browers open, and still open my e-mail without disturbing my browers.
Mestiphal said:
that's the point. in your phone you don't close your brower (by pressing back back until you're at the homescreen, you just press the middle button to pull up the home screen). in my desktop I can have 10 browers open, and still open my e-mail without disturbing my browers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do I remember correctly that tabbed browsing is coming with IE9/Mango, and said tabs will be in the multitasking screen? I guess it could very well start working more like you described?
We will see in 2 days hopefully.
dtboos said:
Do I remember correctly that tabbed browsing is coming with IE9/Mango, and said tabs will be in the multitasking screen? I guess it could very well start working more like you described?
We will see in 2 days hopefully.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's interesting actually if they do that I can see it helping. Proving that when returning to a browser page, you can still use the back button to work the browser rather than just jumping back to where you were before.
If they're gonna carry on with the back button doing special stuff in the browser, they need to implement the Android trick of the back button going back through browser history until the start, then going back through application screen history.

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