Official iPad Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
character said:
Actually, having played around with this some more, I think that while we will still include the dual-pane (= permanent definition embedded on the bottom of the screen) mode as an option, since a lot of people have asked for it (and been asking for it since the original beta-test), we won't be making it the default even on iPad.
The reason for that is that your eye's focal distance tends to be much shorter with an iPad's screen than on a PC's, and consequently it feels like a significant strain to have to move all the way down at the bottom of the screen from the text you're looking at to get its definition; your eyes are constantly flipping back and forth between the top / middle of the screen and the bottom. So I think we may have gotten things right initially with the bubble interface; while it does get in the way of reading the surrounding sentence context, in exchange for that you get a definition located right below the word you're looking up.
character said:
Two files? Hadn't thought of that one - what would be the practical use of that? Some sort of file comparison system? Displaying the definition in the middle seems like it might end up causing more confusion than it causes - people would think there were two documents when there actually weren't.
character
状元
I described it here: viewtopic.php?p=16218#p16218mikelove said:
Just put a border around the definition and show it with an optional animation.
I don't really agree with your argument against having a fixed place for the definition -- the user can always scroll the document so the characters they want to look up are close to the defintion area. You could also offer users the option of having the definition area on top, or bottom, or at the side.
character said:
Oh, right, translation - had that one written down but I'd forgotten about it. I think before we can do that we really need a more robust text editor function - what we have now is really very rough and not good at all for large documents, so it really needs some under-the-hood improvements before we can have people putting hours of work into creating / modifying documents with it. We've got a long list of things like that to work on - just finally got iPhone-style text selection working, for example - but we can't spend too much time on them in any given release since we need to concentrate most of our attention on more obvious / user-facing / UI-related improvements.
character said:
Which is why we're planning to offer it as an option, but personally I still find it rather awkward - you end up spending a lot more time scrolling / tweaking your scroll position a bit / etc, and you're potentially just as likely to find that the context for what you're reading is covered up. And if we add the option for "pages" instead of continuous scrolling (something a lot of people have asked for) then the approach of moving characters to the bottom wouldn't really work.
Just got an Apple wireless keyboard for the iPad. The HWR input, which by default is a bit too large on iPad, suddenly shrinks to an unusable miniature when the keyboard is turned on. Looks like a bug coming from Apple's automatic change of behavior when the keyboard engages (i.e. the onscreen keyboard no longer pops up).
radioman
状元
Some comments on iPad in China.
I find it interesting that I can get phone cards with numbers (not just top-up) without anything (even a passport). Upon my return to Dalian with my iPad, I came across a 3G China Unicom card for 100 RMB for like 400MB (I think that was for a month). I also believe there are Cheaper ones out there. The service works just fine with the iPad.
- I bought my 3G card on 8/8 (today is 11 days later). I have used 111 MB received and 18.1 MB sent so far.
- I have run several live in-vehicle navigation sessions of about 30 minutes each.
- Looking up movie reviews at the local DVD shop.
- Web site access when convenient. On WiFi when I can (which is often ... @ Starbucks, home). But no heroic efforts to find WiFi. In fact, at Starbucks I would get on 3G because their WiFi is so bad.
- Maybe the most ANNOYING part - NO VPN. On WiFi services and even China Mobile Edge - no problem, but for some reason Unicom apparently does not allow it.
I imagine that if someone was "streaming" audio and video all the time on 3G, this would eat up bandwidth and warrant another plan. But the good news (I guess...) is that the 3G throughput is lousy enough to not support this this anyway. So I tend to think that a 2G plan for an iPad, at least now, is not worth it. However, I do believe I can find cheaper than the 100RMB/400MB plan.
I find it interesting that I can get phone cards with numbers (not just top-up) without anything (even a passport). Upon my return to Dalian with my iPad, I came across a 3G China Unicom card for 100 RMB for like 400MB (I think that was for a month). I also believe there are Cheaper ones out there. The service works just fine with the iPad.
- I bought my 3G card on 8/8 (today is 11 days later). I have used 111 MB received and 18.1 MB sent so far.
- I have run several live in-vehicle navigation sessions of about 30 minutes each.
- Looking up movie reviews at the local DVD shop.
- Web site access when convenient. On WiFi when I can (which is often ... @ Starbucks, home). But no heroic efforts to find WiFi. In fact, at Starbucks I would get on 3G because their WiFi is so bad.
- Maybe the most ANNOYING part - NO VPN. On WiFi services and even China Mobile Edge - no problem, but for some reason Unicom apparently does not allow it.
I imagine that if someone was "streaming" audio and video all the time on 3G, this would eat up bandwidth and warrant another plan. But the good news (I guess...) is that the 3G throughput is lousy enough to not support this this anyway. So I tend to think that a 2G plan for an iPad, at least now, is not worth it. However, I do believe I can find cheaper than the 100RMB/400MB plan.
radioman
状元
With regard setting the ability to put an icon on the springboard...
1) is there anyway to, form the Pleco web browser save a url to the springboard as an icon?
2) and on a related note, is there anyway to a have it so that from safari, if you save a plecoforum page to the springboard, it will place a decent looking Pleco icon on the springboard? (ah..not a big priority but thought I would throw it out there...)
1) is there anyway to, form the Pleco web browser save a url to the springboard as an icon?
2) and on a related note, is there anyway to a have it so that from safari, if you save a plecoforum page to the springboard, it will place a decent looking Pleco icon on the springboard? (ah..not a big priority but thought I would throw it out there...)
Is this happening on iPad? And are you running the latest version (2.1.2) of Pleco? If that's the case, could you send me (mikelove@pleco.com) your crash logs? Here's how to obtain them:
radioman
状元
Quick comment on iPad interface after working with it for an extended length of time.
Referencing the attached, if running in landscape mode (and probably portrait, it would be great to be able to swipe in from right to left (see picture). to bring the writing screen in and out. This would alleviate the need to ever have to run to the top of the screen with your fingers to input text. In that way you could toggle the various input methods. by just swiping them through. One problem I see that is that the writing area is starts right at the edge. But I am thinking if there was some small margin area applied to sense the swipe right-to-left, then maybe moving the input methods in this way would seem pretty natural.
Referencing the attached, if running in landscape mode (and probably portrait, it would be great to be able to swipe in from right to left (see picture). to bring the writing screen in and out. This would alleviate the need to ever have to run to the top of the screen with your fingers to input text. In that way you could toggle the various input methods. by just swiping them through. One problem I see that is that the writing area is starts right at the edge. But I am thinking if there was some small margin area applied to sense the swipe right-to-left, then maybe moving the input methods in this way would seem pretty natural.
Attachments
Might make sense, but to be honest on the iPad I'm not quite sure why you ever even need to exit the input area unless you're switching to another tab like the document reader - most dictionary entries should fit on the screen just fine even with the keyboard visible, and I'd say in general that a better goal for us would be to make the entire UI (even tab-switching) keyboard-friendly.
I do agree that we need to do a better job in general about reducing finger travel, though Apple commits many of the same sins in their own iPad apps. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the Android / Windows 7 tablet implementations; while I'm sure there'll be a lot of the same, umm, "borrowing" from Apple that we've seen on other smartphone OSes, I'm hoping there'll be some interesting new design ideas too; there's a lot of room for improvement in tablet UI in general.
I do agree that we need to do a better job in general about reducing finger travel, though Apple commits many of the same sins in their own iPad apps. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the Android / Windows 7 tablet implementations; while I'm sure there'll be a lot of the same, umm, "borrowing" from Apple that we've seen on other smartphone OSes, I'm hoping there'll be some interesting new design ideas too; there's a lot of room for improvement in tablet UI in general.