New 1.1.4.29 side swipe animation is less useful
asked 2015-05-26 02:38:42 +0200
I'm afraid I don't like the new "hard" side swipe animation that was introduced in 1.1.4.29, and I much preferred the older animation which faded in more gradually and gracefully.
Probably my main use for a side swipe is not actually for app switching (that comes second), but to swipe in just enough that I can see what the current time is, how strong my network signal is, how much battery life I have left, etc.
It certainly seemed to be the case with the old swipe animation that I barely had to swipe in at all to make the display fade through just enough to be able to see the time, etc. It now seems to be the case that I have to move my finger about 1/4 of the way across the screen before the display starts to fade through at all. Possibly this might not actually be the case, but it certainly "seemed" that a small swipe was more responsive over just a short distance than the new one.
On a related note, I find the boring hard edge of the new side swipe quite aesthetically unpleasing: would it be possible to make the "edge" of the swipe slightly contoured and textured/bevelled perhaps in a similar way to the pulley-menu edge? This would give more of an impression that you are actually interacting with a part of an interface, rather than what looks more like some kind of display "glitch" (almost as if two screen modes had clashed and caused graphic card corruption!). Similarly, I feel it would be help to have a small "gripper" on the edge of the on-screen keyboard, to give a better indication of where you need to drag it from when you want to hide the keyboard? I suspect that it may go against the Jolla design style to some extent, but I am not a fan of interfaces that are "too" hidden: new users do need some sort of indication as to which parts can be clicked, moved, etc..?