From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:15:52 -0500

Jürgen Hestermann wrote:
>
> For example, it drives me nuts when I try to use the Windows Explorer
> with the keyboard because when I linger for only half a second on a
> directory (or drive) it tries to log it (even if it's the diskette
> drive A: causing an error message). That's not good. Ok, it's not the
> same as when *keeping* a button pressed but the latter annoys too
> because it depends on your *feeling* for time.
>
No "feeling" is depended upon. Long press stops playback, so you know
immediately when enough time has passed because playback stops. Very
long press shuts down teh player, and requires a significant amount more
time. All you have to do is release the button when playback stops and
you've succeeded in "long press but not very long press." And this is on
a player where the original firmware didn't really have a concept of
"stop" so a large subset of users are probably simply going to use the
pause function rather than the stop function, as they're used to doing
with the OF.

> Whenever you try to do a "long" press and don't press hard enough (so
> that the buttons pops up for a microsecond) you inadvertantly have
> selected a completely different function because of the "short" press
> followed by yet another "short" press. This can lead to unwanted results.

There's always going to be a basic "long press" functionality. At the
very least this is exceedingly common for seeking. The fact that people
can mess this up is no reason to scrap it entirely.

>
> If multiple functions have to be provided with only a few buttons a
> much better way would be to present a pop up menu where the user can
> select and confirm.
>
"Much better" in which sense? The one where it significantly slows down
operation because with every press of "select" it pops up a pop up menu
that asks if they wanted to enter that folder or open the context menu
on it, and with every press of "next" in the WPS it prompts them if they
wanted to skip tracks or seek, and if they wanted to seek, how long?
"Much better" is very subjective and the concept of holding down a
button to get a different action abounds in UI design. At the very least
nearly every mouse driven computer has the ability to click on something
vs the ability to click on something, hold down the mouse button, and drag.

The only real problem is this long vs very long case, and at least in
the case it happens for the poster, immediate feedback is provided when
you've reached the threshold of "long."
Received on 2009-06-17