Kontact Touch on larger screens, flaps wider hack

[Marco Martin]

On Thursday 05 May 2011, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 5. Mai 2011 13:33:35 schrieb Sebastian Kügler:
> > On Thursday, May 05, 2011 09:43:06 Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > >   Me and my ideapad with Kontact Touch were alone on a train...
> > > 
> > > Because of QML I could do a quick hack to address a major usability
> > > problem: It is too hard to hit the flaps on the left.
> > > 
> > > The changes outlined at the bottom will make the flaps slightly wider
> > > and the  interface uglier, but for me this is a large usability gain.
> > > This works a lot better on the n900 or HTC Touch Pro2 because someone
> > > can slide in from the left side. For whatever reasons this does not
> > > work on the ideapad. I don't know about the exopc slate or the weetab,
> > > but I guess a slightly larger flap can also help there.
> > 
> > I haven't tested the changes, but widening the flaps seems
> > counter-intuitive to me. I'm running Kontact Touch on a Wepad, and the
> > biggest UI problems are:
> > 
> > - flaps too wide, hard to reach the second column
> 
> How interesting!
> Maybe we use it differently:
> Because the idepad is a netbook that can be changed to a tablet, the frame
> around the display is realtively thick, the frame is not on the same depth
> level as the screen. So I cannot slide in unto the touchscreen in from the
> left and I am using my finger.

that's exactly where the problem is.

"real" tablets always have just a flat glass over the whole area (bigger than 
the screen), so is easy to hit the very edge of the screen.
actually, swiping from outside the screen area is a quite common and 
convenient gesture.
i would seriously not waste time to adapt an ui to the shortcomings specific 
of the ideapad, device that will really have zero value other than be a 
development machine.

Cheers,
Marco Martin