Develop Bugs

D-pad for rhodiium

Sorry if this was mentioned before but there is a way to create a d-pad using the AE Button Plus
http://ae.inc.ru/aebplus.php
I did it using the increase and decrease volume and changed them to up and down scrolling,
Thanks

pantelis25 said:
Sorry if this was mentioned before but there is a way to create a d-pad using the AE Button Plus
http://ae.inc.ru/aebplus.php
I did it using the increase and decrease volume and changed them to up and down scrolling,
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason Rhodium doesn't have a D-pad in the first place is because you are suppose to use the phone with the qwerty keyboard out most of the time.

poetryrocksalot said:
The reason Rhodium doesn't have a D-pad in the first place is because you are suppose to use the phone with the qwerty keyboard out most of the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't have a dpad because a) they thought it didn't need one because dpads are so 2005 and b) there wasn't room for everything and reviewers are already fond of calling it a brick.
I didn't notice AEB+ using the zoom bar as a dpad, but that's the hack I'm hoping for. Maybe it can capture the zoom bar action, I'm just not sure.

fortunz said:
It doesn't have a dpad because a) they thought it didn't need one because dpads are so 2005 and b) there wasn't room for everything and reviewers are already fond of calling it a brick.
I didn't notice AEB+ using the zoom bar as a dpad, but that's the hack I'm hoping for. Maybe it can capture the zoom bar action, I'm just not sure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just trust me on this...the reason is that the keyboard qwerty is good enough"
Think about PLEASE!!!!!
Why the hell would you buy a phone with qwerty keyboard, ctrl, arrow keys, and proper function indicators? Obviously because you rely on those.
And if you rely on those than you obviously already have a D-Pad called "Arrow Keys" and "Enter/Select Key"
Also don't you find it absolutely ****ing pointless to have a volume control keys be used as a scroll wheel when you lack a freaking "select" button?
Man what are you people thinking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why would you use up and down with volume rocker just to highlight an item and then tap on the same exact item to select it.
Why would you use a freaking volume rocker to scroll down a page when you obviously can do it better with a freaking stylus?
The same goes for the zoom bar!!! That ludicrously illogical to use zoom bar to highlight items and then having to get the stylus out to tap it. Waste of time and efficiency without a freaking "enter/select key"
Think aF***ingBout It! Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

poetryrocksalot said:
Why the hell would you buy a phone with qwerty keyboard, ctrl, arrow keys, and proper function indicators? Obviously because you rely on those.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In order to type. It is entirely possible, and preferable to some to navigate without always having it open.
Now, about your caffeine intake...

fortunz said:
In order to type. It is entirely possible, and preferable to some to navigate without always having it open.
Now, about your caffeine intake...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
haha that's hilarious

DPad Desire
I just got my TP2 a few days ago, my personal desire would be a DPAD app that uses the whole keyboard, so generically pressing rowards the left of the keys is left (like Q,W,A,S,D), towards the top is up (like 4,5,6,R,T,Y) etc. etc.
Then an assignable button for select, like space bar or FN.
Anyway, it would make sense to me and be easier to use especially for games , I find the DPAD being on the bottom right a bit annoying but they've done a good job fitting it all in!

Calm the hell down! How old are you, 12? The dpad is nice when you are only holding the phone with one hand. It is nearly impossible to use it with one hand while open. If your reasons why it doesn't have a dpad were true then the last 4 generations of HTC sliders wouldn't have a dpad. It doesn't have a dpad for multiple reasons including the iPhone's lack of a dpad, how a USABLE (Touch Pro!) dpad doesn't look good, and the lack of room on the front.
Up/Down without enter is still somewhat useful if you are reading something while only holding the phone with one hand. You can always map something else to be enter, like long press on start or back. I will DEFINITELY experiment with this once AT&T releases the Touch Pro 2 since I still do use it on my TP.
If only they put a ball or sensor like tbe Samsung Epix and new Blackberries have it would have greatly increased one handed usability.

so HOW can you map different actions to the zoom slider? like scroll?!

petard said:
Calm the hell down! How old are you, 12? The dpad is nice when you are only holding the phone with one hand. It is nearly impossible to use it with one hand while open. If your reasons why it doesn't have a dpad were true then the last 4 generations of HTC sliders wouldn't have a dpad. It doesn't have a dpad for multiple reasons including the iPhone's lack of a dpad, how a USABLE (Touch Pro!) dpad doesn't look good, and the lack of room on the front.
Up/Down without enter is still somewhat useful if you are reading something while only holding the phone with one hand. You can always map something else to be enter, like long press on start or back. I will DEFINITELY experiment with this once AT&T releases the Touch Pro 2 since I still do use it on my TP.
If only they put a ball or sensor like tbe Samsung Epix and new Blackberries have it would have greatly increased one handed usability.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He spaced the hell outta himself one time.. pissing of an employee at SE so he wouldnt give us valuable info anymore on a new phone that comes out in the end of the year

pantelis25 said:
Sorry if this was mentioned before but there is a way to create a d-pad using the AE Button Plus
http://ae.inc.ru/aebplus.php
I did it using the increase and decrease volume and changed them to up and down scrolling,
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
pantelis if you need a d-pad on a tp2.. try the acer m900.. it looks like the tp2 and has a fingerprint scanner that you can use as d-pad.. better camera with flash too.. but no tilting, ****ed up RAM, and a ****ed up KB

poetryrocksalot said:
Just trust me on this...the reason is that the keyboard qwerty is good enough"
Also don't you find it absolutely ****ing pointless to have a volume control keys be used as a scroll wheel when you lack a freaking "select" button?
Man what are you people thinking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why would you use up and down with volume rocker just to highlight an item and then tap on the same exact item to select it.
Why would you use a freaking volume rocker to scroll down a page when you obviously can do it better with a freaking stylus?
QUOTE]
this may be your oponion, but that's no reason for putting other people down.
personnaly i use the volume buttons as up/down. thsi works very wel if you are scrolling in your emails. if i want to clean up my mailbox i can scroll the mails and delete them with my left soft-key. ik i tap the email is opened, but i dont always want to open the mail because this is time-consuming.
So you see, for some people these functions can be very usefull.
So please have an open mind en don't think you opinion is the only one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

xdadJeroen said:
pantelis if you need a d-pad on a tp2.. try the acer m900.. it looks like the tp2 and has a fingerprint scanner that you can use as d-pad.. better camera with flash too.. but no tilting, ****ed up RAM, and a ****ed up KB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ive seen the reviews. The OS is bs its generally a bs phone. Wouldnt bother with it. Although fingerprint scanner is very cool.
On topic: SCROLL WITH ZOOM BAR! Had the wheel as a scroller on my TP and i want similar on my TP2

poetryrocksalot said:
The reason Rhodium doesn't have a D-pad in the first place is because you are suppose to use the phone with the qwerty keyboard out most of the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What about the Topaz? It doesn't have a QWERTY keyboard or a D-pad.

poetryrocksalot said:
Just trust me on this...the reason is that the keyboard qwerty is good enough"
Think about PLEASE!!!!!
Why the hell would you buy a phone with qwerty keyboard, ctrl, arrow keys, and proper function indicators? Obviously because you rely on those.
And if you rely on those than you obviously already have a D-Pad called "Arrow Keys" and "Enter/Select Key"
Also don't you find it absolutely ****ing pointless to have a volume control keys be used as a scroll wheel when you lack a freaking "select" button?
Man what are you people thinking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why would you use up and down with volume rocker just to highlight an item and then tap on the same exact item to select it.
Why would you use a freaking volume rocker to scroll down a page when you obviously can do it better with a freaking stylus?
The same goes for the zoom bar!!! That ludicrously illogical to use zoom bar to highlight items and then having to get the stylus out to tap it. Waste of time and efficiency without a freaking "enter/select key"
Think aF***ingBout It! Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OMG. Somebody is a grumpy-pants and got up on the wrong side of the bed.
This phone would be almost perfect if it had a scroll wheel or a D-pad. This device uses WM6.1 and this is the norm for WM6.1 (this may change with WM6.5)
I can easily envision how the use of the zoom bar or the volume buttons as a scroll wheel or d-pad replacement could work efficiently and better than the "freaking" stylus. All because you lack the vision to make it work doesn't mean that it cannot work well.
For example. The zoom bar could have five zones: up, left, select, right, & down. Just put some tape over the zoom bar with the map, and viola.
Also, what about phones like the Topaz? Where's the "freaking" arrow keys or the enter/select key?
You may be content with the phone, but others may not.

Volume buttons up/down navigation?

I apologize if this is a repeat or an obvious question, but...
Has anyone had any success remapping the volume buttons to be page up/page down or simply up/down for any purpose? I'm specifically thinking of eBook readers that require tapping or swiping the screen currently to flip pages. But also perhaps browsers as well.
We saw this on WinMo devices back in the day, but I've never seen it on Android. Is it impossible, difficult, or simply not in demand?
Would appreciate any insight, and thanks for all you do.

I'm thinking an app would be able to hook the volume keys, and override their functionality.
But it would not be so easy to hook that functionality from outside the app you want to affect. You could also remap the volume keys to page up/down, assuming you have root.

Don't know about global remapping, but apps often do it themselves. For example Dolphin Browser HD has settings to scroll the page with vol up/down.

maejrep said:
I'm thinking an app would be able to hook the volume keys, and override their functionality.
But it would not be so easy to hook that functionality from outside the app you want to affect. You could also remap the volume keys to page up/down, assuming you have root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you!
Is there a built-in page up/page down function to which they could be mapped?
It would be more useful to make it either application-specific or a global app to grab them based on which app was running, but remapping might be worth it.

I'd love to see an app that would use the volume buttons as a physical camera shutter button. So much better than an onscreen button.

Aldiko reader in the market uses volume buttons to flip pages
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

katmandu421 said:
Aldiko reader in the market uses volume buttons to flip pages
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for the help! That's halfway to solving all my problems!
Page up/page down on a browser would be great as well, but I'm very glad to have this.
Thanks again!

Any hacks to disable search button?

My biggest gripe right now with my HD7 is the search button. It's pretty hard to hold in landscape (securly at least) without accidentally tripping the search button. To really secure the phone my index finger needs to slightly overlap the edge of the screen, in that position it's pretty much guaranteed that my finger will rest on the search button.
Does anyone know if there are any hacks to do this?

at present i don't believe so. the search button is pretty handy but with capacitive buttons it's so easy to just run your finger over it.

The Gate Keeper said:
at present i don't believe so. the search button is pretty handy but with capacitive buttons it's so easy to just run your finger over it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While handy, it's a little superfluous in the browser since you could just as easily tap the address bar.

yea but it's not the soul purpose. as a dev creating an app, having a search button can be a very nice feature for my app... for example if i had a list of features, i could utilise the search button inside my app to narrow down to what people want.
but yea, in other situations like games, they should purposefully take it over and disable it whilst inside the game.

The Gate Keeper said:
yea but it's not the soul purpose. as a dev creating an app, having a search button can be a very nice feature for my app... for example if i had a list of features, i could utilise the search button inside my app to narrow down to what people want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I’m not trying to say I don’t want the ability to search, but it’s the lesser of two evils. Right now I have a lot of apps whose usability is being impacted by the capacitive search button being accidentally hit. I frequently navigate away from web-pages, I constantly hit it while watching videos in landscape, I’m always triggering it while using maps in my car.
If I had to put a number on it I’d say for every 1 time I purposely hit the search button, I trigger it 3 or 4 times accidentally. With those kind of numbers I definitely see disabling search as the lesser of two evils.
I think the problem could be fixed pretty elegantly if there was a setting that required the buttons to be double-tapped.

Where's 'Menu'?

Looking at the softkeys, where is the Menu key? I see Home, Back, and the new Multitasking key, but no Menu. How can this be? The iOS method of integrating all menu options into the application UI is terrible, and what about apps made before ICS? Lack of a Menu key would make them unusable. I must be missing something here, but I can't see what it might be.

A virtual menu button appears in the form of 3 dots. It can be seen in this photo.

Tung_meister said:
A virtual menu button appears in the form of 3 dots. It can be seen in this photo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice catch. Was wondering about that.

Menu items are represented by the 3 vertical dots at the top right corner of apps.
The indication is that new apps should no longer hide their menus, but rather make them intuitive to access in the app's UI.
For legacy apps, we'll probably see a menu button of some type appear along with the 3 softkeys at the bottom.

On my Honeycomb tablet either a button is in the top right corner or another is added to the bottom when menu is needed... I'm guessing HC is a good example of what we'll be getting, and if so I look forward to it

Thanks so much for a useful thread. I was actually wondering about that myself. Glad to know its non-obtrusive and clean
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

You have lost the search button though. Not all apps will handle this well... I had to tweak an app I was writing because of this (luckily found fairly early during testing on Honeycomb).
Of course for most apps search isn't useful - probably why they removed the dedicated key.

TonyHoyle said:
You have lost the search button though. Not all apps will handle this well... I had to tweak an app I was writing because of this (luckily found fairly early during testing on Honeycomb).
Of course for most apps search isn't useful - probably why they removed the dedicated key.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The idea is if the app needs search in order to function properly, you just put the search button up in the menu bar, just like they're doing with settings buttons.
Otherwise, the google search button is at the top of every homescreen now.

martonikaj said:
The idea is if the app needs search in order to function properly, you just put the search button up in the menu bar, just like they're doing with settings buttons.
Otherwise, the google search button is at the top of every homescreen now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The menu button happens automatically (technically, since 2.3 android has called onCreateOptionsMenu at activity startup so it knows you need it already).
There simply is no search button in Honeycomb/ICS - you have to stick it on the options menu, the action bar*.. somewhere the user can reach it. That needs code (not much.. respond to 'search' in the options menu by calling onSearchRequested()).. existing apps will simply lose that function if they run on ICS assuming a button exists.
We're not talking about a lot of apps here.. Not much point in a search function in 'Angry Birds' for example. Just something to bear in mind when developing a new app or trying to work out if your favourite app will work without issue on ICS.
Home screen search is totally different.. that searches the global search (emails, contacts, etc.). Different class of app entirely.
* The honeycomb search widgets are really flexible, but of course not available unless you break compatibility with <3.0.

TonyHoyle said:
You have lost the search button though. Not all apps will handle this well... I had to tweak an app I was writing because of this (luckily found fairly early during testing on Honeycomb).
Of course for most apps search isn't useful - probably why they removed the dedicated key.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are already quite a few phones out there without a search button. My almost 2 years old X10 doesn't have a dedicated search button and i never missed it. The search function is bound to long-press menu at the x10. Given the fact that ICS has a dedicated task switcher button, they could bind the search to long-press home for example. Just an idea though
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

qwer23 said:
There are already quite a few phones out there without a search button. My almost 2 years old X10 doesn't have a dedicated search button and i never missed it. The search function is bound to long-press menu at the x10. Given the fact that ICS has a dedicated task switcher button, they could bind the search to long-press home for example.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm.. news to me - I've never seen an android phone without one. Lucky I was doing tablet compatibility testing then
There will probably also be custom roms that put it back (since a custom rom can do anything it likes with the buttons.. change their apparence, colour, hide them completely, make them dance up and down..).

TonyHoyle said:
Hmm.. news to me - I've never seen an android phone without one. Lucky I was doing tablet compatibility testing then
There will probably also be custom roms that put it back (since a custom rom can do anything it likes with the buttons.. change their apparence, colour, hide them completely, make them dance up and down..).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Galaxy series in general (SGS1, SGS2) do not have a dedicated search button. They have just the menu, home and back buttons. However search is bound as a long press to the menu button which I guess won't be possible anymore. Haven't really found search to be that vital (maybe because I don't want to long press the menu button just to bring it up when I can search in other ways)

Since it's purely software, I know for a fact someone will mod in a search key.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using XDA Ultimate App

That would be pointless. When search is available, the search box will appear in the menu bar of the app.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

[Q] possible to remap hard keys?

Hi,
I use the menu key a whole lot more than multi task. How hard would it be to remap the multi task key to act like a menu key? Is it even possible?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

If the apps is according to the new ICS look, Holo I think the theme is called, then the menu button is on the top right of the screen.
Seems to me it would be a hassle to press a button on the bottom right and then move youre finger to the top right to actually use the menu.
On apps not yet fitted for ICS I can understand what u mean, however this problem should hopefully be almost gone within not too long.

Would love to remap the useless.most recent programs button to act as a google search button, much like a long press on menu on my s2 does...

There are several threads about this. Here is one: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1480130
I just got my One X, so haven't tried anything myself.
But being able switch songs with the volume buttons while locked is what I'm looking for.
A must when you're outside in heavy rain or snow.