Just giving people an idea. - Android General

Well since I don't know how to code I figure id throw out an idea and see if it catches on. I noticed on allot of these phones that have software keys, they don't have an option to hide them without some sort of hassle.
My idea is simple, make a mini pull up list similar to the drop down menu but only big enough to store your software keys that will overlay the screen instead of being a permanent part of it.
OR possibly make the bottom part where the app menu button is usually located, make it page scroll able like the way different home screens work and put the software buttons there.
That in my opinion would make for a very good looking UI that is stock feeling and simple while expanding your screen.

Expanded desktop mod does it better and already exists.

Related

How about a back gesture?

I appologize if its already on here somewhere but I didn't find much on it. what I think would make the G1 much nicer to use would be a back gesture rather then having to reach down to the back button all the time. u know slide your thumb from right to the left when ur in an app and it would be the same as streching your thumb all the way down to the back button. If someone could either tell me how to set gestures or make something quick and simple to do it I think it would be much nicer to use and I would appriciate it much.
This forum is great and helped me tons on my universal so naturally I'm turning here for help first. I have a feeling by the end of the year Android will be killin the iphone! Turns out its not the phone, its the OS... lol..
The G1 does that to a certain extent but what you are talking about would require a lot of codding in the OS, I don`t think it would be a simple task. But if you are a coder and want to do this, I`m sure other people can offer you some assitance, JF would be one of them for sure. Cheers!
svxdriver said:
u know slide your thumb from right to the left when ur in an app and it would be the same as streching your thumb all the way down to the back button.
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Possibly the only space the operating system reserves for its own input detection is the notification bar. I imagine it might be possible to add some kind of swipe detection to that. However considering how narrow that space is, I don't see how it would be any better than just clicking the back button.
As for the system detecting swipes on the whole lcd, that's probably a non-starter. It would break the touch user interface of many apps.
Currently there are two ways to bring up the programs tab - dragging the tab up and a short press on the tab itself. It *may* be possible to change the function of the short press to 'back' but I think that may cause a lot of inadvertent 'back' presses...
boogie1077 said:
Currently there are two ways to bring up the programs tab - dragging the tab up and a short press on the tab itself. It *may* be possible to change the function of the short press to 'back' but I think that may cause a lot of inadvertent 'back' presses...
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I think what svxdriver wants is for a leftward swipe to be universally recognized as a backstep, meaning not just on the Launcher screen but in all applications.
Not sure how well that would work. The o/s would need to distinguish between a swipe and just scrolling across the screen. Easier, I think, to just use the back button.
BobbyHill said:
Not sure how well that would work. The o/s would need to distinguish between a swipe and just scrolling across the screen. Easier, I think, to just use the back button.
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well it doesn't have a hard time distinguishing between moving up on a page and when you drag from the top of the screen to pull the notification bar down. in windows mobile I had a program that I could assign different gestures to do different things.. I thought it the same kind of thing would be handy.. but I wouldn't want it to go back cause I swiped, onlyl if I swipe from the edge of th screen to signify I want to go back..

Left and Right Keys...

Why is it so hard to push the left and right keys? they should have made it just like the up and down keys.
I want to play frogger and you just cant do it lol
Is there anyway around this?
I agree. It is SOO HARD
is there any way to "hard mod" it by like dremaling holes in the faceplate and just attaching little button nubs to the sensor? anyone tried this? i would rather it worked than looked pretty....seriously htc, what the heck.
just find the point between the home icon and phone icon an press it over and over on each side it really is a "sweet spot" as described in another thread. Once you get it it will come naturally, at least for me it did
SUPAstarr said:
just find the point between the home icon and phone icon an press it over and over on each side it really is a "sweet spot" as described in another thread. Once you get it it will come naturally, at least for me it did
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I've had my Fuze since launch and it is still hit and miss. The bad thing is gaming, when you really rely on the buttons... you don't have time to look down and get the thumb placement 100% right. This is the problem.
What I would LOVE to see happen is to completely get rid of the Today and Back buttons, since I never use them anyway. The Red End key works as a Today button and I'm accustomed to using the X close button to minimize/close my apps.
With the Today and Back buttons disabled it would be much easier to use Left/Right because then you wouldn't have to worry about ending up at the today screen.
OR an even better solution would be to simply re-assign the Today and Back keys as softkeys (which could then be reassigned in the game's button mapping) or remap the hard keys to Left/Right for easy use. Either way it would work pretty well.
For the time being... I wonder if you could place a small circular sticker on the "correct" placement... thus fooling the sensor that every time it is pressed it "see's" the sticker thinking it is your thumb and triggers left/right actions.
OR if that doesn't work... what about finding the correct placement location and installing some kind of "dimple". Like a small half-bubble-like sticker that will enable you to "feel" where the correct spot is. This way when your playing, you could at least find the dimple, and press... all without looking.
Just a few ideas. I haven't tried any of them, so if anything works let me know.

[Q] WP7 Phone App Registry Location

Hello everyone,
I have an unlocked Nokia Lumia 710 running a custom ROM and all in all the phone is good. However, the proximity sensor doesn't seem to work properly (I don't know if the problem is from the custom ROM or from the phone itself but it doesn't really matter) - when I'm in a call I keep pressing the Hold and Mute buttons (no matter how I hold the phone) which makes me really irritated. So I was wondering, there should be registries I guess that make the buttons active when pressed during a phone call. Can someone point me to the correct registries that control if the buttons are active or not when pressed so that I will hopefully be able to completely disable these two buttons (so that when pressed nothing happens)? I don't use them anyways, so completely disabling them would certainly fix my problems. I'm posting in the general WP7 section because I guess the location of these registries would most probably be the same for all phones...
Thanks a lot in advance!
There's a registry value that is updated automatically by the proximity sensor and indicates its current status system-wide, but I doubt you'd want to use it. For one thing, it would almost certainly get immediately reset by the sensor, faulty or otherwise. For another, the Phone app isn't the only thing that uses the proximity sensor; you would end up locking out the touchscreen in some other apps too. Finally, this would also prevent you from pressing the End Call button!
I don't know of a registry value that's specific to the Phone app's use of the proximity sensor. However, even if there is, the first and third reasons above still apply.
I instead recommend that you simply tap the power button when putting the phone up to your ear to talk. This will turn off the touchscreen (and incidentally save power) and you can tap the Power button again to access the Phone app or any other app on the phone when you need them, without interfering with the call.
There may also be a tool in some built-in Manufacturer or Diagnostics app that would let you test and adjust the sensitivity of the proximity sensor. This would perhaps be the best option, but I don't know where or if it exists on a Lumia.
What I want to do is not to play with the proximity sensor itself but rather with the buttons on the screen during a call. I guess I didn't make myself clear enough, sorry about that. The idea is that when I'm in a call, the proximity sensor does not work properly and I always press either the Mute or the Hold buttons. So, these buttons can still appear during a call but when you press them, I don't want anything happening. I mean, the idea is even when the phone is not next to your ear and the screen is active during a call, pressing the buttons to do nothing. I'm just following some simple logic, which might of course be incorrect (or too simple), but I'm thinking that there is most probably a separate registry for each button that controls whether this button does some action when pressed or not. I'm also hoping that they'll be separate registries for each button so that I can, for example, disable the actions for the Hold and Mute buttons, but leave the End Call button active. The problem is that I have no idea where to look for this registry since I'm still new to WP OS.
Heck, it would even be OK for me to completely remove the buttons from the screen during a call (or substitute the current buttons with some 1x1 px transparent images), if that's possible, so if someone knows how to do even that, tell me.
I was also considering using the power button when in call but I first want to see if there is any other way to do what I want. And since I'm not using the Mute and Hold functions at all, I just thought about disabling them.
No, I understood you. I was suggesting the "fix your proximity sensor" option because normally, the problem you're experiencing just doesn't happen; that's what the prox sensor is for. Sometimes it's miscalibrated, though, or something is covering it up (some poorly-cut or installed screen protectors do this, for example).
The "Phone" app isn't a Silverlight app like third-party ones; it's a native EXE that we pretty much can't modify without using a custom ROM. That's going to make changing it the ways you suggest (disabling or resizing certain buttons, etc) quite difficult.
I'm pretty sure you don't want to disable all the buttons always, even if that were possible. For one thing, that would prevent you from hanging up, as I mentioned before. It would also prevent you from dialing any numbers, which would make the use of touch-tone automated services impossible.
The Power button option really seems like the best fit for you. It's easy, doesn't require any hacks, doesn't break any other functionality, and should be the next-best solution beyond actually solving the problem.
I see now, makes sense. In my head it sounded simpler than what it really is. I was considering resizing the buttons because I'm also using iOS and I quite enjoy digging in the OS and changing some elements, so it's possible there to, for example, substitute some buttons with transparent 1x1 px images, etc. But that's irrelevant. Looks like WP is different and I still need some time to get in to it. Anyways, thanks for your help.
P.S. The screen protector was the first thing I "accused" but unfortunately it wasn't causing the problem.
On a custom ROM, you could definitely tweak the Phone app if you wanted to. However, the way WinCE (the kernel behind WP7) works, OS files are almost always marked as "in ROM" which means that the filesystem driver will refuse to modify them while the OS is booted. This makes tempering with the stock OS difficult; we have to find ways to modify the behavior of apps and system features without modifying the apps or features themselves.

Improve one handed usability by swapping back/recent keys!

First off, I know that doing this is looked down upon as samsungification by the Nexus master race and in the past I have agreed that it didn't make sense to have the Samsung style button layout. On this phone however, I've found that it drastically improved one handed usability for those who don't have huge hands (if you hold you're right handed). The buttons are in order of importance (back, home, and recents) going from easiest to hardest to reach with your thumb. I personally have to re adjust my grip to reach the left-most button one handed.
You can do this easily with gravitybox (swap back and recent keys).
I found it awkward at first (i kept instinctually hitting the recents button) and actually switched back because of that, but I found myself missing the reachability of the back button and now it's my full time set up. You get used to it within 2 days. Give it a chance, I bet you'll like it
One of the first mods I made with gravity box when I first got the phone. Having come from a samsung, I'm quite used to the back being on the far right. There's also an option in GB to add the overflow/menu button to the navigation bar. Most menus already have the menu or over flow accessible in one way or another, but this keeps it on the screen consistently.
You should really read through the themes and apps section.
Or you could get one of these: http://shop.flygrip.com/?ref=pg-home
Yes, they're expensive, but once you use one it's hard to imagine not having it.

Front Screen Button Order Edit option missing

Given that the front screen is quite usable, it's odd that the Notification tile button order edit is missing. The button order is actually set by the main screen button order, which kind of makes sense from a consistency perspective, however given that the stock launcher allows a different front wallpaper / setup, I think the button order for the front screen should also be independent.
Vimes14 said:
Given that the front screen is quite usable, it's odd that the Notification tile button order edit is missing. The button order is actually set by the main screen button order, which kind of makes sense from a consistency perspective, however given that the stock launcher allows a different front wallpaper / setup, I think the button order for the front screen should also be independent.
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It's available in the main screen, which applies any changes to both. Unless you're expecting to have different layouts for each screen, which isn't possible and probably for good reason.
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EDIT: Oops I didn't read your entire message and I now see what you mean. But I don't see any real advantage of having different setups, I use the same ones regardless.
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