Questions specific to gestures..."back"

kugiigi

There's no universal "back" action in UT, the same way most OSes don't have it except Android and Windows phone. There's a back button in each app but can be implemented differently and reacts to different key bindings or none at all.

This has been discussed many times already and honestly, I don't think we can have a universal back action similar to Android. The best we can do is probably to design the standard toolkit to make it easier to trigger. That's another discussion that has been discussed many times too but needs someone to actually design and implement it.

I personally have many experiments on this. My older apps like Palitan for example has swipe up on the bottom left edge to go back (or whichever button is at the top left). My newer apps like Tagatuos and Sapot Browser, you can swipe left or right on the bottom edge. Ambot Installer also has a package called MariKit which adds this gesture is apps that use UT's standard toolkit.
I personally like this gesture but there needs to be a deeper and proper discussion if we really want it

projectmoon

@kugiigi said:

There's no universal "back" action in UT, the same way most OSes don't have it except Android and Windows phone. There's a back button in each app but can be implemented differently and reacts to different key bindings or none at all.

This has been discussed many times already and honestly, I don't think we can have a universal back action similar to Android. The best we can do is probably to design the standard toolkit to make it easier to trigger. That's another discussion that has been discussed many times too but needs someone to actually design and implement it.

I personally have many experiments on this. My older apps like Palitan for example has swipe up on the bottom left edge to go back (or whichever button is at the top left). My newer apps like Tagatuos and Sapot Browser, you can swipe left or right on the bottom edge. Ambot Installer also has a package called MariKit which adds this gesture is apps that use UT's standard toolkit.
I personally like this gesture but there needs to be a deeper and proper discussion if we really want it

Speaking of which, is it possible to add a gesture hint thingy at the bottom of the screen when your toolkit mod is active?

projectmoon

@undrwater also, since this is not built in, you could check out @kugiigi's Ambot Installer and install MariKit. It does what you want. Slide left or right from middle-ish of the bottom edge of the screen and it's gestures ahoy.

undrwater

@kugiigi said:

The best we can do is probably to design the standard toolkit to make it easier to trigger.

That's kind of the idea I was considering. I see now that you have something implemented, so I'll check that out.

I'm certainly aware there is no "global back", and that it gets complex to code the correct behavior.

Thanks for your response!

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.