Posted on 2009-09-19 11:20 UTC by Aniello Del Sorbo. Status: Under consideration, Categories: User Experience.
The zoom in/out in the N900 is achieved in different ways. Hardware keys or rotational zoom in/out (a la browser). This is due to the missing multitouch support in Fremantle.
Even though it gives you fine grained control on the zoom in/out, I quite don't like it as I don't feel it's "natural".
Posted on 2009-09-19 11:22 UTC by Aniello Del Sorbo.
I don't think we've got access to the code at the level needed to implement this.
So I think Nokia should do it.
I gave this idea to the Nokia UX Manager when he was in London and he liked it.
EDIT: this is not an actual "solution" to the raised brainstorm idea, but rather "who should implement it" proposal. Please vote (and better propose) a real solution and not this one. Thank you.
Posted on 2009-10-19 09:49 UTC by Aniello Del Sorbo.
My idea for a single finger zoom in/out is like this.
Firstly some "terminology".
Half tap -> touch the screen keeping the finger on the screen: used for panning
Tap -> touch the screen then immediately raise the finger: used as normal click
Double Tap -> touch the screen, raise finger, touch the screen again, raise finger: used as double click
My idea is ot use the "missing" Tap and a half:
Tap & 1/2 -> touch the screen, raise the finger, touch the screen again DON'T raise it
Once a Tap&1/2 is being detected the tablet switches in "zoom mode" and a white spot appears under the finger and a ruler could show up crossing the screen horizontally. The white spot is the "zero" of the zoom scale (i.e. 1:1)
As you drag the finger along the ruler, the more you go farther rigth from the white spot, the more the zoom in. Viceversa along the left side of the ruler for zoom out.
This can work everywhere and it's nice and intuitive to me.
Posted on 2010-01-11 14:27 UTC by jeremy gillespie.
I actually like the rotational zooming gestures built into the browser. The only downside to Maemo 5 currently is that this is not standard across all apps which implement zooming - the picture viewer for example only uses the hardware volume keys for zooming. To keep things standard the zooming gesture and hardware key control should be part of the firmware, this way all applications which implement zooming would have the same gestures for zooming - this would follow other OS's like apple where the pinch zoom is standard across all built in applications.
If this was a requirement then this would give a consistent feel to the application set on the device and not have you guessing how to zoom each time for each application you run. If it implements the zooming api then the rotate gesture and the hardware keys would both be supported.
The would also stop the gestures becoming more fragmented as there is no central control to the applications in the extra's repo, currently each developer of each application could implement zooming their own way which is far from ideal...
