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Ahoy! Me and many others seem to think that the issue of having a maximum of only two cover actions is one that simply has to be addressed. There have been discussions about dividing the covers in four parts, swiping them up and down as well as to the sides, pinching them, and even "swirling" them (whatever that is :P). Deeming from all the creative ideas popping up all over the place it stands clear that the users love the cover actions and therefore want moar of them!

The best alternative to date in my opinion was from dez. He suggested a vertical menu appearing when you swipe a cover. While it probably would be functional, in my opinion it doesn't seem elegant enough for Sailfish.

My idea is to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions. I mean, why not? This is how it's supposed to work: Activate an active cover by swiping it, just like you do now, and the screen divides itself into different zones, each zone corresponding to a given cover action. Simply move your finger to the area representing your desired cover action and release to select it.

The issue is how to divide the screen. This depends on two things: how many cover actions do you want, and where is the active cover you are currently using situated?

The most obvious division is to turn all other smart covers into cover-action-surfaces (fig 1). The second most obvious division is to subdivide (subdivision = splitting a surface into four equal parts) the screen once or twice, yielding 4 or 16(!) smart cover action surfaces (fig 2). I made some other designs in fig 3 and 4 which are completely arbitrary, and just serve as examples of how you might implement the idea.

By now, you might think that this will be too slow, but considering that more cover actions means entering apps less often, there is no doubt you will gain in speed on average (because entering an app takes sooo much longer than moving your finger an extra inch). What's more, the fewer cover actions you need the larger the surfaces may be, controlling the loss in speed.

So yeah, I made some absolutely horrid concept pictures, if you can even call them that... to illustrate my idea. Note that each color represents an action. And the activated cover is the one with black borders.

So what do you guys think? Is this idea completely crazy for some reason I'm too stupid to understand or could I be onto something? Or are other peoples ideas better? Or maybe you yourself have an even better idea? Or should things simply be left as-is? Let me know below!

Ahoy! Me and many others seem to think that the issue of having a maximum of only two cover actions is one that simply has to be addressed. There have been discussions about dividing the covers in four parts, swiping them up and down as well as to the sides, pinching them, and even "swirling" them (whatever that is :P). Deeming from all the creative ideas popping up all over the place it stands clear that the users love the cover actions and therefore want moar of them!

The best alternative to date in my opinion was from dez. He suggested a vertical menu appearing when you swipe a cover. While it probably would be functional, in my opinion it doesn't seem elegant enough for Sailfish.

My idea is to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions. I mean, why not? This is how it's supposed to work: Activate an active cover by swiping it, just like you do now, and the screen divides itself into different zones, each zone corresponding to a given cover action. Simply move your finger to the area representing your desired cover action and release to select it.

The issue is how to divide the screen. This depends on two things: how many cover actions do you want, and where is the active cover you are currently using situated?

The most obvious division is to turn all other smart covers into cover-action-surfaces (fig 1). The second most obvious division is to subdivide (subdivision = splitting a surface into four equal parts) the screen once or twice, yielding 4 or 16(!) smart cover action surfaces (fig 2). I made some other designs in fig 3 and 4 which are completely arbitrary, and just serve as examples of how you might implement the idea.

By now, you might think that this will be too slow, but considering that more cover actions means entering apps less often, there is no doubt you will gain in speed on average (because entering an app takes sooo much longer than moving your finger an extra inch). What's more, the fewer cover actions you need the larger the surfaces may be, controlling the loss in speed.

So yeah, I made some absolutely horrid concept pictures, if you can even call them that... to illustrate my idea. Note that each color represents an action. And the activated cover is the one with black borders.

So what do you guys think? Is this idea completely crazy for some reason I'm too stupid to understand or could I be onto something? Or are other peoples ideas better? Or maybe you yourself have an even better idea? Or should things simply be left as-is? Let me know below!

Ahoy! Me and many others seem to think that the issue of having a maximum of only two cover actions is one that simply has to be addressed. There have been discussions about dividing the covers in four parts, swiping them up and down as well as to the sides, pinching them, and even "swirling" them (whatever that is :P). Deeming from all the creative ideas popping up all over the place it stands clear that the users love the cover actions and therefore want moar of them!

The best alternative to date in my opinion was from dez. He suggested a vertical menu appearing when you swipe a cover. While it probably would be functional, in my opinion it doesn't seem elegant enough for Sailfish.

My idea is to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions. I mean, why not? This is how it's supposed to work: Activate an active cover by swiping it, just like you do now, and the screen divides itself into different zones, each zone corresponding to a given cover action. Simply move your finger to the area representing your desired cover action and release to select it.

The issue is how to divide the screen. This depends on two things: how many cover actions do you want, and where is the active cover you are currently using situated?

The most obvious division is to turn all other smart covers into cover-action-surfaces (fig 1). The second most obvious division is to subdivide (subdivision = splitting a surface into four equal parts) the screen once or twice, yielding 4 or 16(!) smart cover action surfaces (fig 2). I made some other designs in fig 3 and 4 which are completely arbitrary, and just serve as examples of how you might implement the idea.

By now, you might think that this will be too slow, but considering that more cover actions means entering apps less often, there is no doubt you will gain in speed on average (because entering an app takes sooo much longer than moving your finger an extra inch). What's more, the fewer cover actions you need the larger the surfaces may be, controlling the loss in speed.

So yeah, I made some absolutely horrid concept pictures, if you can even call them that... to illustrate my idea. Note that each color represents an action. And the activated cover is the one with black borders.

So what do you guys think? Is this idea completely crazy for some reason I'm too stupid to understand or could I be onto something? Or are other peoples ideas better? Or maybe you yourself have an even better idea? Or should things simply be left as-is? Let me know below!

This is the original post, skip it and scroll down for a better idea

Ahoy! Me and many others seem to think that the issue of having a maximum of only two cover actions is one that simply has to be addressed. There have been discussions about dividing the covers in four parts, swiping them up and down as well as to the sides, pinching them, and even "swirling" them (whatever that is :P). Deeming from all the creative ideas popping up all over the place it stands clear that the users love the cover actions and therefore want moar of them!

The best alternative to date in my opinion was from dez. He suggested a vertical menu appearing when you swipe a cover. While it probably would be functional, in my opinion it doesn't seem elegant enough for Sailfish.

My idea is to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions. I mean, why not? This is how it's supposed to work: Activate an active cover by swiping it, just like you do now, and the screen divides itself into different zones, each zone corresponding to a given cover action. Simply move your finger to the area representing your desired cover action and release to select it.

The issue is how to divide the screen. This depends on two things: how many cover actions do you want, and where is the active cover you are currently using situated?

The most obvious division is to turn all other smart covers into cover-action-surfaces (fig 1). The second most obvious division is to subdivide (subdivision = splitting a surface into four equal parts) the screen once or twice, yielding 4 or 16(!) smart cover action surfaces (fig 2). I made some other designs in fig 3 and 4 which are completely arbitrary, and just serve as examples of how you might implement the idea.

By now, you might think that this will be too slow, but considering that more cover actions means entering apps less often, there is no doubt you will gain in speed on average (because entering an app takes sooo much longer than moving your finger an extra inch). What's more, the fewer cover actions you need the larger the surfaces may be, controlling the loss in speed.

So yeah, I made some absolutely horrid concept pictures, if you can even call them that... to illustrate my idea. Note that each color represents an action. And the activated cover is the one with black borders.

So what do you guys think? Is this idea completely crazy for some reason I'm too stupid to understand or could I be onto something? Or are other peoples ideas better? Or maybe you yourself have an even better idea? Or should things simply be left as-is? Let me know below!

A better idea

Ok, so the big flaw with the idea above (to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions) is that you have to move your thumb/finger all over the screen in order to select the actions. But I came up with a simple way to avoid this problem, illustrated by these two pictures:

Ok, so what happens here? The user swipes right on the active cover in the middle. This turns all the other active covers into option symbols. The movement of the finger, thumb, represented by the darker, shorter arrows, is leveraged by a constant >1. This "leveraged" movement, represented by the longer, lighter arrows, enables the user to quickly navigate among the different actions. In this case the user reaches the flight mode option. When the leveraged movement vector reaches an area, the area lights up, and the user can choose to select it by simply releasing the screen. In this case, however, the user didn't want to activate flight mode, but moved his/her thumb upwards a bit in order to "reach" bluetooth (it was the leveraged vector that reached the bluetooth area -- the user's thumb is still basically on top of the active cover of the settings app, as indicated by the darker arrow).

This might sound elaborate when described like this but I would think that the thumb movement illustrated above would be almost diagonal and only a fraction slower than a regular action cover swipe. The most complicated of swipes using this systems would mean c-shaped swipes, still taking no more than half a second. And obviously if you just wanted wifi or flight mode, it would be the exact same procedure as today.

Using the whole screen estate for cover actions together with leveraging has the following advantages:
1. Up to eight cover options (or more, if you choose other kinds of screen divisions, see original post).
2. Small amounts of thumb movement (the greater the leverage/constant the smaller the physical movement).
3. Great visibility since your finger is not in the way of what you are doing.
4. Hassle related to selecting actions scales linearly with amount of cover options (for example, having just two options means everything would function exactly as it does today, (I have a simple solution for covers in corners, in case you were wondering)).

These are the tradeoffs that I can currently think of: The largest one is that depending on where the cover you activate is situated you will have to move your finger differently, and consequently won't be able to learn by heart which swipes does what for which application. For me, this is not a problem because I wouldn't bother learning that anyway, I just want quick and easy access to many cover actions. Another tradeoff is that since other active covers will turn into big fat icons, you won't be able to see what's going on with them the split second it takes you to select your cover action. To me this is a non-issue. I bet you guys can come up with many more tradeoffs :X

Please let me know what you think by commenting and voting and stuff!

This is the original post, skip it and scroll down for a better idea

Ahoy! Me and many others seem to think that the issue of having a maximum of only two cover actions is one that simply has to be addressed. There have been discussions about dividing the covers in four parts, swiping them up and down as well as to the sides, pinching them, and even "swirling" them (whatever that is :P). Deeming from all the creative ideas popping up all over the place it stands clear that the users love the cover actions and therefore want moar of them!

The best alternative to date in my opinion was from dez. He suggested a vertical menu appearing when you swipe a cover. While it probably would be functional, in my opinion it doesn't seem elegant enough for Sailfish.

My idea is to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions. I mean, why not? This is how it's supposed to work: Activate an active cover by swiping it, just like you do now, and the screen divides itself into different zones, each zone corresponding to a given cover action. Simply move your finger to the area representing your desired cover action and release to select it.

The issue is how to divide the screen. This depends on two things: how many cover actions do you want, and where is the active cover you are currently using situated?

The most obvious division is to turn all other smart covers into cover-action-surfaces (fig 1). The second most obvious division is to subdivide (subdivision = splitting a surface into four equal parts) the screen once or twice, yielding 4 or 16(!) smart cover action surfaces (fig 2). I made some other designs in fig 3 and 4 which are completely arbitrary, and just serve as examples of how you might implement the idea.

By now, you might think that this will be too slow, but considering that more cover actions means entering apps less often, there is no doubt you will gain in speed on average (because entering an app takes sooo much longer than moving your finger an extra inch). What's more, the fewer cover actions you need the larger the surfaces may be, controlling the loss in speed.

So yeah, I made some absolutely horrid concept pictures, if you can even call them that... to illustrate my idea. Note that each color represents an action. And the activated cover is the one with black borders.

So what do you guys think? Is this idea completely crazy for some reason I'm too stupid to understand or could I be onto something? Or are other peoples ideas better? Or maybe you yourself have an even better idea? Or should things simply be left as-is? Let me know below!

A better idea

Ok, so the big flaw with the idea above (to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions) is that you have to move your thumb/finger all over the screen in order to select the actions. But I came up with a simple way to avoid this problem, illustrated by these two pictures:

Ok, so what happens here? The user swipes right on the active cover in the middle. This turns all the other active covers into option symbols. The movement of the thumb, represented by the darker, shorter arrows, is leveraged by a constant >1. This "leveraged" movement, represented by the longer, lighter arrows, enables the user to quickly navigate among the different actions. In this case the user reaches the flight mode option. When the leveraged movement vector reaches an area, the area lights up, and the user can choose to select it by simply releasing the screen. In this case, however, the user didn't want to activate flight mode, but moved his/her thumb upwards a bit in order to "reach" bluetooth (it was the leveraged vector that reached the bluetooth area -- the user's thumb is still basically on top of the active cover of the settings app, as indicated by the darker arrow).

This might sound elaborate when described like this but I would think that the thumb movement illustrated above would be almost diagonal and only a fraction slower than a regular action cover swipe. The most complicated of swipes using this systems would mean c-shaped swipes, still taking no more than half a second. And obviously if you just wanted wifi or flight mode, it would be the exact same procedure as today.

Using the whole screen estate for cover actions together with leveraging has the following advantages:
1. Up to eight cover options (or more, if you choose other kinds of screen divisions, see original post).
2. Small amounts of thumb movement (the greater the leverage/constant the smaller the physical movement).
3. Great visibility since your finger is not in the way of what you are doing.
4. Hassle related to selecting actions scales linearly with amount of cover options (for example, having just two options means everything would function exactly as it does today, (I have a simple solution for covers in corners, in case you were wondering)).

These are the tradeoffs that I can currently think of: The largest one is that depending on where the cover you activate is situated you will have to move your finger differently, and consequently won't be able to learn by heart which swipes does what for which application. For me, this is not a problem because I wouldn't bother learning that anyway, I just want quick and easy access to many cover actions. Another tradeoff is that since other active covers will turn into big fat icons, you won't be able to see what's going on with them the split second it takes you to select your cover action. To me this is a non-issue. I bet you guys can come up with many more tradeoffs :X

Please let me know what you think by commenting and voting and stuff!

This is the original post, skip it and scroll down for a better idea

Ahoy! Me and many others seem to think that the issue of having a maximum of only two cover actions is one that simply has to be addressed. There have been discussions about dividing the covers in four parts, swiping them up and down as well as to the sides, pinching them, and even "swirling" them (whatever that is :P). Deeming from all the creative ideas popping up all over the place it stands clear that the users love the cover actions and therefore want moar of them!

The best alternative to date in my opinion was from dez. He suggested a vertical menu appearing when you swipe a cover. While it probably would be functional, in my opinion it doesn't seem elegant enough for Sailfish.

My idea is to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions. I mean, why not? This is how it's supposed to work: Activate an active cover by swiping it, just like you do now, and the screen divides itself into different zones, each zone corresponding to a given cover action. Simply move your finger to the area representing your desired cover action and release to select it.

The issue is how to divide the screen. This depends on two things: how many cover actions do you want, and where is the active cover you are currently using situated?

The most obvious division is to turn all other smart covers into cover-action-surfaces (fig 1). The second most obvious division is to subdivide (subdivision = splitting a surface into four equal parts) the screen once or twice, yielding 4 or 16(!) smart cover action surfaces (fig 2). I made some other designs in fig 3 and 4 which are completely arbitrary, and just serve as examples of how you might implement the idea.

By now, you might think that this will be too slow, but considering that more cover actions means entering apps less often, there is no doubt you will gain in speed on average (because entering an app takes sooo much longer than moving your finger an extra inch). What's more, the fewer cover actions you need the larger the surfaces may be, controlling the loss in speed.

So yeah, I made some absolutely horrid concept pictures, if you can even call them that... to illustrate my idea. Note that each color represents an action. And the activated cover is the one with black borders.

So what do you guys think? Is this idea completely crazy for some reason I'm too stupid to understand or could I be onto something? Or are other peoples ideas better? Or maybe you yourself have an even better idea? Or should things simply be left as-is? Let me know below!

A better idea

Ok, so the big flaw with the idea above (to use the whole screen estate for active cover actions) is that you have to move your thumb/finger all over the screen in order to select the actions. But I came up with a simple way to avoid this problem, illustrated by these two pictures: pictures:

Ok, so what happens here? The user swipes right on the active cover in the middle. This turns all the other active covers into option symbols. The movement of the thumb, represented by the darker, shorter arrows, is leveraged by a constant >1. This "leveraged" movement, represented by the longer, lighter arrows, enables the user to quickly navigate among the different actions. In this case the user reaches the flight mode option. When the leveraged movement vector reaches an area, the area lights up, and the user can choose to select it by simply releasing the screen. In this case, however, the user didn't want to activate flight mode, but moved his/her thumb upwards a bit in order to "reach" bluetooth (it was the leveraged vector that reached the bluetooth area -- the user's thumb is still basically on top of the active cover of the settings app, as indicated by the darker arrow).

This might sound elaborate when described like this but I would think that the thumb movement illustrated above would be almost diagonal and only a fraction slower than a regular action cover swipe. The most complicated of swipes using this systems would mean c-shaped swipes, still taking no more than half a second. And obviously if you just wanted wifi or flight mode, it would be the exact same procedure as today.

Using the whole screen estate for cover actions together with leveraging has the following advantages:
1. Up to eight cover options (or more, if you choose other kinds of screen divisions, see original post).
2. Small amounts of thumb movement (the greater the leverage/constant the smaller the physical movement).
3. Great visibility since your finger is not in the way of what you are doing.
4. Hassle related to selecting actions scales linearly with amount of cover options (for example, having just two options means everything would function exactly as it does today, (I have a simple solution for covers in corners, in case you were wondering)).

These are the tradeoffs that I can currently think of: The largest one is that depending on where the cover you activate is situated you will have to move your finger differently, and consequently won't be able to learn by heart which swipes does what for which application. For me, this is not a problem because I wouldn't bother learning that anyway, I just want quick and easy access to many cover actions. Another tradeoff is that since other active covers will turn into big fat icons, you won't be able to see what's going on with them the split second it takes you to select your cover action. To me this is a non-issue. I bet you guys can come up with many more tradeoffs :X

Please let me know what you think by commenting and voting and stuff!

Hello! This is an idea for many smart cover actions!