Questions specific to gestures..."back"
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This has been discussed before I've discovered many years ago (tech time == decades ago!).
The thing that is slowing me down the most while using the UI / UX is the notion of "back". Since this can have several meanings, let me narrow it down to a specific case:
If the app presents a "back button" (usually represented as "<" on the top left of the screen), it would be nice to have a one-handed gesture that activates that button. Reasoning is that on the taller phones, a one-handed reach to that button is nigh impossible.
I've searched to see if such a thing is implemented, and all I've come up with is that "there is no concept" of "back" on UT. I guess what I'm saying is that the "<" button would like to disagree.
Thanks for reading!
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@undrwater It's called having two hands. It's like a browser, Chrome's back button is hidden so you have to have two hands to use it. I think that would come under "nice to have" so it would be way down in the priorities of development unless the app developer decides to do so. For one handed gestures, large screen phones and tablets have their limitations.
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@undrwater I think a gesture wouldn't be nice. No idea the best way to properly integrate it from a UX perspective. Maybe just borrow the side screen background gesture from Android?
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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
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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 itSpeaking of which, is it possible to add a gesture hint thingy at the bottom of the screen when your toolkit mod is active?
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@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.
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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!
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@undrwater unfortunely we're kind of like IOS in this regard.
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@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 barIn 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
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Imagine you only had one hand to work with. It's not beyond the realm of possibilities.
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@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)
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@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. -
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.
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@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.Another planet, another time, another universe!
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@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.
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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. -
@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. -
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.
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@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.
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In my opinion all bottom (or most) gestures should be optional, meaning their functions should be accessible elsewhere, ideally in the standard or common way like header button.
So basically, gestures are like shortcuts. In this context, we can have a gesture that would be "standard" or consistent across apps.
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