Questions specific to gestures..."back"

ChromiumOS-Guy

@undrwater unfortunely we're kind of like IOS in this regard.

kugiigi

@projectmoon There's a setting for that inside Ambot however it only works in unconfined apps.
Not though that there apps that use the affected components in unusual ways so the hint may show in weird places e.g. Music app, the hint shows above the currently playing bar

In regards to the global back action, we can implement it in the toolkit, you just have the back button trigger with the back button but we can't really enfore it everywhere else so it will be kind of pointless if it only works in certain apps

undrwater

@MrT10001

Imagine you only had one hand to work with. It's not beyond the realm of possibilities.

haagch

@kugiigi Mouse Button 8 is usually mapped to Back, Mouse Button 9 to Forward. Here on desktop plasma wayland, in a quick test Firefox, Thunderbird, Dolphin and Kate do something with it. I wouldn't know if emulating those events would be a good idea, or if encouraging apps to respect it would set a bad precedent that everyone will regret in the future though.

I also tried connecting a usb mouse to Ubuntu Touch. It looks like those mouse buttons are not mapped at all, at least none of the apps react to it, including firefox(xmir)

kugiigi

@haagch There's a separate back button but I guess the mouse back button is better supported in desktop apps.
And yes, it's currently not working in UT.

MrT10001

@undrwater said:

Imagine you only had one hand to work with. It's not beyond the realm of possibilities.

That is one scenario, but with a big screen device you would struggle to get across the screen in some scenarios one handed too.

CiberSheep

@undrwater the thing is Ubuntu Touch is a left, top OS.
It would ideal is developers follow the Human Interface Guidelines and stop pushing bottom controls into apps.
And again, there is no «global back» concept because we have the app spread to switch from app to app. And the launcher to launch apps. Of course there's an in-app back, end it is on the top left corner.

arubislander

@grenudi OK, Please stop feeding forum posts to your LLM and then posting long sentiment analyses as answers. It pollutes the discussion thread. Consider this your first and only warning.

Here is a place for open discussion, but forcing people to be confronted with AI generated long-winded and bloated responses is an abuse of their time.

sixwheeledbeast

I agree with Cibersheep here.
It's not part of the OS design to have a global back button like Android and not a requirement due to the edge OS controls.
Yes the in-app back being top left is awkward positioning for one handed use but I would find it more annoying that a window was closed/disappeared by accident from some other inconsistent close or back positioning.
I'm not against a top swipe for back on top of the standard style back, like in openstore Timer app but really following the development guidelines and being consistent between all apps is the important thing.

danfro

@CiberSheep to be honest, I disagree here. In my opinion we rather should update our HIG design to cover/allow for other app navigation methods.
For instance OP8T (and another device which I don't remember) has the camera exactly where the back button sits. And this back button IS hard to reach with phones getting larger. This is a problem coming up again and again for a reason.
Yes, there is no universal back, but there is in-app back.

undrwater

@danfro

I've got the 8T, but it's my daily running Lineage OS; but YES, the camera sits right where the back button would be.

I find it interesting that folks have an aversion to these kinds of gestures, but I understand and respect the opinion. Were I capable, I'd look into developing something and make it opt-in.

danfro

@undrwater I think it may not be a general aversion to guestures, but UT already has some implemented. So adding more without breaking something and doing it in a nice way isn't easy.