[Q] Dual touch pads for browser navigation? - Xperia Play Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

apologies if this has already been asked. I remember earlier android handsets that had little track balls just beneath the screen with which you could move a little mouse cursor when surfing the internet to give you better control over highlighting etc. they've since gone our of vogue but it was a feature that came in handy from time to time. with that in mind. I'm surprised that the xperia play doesn't have an option to use the dual touch pads for browsing when in landscape: we know from Sony that the entire middle area is touch sensitive so theoretically it could be used similar to a mouse touch pad on a laptop, or the left pad could move a cursor and the right could scroll around the web page, or ideally you could toggle between both. given the pre existing trackball/cursor code in android would it be feasible to use them in this way?

I wanted this for so long but seems like no one cares a fuc*. Also one option to be added, pinch to zoom for zooming.

I always thought the little 'cleavage' area between the man nipples was a mini touchpad. That would be perfect for up and down scrolling
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[Q] No mouse?

How is it when editing text/mistakes without a mouse?
I know, not really a mouse. But a trackball, optical sensor, whatever.
Got my defy yesterday and already sent quite a number of texts, since it comes with swype you really dont make that many mistakes, however it -does- have a text browsing feature similar to iphone but without the magnifying glass
I text and do most things on my defy using my thumbs, and considering this the text editing thingy is very accurate- especially when comparing to my old resistive LG screen
Mine has a magnifying "glass".
Just checked again, and wow how did i miss that
After one press on the text box it doesnt show, but after the second it has a quite large rectangular magnifying glass feature that pops up and very easy to use
Thanks guys. Wondered how that worked.
Sent from my T-Mobile G1 using XDA App
Coming from a BB 9700 i was a bit worried about the mouse but after two days I got used to it. And thanks for the double tap magnifying glass tip.
Through even more texting, I have discovered that you do -not- need to double tap to get magnifying glass but rather do a swipey motion through the text.. quite hard to explain but if you hold your finger still it pulls a menu, and move too slow it highlights the word instead of moving the cursor.
You probably get the idea and its very easy to get used to

[THINK TANK] Gesture bar instead of soft key bar

I've been realizing lately how amazing android really is and customizable it is with this phone. Off topic but I kinda hated the fact. Of a recent app button and the fact that I lost the menu button (honestly the most used button on all my other phones). The devs here realized it and gave me the ability to have my menu button, get my search button back, and make recent apps come up by holding the home button. Got to love them. Shout out to our fantastic devs.
Now the point of this thread was just I wanted to know how you guys thought about a gesture bar instead of having buttons. So swipe on the bar to go back, maybe swipe up to go home etc? Just trying to think of creative ideas on how to use this huge screen and since everything is virtual, why can't this be possible. What you guys think?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
nice idea, kind of like the microsoft touch mouse. I would like to see someone make that possible and see how it works out.
Shaquiel Harris said:
Now the point of this thread was just I wanted to know how you guys thought about a gesture bar instead of having buttons. So swipe on the bar to go back, maybe swipe up to go home etc? Just trying to think of creative ideas on how to use this huge screen and since everything is virtual, why can't this be possible. What you guys think?
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As a technical exercise it sounds like a very good idea, but I know for one I wouldn't use it. Dolphin HD has had gesture support for such a long time and I used it as my main web browser on my Desire but I didn't ever use the gesture support.
Even my HD2 running WM 6.5.x had an app that allowed you to launch any app/program by configuring a gesture, but again I didn't use it.
I guess it's just easier to place my thumb than to move about when holding the phone in one hand. Is this an idea you were thinking of implementing yourself, or are you looking for someone to pick the idea up and run with it?
Kalavere said:
As a technical exercise it sounds like a very good idea, but I know for one I wouldn't use it. Dolphin HD has had gesture support for such a long time and I used it as my main web browser on my Desire but I didn't ever use the gesture support.
Even my HD2 running WM 6.5.x had an app that allowed you to launch any app/program by configuring a gesture, but again I didn't use it.
I guess it's just easier to place my thumb than to move about when holding the phone in one hand. Is this an idea you were thinking of implementing yourself, or are you looking for someone to pick the idea up and run with it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you talking about lmt? Fyi: it's now also available for android/gsn...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1330150
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
Shaquiel Harris said:
I lost the menu button (honestly the most used button on all my other phones).
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Click to collapse
You never lost the menu button, it's just not on screen 100% of the time anymore, where it would just waste space otherwise.
I think its great idea!
Another few things that would be cool to see would be, resizing the Navigation Bar to be maybe a little thinner, and being able to slide the nav bar left or right, to reveal a icons to launch other apps, and maybe swiping down to hide the navbar all together.
Like you said being able to customize android and change every aspect of it is what makes this OS so awesome.
You guys ever use gesture area on webOS phones? Much better than using back key, would be a great idea. It also used visual feedback so a white line would go in the swipe direction. Currently the only phone using something similar to this is the N9 probably, which has swiping through the sides of screen to control apps.
I was just thinking about WebOS when reading this as well. Would be nice.
Just having the soft keys area as a gesture area? cool!
Maybe you could customize your gestures?
A big thing to me would be the ability to have a fully loaded package and be able to switch between stock softkeys, added search/menu softkeys, and gestures. Everything customizeable by user rather than through flashing?
menu bar like in windows 8
I think gesture is pretty good, but i`d like to see menu bar(home, recent, etc) like in win8: it is hidden until you swype from bottom-outside up, than it become unhidden. see any wideo with windows 8 tablert, you`ll see what i mean.
MrBIMC said:
I think gesture is pretty good, but i`d like to see menu bar(home, recent, etc) like in win8: it is hidden until you swype from bottom-outside up, than it become unhidden. see any wideo with windows 8 tablert, you`ll see what i mean.
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That would get annoying pretty quickly. I don't want to have to add extra steps to navigate my phone. Back, home and recent app are buttons you use all the time, why add a barrier to get to em? More screen real estate isn't worth the extra hassle.
Enhanced said:
That would get annoying pretty quickly. I don't want to have to add extra steps to navigate my phone. Back, home and recent app are buttons you use all the time, why add a barrier to get to em? More screen real estate isn't worth the extra hassle.
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Click to collapse
How about navigational controls similar to the quick controls in the stock browser? Touch the bottom edge of the screen and out pops a semi-radial menu that can contain: back, home, recent apps, menu, search and can be used to add quick shortcuts to your most used apps like messaging, contacts, browser, etc., or app specific commands, like say refresh for browser, check mail for, well, email, and so on. Touching the edge requires less effort and movement as compared to swiping up or down.
I came to Android from webOS after HP shot themselves in the foot several times and one of the things I miss most is the gesture bar you had at the bottom of the screen. With the advent of the soft button area in ICS I see a real option to enable the area to work in a similar fashion. Hell yes!
The webOS gestures were:
A single swipe up would show you your running apps.
Swiping 2 fingers up would show you the launcher (app drawer).
A leftward swipe would go back.
A full swipe across the entire area going either right or left would take you to the next or previous running app.
Besides the wireless charging, the gesture area was one of the webOS killer features you very quickly learned to take for-granted. So long as gesture detection was implemented well I don't see why you couldn't have the soft buttons as they are now and gestures all working at the same time.
Call me old fashioned, but I also don't like the gestures idea.
Dolphin is just about the only program on android that I have tried to use gestures with, and it's not the sort of feature i'd personally like integrated into my phone.
That said, customizing how different people can use their phones, within the same operating system, so two people can use the exact same phone in two totally different ways, is the way to go
j.go said:
How about navigational controls similar to the quick controls in the stock browser? Touch the bottom edge of the screen and out pops a semi-radial menu that can contain: back, home, recent apps, menu, search and can be used to add quick shortcuts to your most used apps like messaging, contacts, browser, etc., or app specific commands, like say refresh for browser, check mail for, well, email, and so on. Touching the edge requires less effort and movement as compared to swiping up or down.
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Click to collapse
I like your idea of having the pie control from the stock browser available all over android. I had the idea a while back but was just too lazy to implement it. Today I did a small working prototype and I think I will add the pie control feature to my gesture app "LMT"...
good idea but put ot optionaly! maybe it is not practical ! iwould rather hidden button ! like Video player amaing full screen with hidden buttons !!
Huntlaar said:
good idea but put ot optionaly! maybe it is not practical ! iwould rather hidden button ! like Video player amaing full screen with hidden buttons !!
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Click to collapse
If implemented properly, you might be able to do away with the bottom bar and take advantage of the full screen. You can't see it with the nexus browser, but if you have a tablet running ICS and enable browser quick controls, the app hides the tabs and address bar, instantly adding an inch of usable screen real estate at the top.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
The big nasty problem with having hidden buttons or, for that matter, any trigger point area(s) on the devices main screen is you'll always end up triggering something when you didn't want to or it interferes with a ui element in one or more apps e.g. game scroll bars / buttons. I've tried plenty and they all interfered with one app or another to the point I stopped using them.
The quick controls idea is fine but you're still having to watch what you're doing. The beauty of gestures in webOS was that you wouldn't have to take your eyes of what you were doing to find a button - your finger just flicked below the screen content while your eyes looked towards what you were going to do next.
I realise it's hard to imagine if you've never done it before but (weak analogy approaching...) think of it like walking up a thin and narrow set of steps as opposed to thick wide ones while trying to read a book. On the narrow steps you have to look down to hit the next step thus breaking the flow of your reading. While on the bigger wider ones you can carry on reading as the step is big enough your foot can find it without taking your eyes of your book.
Anyroad, IMHO, gestures need to be out of the way of app content so as not to interfere with app usage patterns and shouldn't require the user to take their eyes off what they're doing.

REQUEST: keyboard touchpad

HELLO EVERYONE,
I've been an iphone user since smartphones came out and I just recently purchased a S3 and I'm really enjoying it. I love the added buttons at the bottom that aid a lot in navigating. I love the open platform and the ease of customization. The only real negative is the painful process in order to edit text. God forbid you make a couple mistakes way back in the sentence. My big fingers are having a hard time selecting text and correcting mistakes. The best mod I used on a jailbroken iphone is a mod called swipeselection. Its composed of a hidden touchpad that takes up no real estate on your screen. You type your message normally and if you have to move the cursor all you have to do it swipe left and right on the keyboard. Also highlighting text is a breeze, you just have to hold down the shift key on the keyboard and swipe left or right to highlight the text. Its so simple and saves so much time. I would be willing to pay $$$ if someone could port this over to android. What do you guys think? Check out the youtube link swipeselection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSzg0r05Eg8
DG

App: All in one Gestures (without Root)

A large tablet comes with the price of greater hand/arm travel distance when working with the screen. I am by no means complaining any sore elbows here. But it does take some getting used to, especially for those coming from smaller (7" - 8") tablets. Over and over again when my hand moves up and down between the screen and the (home and capacitive) buttons, I can't help but wish I had multi-touch gestures like on an iPad.
If my GNP were rooted, GMD Gestures would have solved my problem. But I am not ready to trip that stupid Knox counter yet. So here we are.
I came across this app called All in one Gesture. It doesn't have multi-touch, but at least some simple 'swiping from edges' functions.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phoenixstudios.aiogestures
Let me share with you my experience on working with this app. First, after installation, you need to enable the app under Accessibility in Settings before you can activate/use the gestures. But soon, Android will warn you of disabling a whole bunch of functions as a result, including Multi window. See attachment.
The good news is, some of those functions can be re-enabled to work with All-in-one-Gesture without issues. I tested Multi window, Air view and Direct pen input and they all seemed to be working fine after re-enabling. (I don't use the others, but I suspect some other ones would work too). But you should exercise cautious when doing so. For example, Multi window requires swiping from right edge to activate; and so I should not use the swiping from right edge gesture. Currently, I only use swiping from left for the 'back' function, and swiping from bottom for the 'home' function.
The Back and Home functions are universal in all apps; e.g., they will work in Chrome browser, where I can swipe from left edge to go back to previous page, and swipe from bottom to exit app.
I also changed some settings in All in one Gestures. For example, I made the 'Edge Width' longer under 'Edge Preference', and also made the touch area transparent under 'Transparency and Color'. There are also settings for tweaking the swipe area and sensitivity. I haven't played with them to much, but they may become useful for certain games to avoid accidentally triggering the actions.
ikeny said:
A large tablet comes with the price of greater hand/arm travel distance when working with the screen. I am by no means complaining any sore elbows here. But it does take some getting used to, especially for those coming from smaller (7" - 8") tablets. Over and over again when my hand moves up and down between the screen and the (home and capacitive) buttons, I can't help but wish I had multi-touch gestures like on an iPad.
If my GNP were rooted, GMD Gestures would have solved my problem. But I am not ready to trip that stupid Knox counter yet. So here we are.
I came across this app called All in one Gesture. It doesn't have multi-touch, but at least some simple 'swiping from edges' functions.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phoenixstudios.aiogestures
Let me share with you my experience on working with this app. First, after installation, you need to enable the app under Accessibility in Settings before you can activate/use the gestures. But soon, Android will warn you of disabling a whole bunch of functions as a result, including Multi window. See attachment.
The good news is, some of those functions can be re-enabled to work with All-in-one-Gesture without issues. I tested Multi window, Air view and Direct pen input and they all seemed to be working fine after re-enabling. (I don't use the others, but I suspect some other ones would work too). But you should exercise cautious when doing so. For example, Multi window requires swiping from right edge to activate; and so I should not use the swiping from right edge gesture. Currently, I only use swiping from left for the 'back' function, and swiping from bottom for the 'home' function.
The Back and Home functions are universal in all apps; e.g., they will work in Chrome browser, where I can swipe from left edge to go back to previous page, and swipe from bottom to exit app.
I also changed some settings in All in one Gestures. For example, I made the 'Edge Width' longer under 'Edge Preference', and also made the touch area transparent under 'Transparency and Color'. There are also settings for tweaking the swipe area and sensitivity. I haven't played with them to much, but they may become useful for certain games to avoid accidentally triggering the actions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! Sounds interesting! Will try this asap!
i found it today and it's very close to the perfect app i was looking for!
has anyone noticed a degrade in battery life? which are your views?

Use touch interface with a mouse

is there any way of using the mouse to simulate touch across windows 8.1?
i find the touch behavior to be way more fluid than the mouse behavior of windows and would like to be able to make widows think my clicks and drags are touch events.
(possibly even having right click as a single touch pinch to zoom).
all full screen apps and the start screen just screams "drag scroll me!" and it never works when i try ^^
when you connect a mouse to an android device you can touch with clicks and i'd like that to work in windows too.
besides i'm pretty sure some devs would love to use it for debugging^^

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