[feature request] Make all gestures fully configurable

asked 2015-03-16 18:15:46 +0300

Odorobo gravatar image

updated 2015-03-18 09:50:42 +0300

Let user change and add gestures through a special menu.
As gestures are Jolla Phone's main control element the possibility to make them personally comfortable would suit people who say "this new gesture is bad, don't apply it" as well as those who say "this new gesture is good, please apply it".
As example of the awesomeness of this feature imagine setting a corner-based gesture: 4 gestures from corner to center and 4 from center to corner would result in 8 always available shortcuts - simple and effective. Or another gesture: swiping left edge of the screen up and down which gives us 2 more (right edge is usually occupied by scroll bar in case somebody uses it; using top and bottom edges does not seem convenient for me). And so on as imagination is the only limitation here.
This could also benefit the device in other ways like letting system refine reading of the gestures through adapting to user's finger thickness or even time user spends on some specific swipe. (Here i had a thought about some cool security system based on user recognition methods like this and mountains of work required for it's creation, lots of time for it's debugging and adjusting to a specific user. Brb copyrighting it :)

Lower are written some thoughts about implementation of this feature.
- Creation of the new gesture should be made in some basic graphical editor.
- There should be nine control points with according zones (or like this) in the pattern recognition system mostly for distinguishing a gesture from a scroll. Central point should be a bit bigger than others; it should be crossed by a line that divides upper and bottom halves of the screen. I think Jolla already has something like this.
- System must message user if the gesture he is trying to create resembles existing one or a swipe too much, possibly lighting up problematic parts with red.
- User should be able to test new gesture before tapping final "Save" button. System then should ask a user to repeat the result a couple times showing some simple "✓" and "x" or (more practical as the test may take the whole screen) a red or green LED lights.
- There have to be a pop-up window asking "Your gesture touches an edge of the screen. Should this edge be included in the new gesture? Y/N". This would allow greater diversification of options.
- It would be really cool if it would be possible to bind anything to a gesture, be it an app or a change in settings or shell command or lock/unlock or anything else.
- Single gesture should be able to run one or more tasks in a simultaneous or consecutive order. For consecutive tasks there should be "Cancel" order.
- If a gesture is a shortcut for an app there may be a pop-up "Tap to confirm opening app_name". This is potentially annoying so there should be a switch to turn this notification on/off.
- Idea honestly stolen from this thread: using two fingers swipe.

If you too have an idea about user interface or something else then feel free to add it.

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Comments

3

and maybe make the defaults "from outside to inside" configurable as well

PatsJolla ( 2015-03-16 18:21:08 +0300 )edit

yep that's what i thought
would be awesome

Odorobo ( 2015-03-16 18:24:11 +0300 )edit
4

As much as that would possibly satisfy all users, I suspect it would make the UI code extremely complicated and a nightmare to maintain...

thisisme ( 2015-03-16 18:55:42 +0300 )edit
4

@thisisme, that is why it's important to have system accepting only simple gestures like the ones i've described. I'm no fan of drawing spirals and hexagons as a shortcut myself but maybe somebody is.
I am mostly noob in coding but adding more patterns to the background app that traces them can't eat up much resource in my opinion. Maybe limit amount of these gestures.

Odorobo ( 2015-03-16 19:03:39 +0300 )edit
1

I like the idea of configurable swipe gestures, but i really do not understand what you mean by that new gestures. What movement is "from center to corner"? I mean I understand by from center to corner a scroll and this might be really confusing...

NuklearFart ( 2015-03-16 22:00:54 +0300 )edit