Hardware Failures due to Flashcard Operation

[radioman]

Mike, et al.,

Thinking back to a few years back, I remember using a palm pilot to play games, and after a short period, the keys were beat to heck and then just broke. I am now running hardware keys for the flashcards on my Palm E2. There are a lot of cards I am reviewing on a daily basis and I can tell the keys are already starting to get a bit beat up.

Using the touch screen with the the stylus reduces the beating on the device, and I know I can use my finger on the touch screen to select the Flashcard response. The issue is that the button design for the touchscreen is not really designed to do that (or maybe it is and my hands are dysfunctional... bigger virtual buttons, easily accessible on left part of screen if I was using my left hand only, etc. ).

I would be curious to if anyone else has had such problems?

Ed.

 

[johnh113]

Dear Radioman,

I tried using the hardware buttons for a while but found using my thumb on the touchscreen was a lot easier. I rarely miss the correct button, but agree that maybe if the buttons were a little larger it might be better. Being able to have the buttons on the other side might also be a good option, but I often switch hands to minimize rsi and don't have any trouble hitting the current buttons in their current locations with either hand (thumb).

I only problem along these lines that I have noticed is that sometimes I hit the button and see a visual indication that the button was hit (i.e., the button changed color), but nothing happens. I then have to go back and hit the button again.

I also noticed that if the Palm was going into a timeout the button presses wouldn't do anything, but would be stored up, and when I turned the Palm back on, the accumulated button presses would advance my flashcards beyond where I wanted to be. I have minimized this by setting my timeout to the maximum of three minutes, and it hardly every happens anymore because rarely do I zone out for 3 minutes.

I also sometimes get button bounce when I hit the flashcard buttons on the touchscreen. This is incredibly annoying as it moves me past the answer into the next card. It would be nice to have a software timer that prevents bounce.

But all in all, very happy using the touchscreen for buttons rather than hardware buttons.

John

 

[westmeadboy]

I only problem along these lines that I have noticed is that sometimes I hit the button and see a visual indication that the button was hit (i.e., the button changed color), but nothing happens. I then have to go back and hit the button again.

You can reproduce this bug by pressing the button and then dragging away from the button before releasing.

Its like: STYLUS_DOWN (INSIDE BUTTON) -> DRAG STYLUS OUTSIDE BUTTON -> STYLUS_UP (OUTSIDE BUTTON)

1.0.3b Windows Mobile 5.0 (i-mate JAMA)

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, the behavior of our custom button controls is a bit unusual thanks to all of the other functionality we've put into them (tap-hold popup menus etc) - we probably should add some sort of flag that makes them handle stylus drags normally, since it's really kind of odd to have the button still be highlighted when you're halfway across the screen from it.

johnh113 - bounce protection would be another good idea, though probably only in 2.1 at this point. The left-handed interface option in preferences is supposed to apply to flashcards too but doesn't do so yet, but that would in theory put the buttons on the other side of the screen so you could switch hands.

 

[radioman]

Mike,

Just a comment, my own wish list (besides getting Pleco v5 out!) would have flashcard softkeys be big and be able set to the right or left side of the screen independent of the pen input and other gui "right handed/left handed" functions. My typical flashcard mode is just holding the unit with one hand and cycling many cards, maybe switch hands, etc. ... the pen action for inputting characters is always on the right side.

Ed

 

[mikelove]

We're actually planning on putting in an extra screen for handedness tweaking at some point, probably not in 2.0 but eventually anyway - a lot of left-handed people have complained that they like some of the interface changes in lefty mode but would rather skip the other ones, so this way you'd have individual checkboxes for toolbars, input panels, flashcard input, flashcard buttons, etc.