[Sigia-l] Tog on iPhone

[Will Parker]

On Jan 16, 2007, at 10:14 PM, tOM Trottier wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 0:42,
> Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote
>
> Yep, Tog confirms that the iPhone is just perfect for the dumb/rich  
> market quadrant.
> Cool, simple, visionary crippled interface. A better iPod

Thanks very much for your guidance, but I'll wait 'til I get my hands  
on the thing itself to decide whether I'm dumb and rich enough to buy  
one. I probably qualify on both axes, but I want to be really, really  
sure about that.

> I also wonder how the iPhone will work with wide web pages - unlike  
> the NYT/CNN narrow
> columns - with hardcoded column widths... Reformat? Greek text?  
> Incomplete lines? Scroll
> sideways with finger?

Wide web pages? Heck, those suck raw sewage on regular browsers with  
screens under 1600px wide -- which means that the problem, dear  
friends, is in the designer, not the browser. When it comes to  
reading devices (and I see browsers as a sub-class of that category),  
sensible people design for readability.

> Pogue says it won't work with fingernails or styli, so goodbye good  
> editing capabilities.

Ah, yes - cuneiform is so much better since we stopped using mud.

However, let's hold on to that pronunciamento for just a second and  
per Frank Gehry's advice (see sig block below), as people interested  
in UI design and behavior, let's think about this for a minute and  
see whether there's in fact a real solution to this particular problem.

Here's the formal question for the group: HOW WOULD YOU design a set  
of text editing functions to work with the iPhone touch screen? Is  
there a general solution for rapid, reasonably error-free text input  
on a finger-operated touch screen that does NOT involve memorizing 83  
gestural macros or other skull-mounted firmware?

(Please note that I think the ideal solution is to AVOID having to  
play the Crackberry game of blasting text into your mobile device  
every five minutes, but let's leave discussions of addictive behavior  
aside. Design solutions only, please.)

- Will

Will Parker
wparker at ChannelingDesign.com
http://www.ChannelingDesign.com

"Well, let's look at it for awhile and be irritated by it and then  
we'll figure out what to do." - Frank Gehry on the creative process