A better iPad keyboard
rosscarter.com
rosscarter.com
In this new scheme I'd be learning a new movement for each capitalization and special character. Seems like it will be a while before I'd become nearly as proficient as I am now (65wpm).
Also, adding flicks (especially downwards ones) to all of the keys seems like a recipe for wrist strain.
There are some interesting ideas in this post, and I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement on the iOS keyboards, but this isn't it. In the end I think it just boils down to needing practice.
And yes: I'm biased. My buddy and I buuilt an iOS typing trainer called TapTyping. We have seen people get some pretty impressive results:
(Not so) Breaking news: New things take some getting used to.
If you really managed to memorize three separate keyboards (regular, numeric, symbols) and all of the tap/hold options they have, props to you. But, memorizing three keyboards isn't something I've managed to do -- even after using iOS pretty much since the original iPhone first came out. But, I'd personally rather just have it all right there on screen, without having to hunt a key down.
I'm coming from the perspective that you shouldn't be looking at the keyboard when you type- virtual or not. Instead you are relying on robotic muscle memory to generate a specific character.
So in my view there's a lot more new stuff to get used to in the author's proposed scheme. We would be memorizing a distinct set of finger motions for every distinct symbol as opposed to a fixed set of taps to certain positions on the keyboard - some with one or more preceding modifier keys (that are always at the same keyboard position).
Apple took advantage of the iPhone to rearrange some parts of the keyboard. Ross is taking advantage of the larger key size on the iPad to do the same and (as far as I can tell) to scale back from having to memorize three different keyboards (thats not including the non-standard-but-still-available Email, URL, etc keyboard).
And honestly? It sounds like you don't want to have to learn something new again. Which is fine. But it doesn't make Ross's keyboard bad in any way, like you're claiming.
I would LOVE to try out the author's keyboard. It's great that someone is at least trying to push touch screen typing forward. I remain skeptical that this form of text input could be faster or safer for your wrists- but it COULD be more enjoyable to use for short typing sessions which is also important.
I haven't been able to separate the two on the iPhone/iPad; they're both on the same screen and relate to what I'm doing at that exact instant.
I would LOVE to try out the author's keyboard.
If you like, email me your UDID and I'll email you back with the demo app the author provides. Or maybe a build of Mobile Colloquy (an IRC client) with this, if I have time to hack it together.
Here's one way -- it's certainly bad to have UPPERcase be a DOWNward flick.
Perhaps he thought he wanted numbers above the lowercase letters on the top row to look something more like a real keyboard, but it's silly for the alphabet.
> "And honestly? It sounds like you don't want to have to learn something new again."
It seems this keyboard is chiefly for the sake of not learning any keyboard. Learn at least one, then complain about someone not wanting to learn another.
// I touch type qwerty, azerty, and qwertz. I've got nothing against learning punctuation on new layouts. If the goal is applying something new to make "hunting and pecking" easier, this system is great: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITALY
Well, yes. But, you would have to unlearn the idea of switching between keyboards on the iPad to get used to flicking between keys ;)
Customers want a new tool/app/service to solve problems, not create new ones.
If you don't know, Ross Carter makes Pagehand (http://pagehand.com) for Mac. Its a very nice text layout app that fills the gap of being somewhere between TextEdit and Pages.app. I don't know if he's porting it to iOS, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's thought a lot about it and the best way to enter text.
Anyway, this is progress. It's the first non-Apple keyboard for an iOS out there. It pushes iOS input forward into another direction (something that Apple really hasn't done much of, for US text input).
Here's another one that's helpful: If you want to type just one character that's on the numerical keyboard, don't just tap the ".?123" button, tap and hold then drag to the key you'd like to press. This selects that key, then immediately returns you to the alpha keyboard.
Apple did not implement this keyboard on an iPad, though. I assume because it would be pretty awkward to use in a full-sized keyboard layout. (E.g. target for full two hands vs. thumb)
So much so, that it makes you almost regret having to type English messages.
The main reason they can get away with this is because the consonants in the language are so regular. The only real exceptions are the single "n" sound and a few rarely used "y" consonants. It would be harder to do in english.
My biggest grips is 'n'. I keep conjoining words with n because it seems as though I hit that rather than space. Then autocorrect makes matters worse is that it figures it out and rather than breaking the words, it instead keeps the last word and drops the first. This is harder to spot when proofing than if it had just left the conjoined word alone.
I mainly use the blackberry for anything typing heavy.
Decades later, totally different technology, and you brought up that memory. Plus ça change and all that.
From dim, distant memory, every one of the 255 characters had a sound mapped to it, though surely I'm misremembering since there are only about 40 distinct phonemes in English.
I just remembered that it was called SAM, and here's the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth Ah, memories...
for a touch typist the keyboard wouldn't even need to be visible, as setting all fingers down again would reset to your current finger locations. Just showing the keys as they are pressed may be sufficient.
Adjusting your fingers to the home row could be difficult. I have had the fingerworks keyboards ever since they came out which has tactile dot's to re-adjust your fingers to the home row. Switching so that the keyboard home row moves to where your fingers are seems like a way to avoid the looking at the keyboard on the screen.
Although since the fingerworks wasn't a wild success, this keyboard app would probably be just for a nitch userbase.
That said, I doubt this is a independent-developer possibility. Alternative keyboards for iOS have, thus far, been limited to their own app, such as ShapeWriter as there is no way to implement them system-wide.. you can copy and paste and what not, but it's far from convenient.
It seems that the Caps Lock idea should not be limited to the upper and lower cases. I would propose that a two finger swipe in any direction could shift the keyboard and replace the primary key faces.
Flick a single key with one finger to type from the alternate characters in that direction.
Double flick up, right, down or left to shift-lock in the chosen direction. Shift-locking consecutively in the same direction would cycle in order.
A two finger tap could return to default.
Minor Note: This is a holdover from the iPhone keyboard which has no punctuation marks on the main letter keyboard. I'm not sure whether it's better to keep the symbols the same or not but I can certainly understand why Apple would have the somewhat redundant symbols on the button.
Surprisingly, if you look at the date of the post, it was originally written on April 23rd, 2010, a few weeks after the iPad was released.
Fitaly is designed to minimize single finger travel: