On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 5:25 PM, "Marco Trevisan (Treviño)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Also using a touch-only screen they don't loose their usability: the > resize, mostly, could be done simply with a scroll, while the rotation
This is kindof like saying what do you need a mouse for, your keyboard has arrow keys doesn't it? (or a control key... you could just move the cursor with control-k, control-l, etc.) The whole point is you don't need to use up any real estate with scroll bars: an image can fill the whole screen and yet you can still interact with it. Dragging/panning seems more intuitive, too... it's just that with such long experience with computers, we've gotten used to the status quo. As for pinching to zoom, the only thing which makes me uncertain is the alleged existence of a patent on it... either it will be licensed cheaply, or stricken down in court, or Apple will just let it go unchallenged (maybe at least in the case of open-source software), or non-Apple devices can be sold with gesture programmability, and it's up to the end user to define what it is that the pinch gesture will do. Or if Apple really succeeds in keeping that gesture for themselves, then it cannot be a standard, because other gestures will have to be invented. But the existence of the original Mac did not prevent GEM or AmigaOS or Windows from being developed, either, despite Apple's attempts to claim ownership of some ideas. They have no hope of preventing multi-touch itself from becoming the accepted mainstream, and then resistive touchscreens are probably going to be seen as obsolete. > using the gimp-way (put a placeholder on the rotating fulcrum tapping, > then use a finger dragging the image...). That requires at least two steps, and involves more screen clutter (at least a separate fulcrum object). Gimp takes a bit of time to learn, even if you are already familiar with Photoshop or (gods forbid) PC Paint, like I was on my first PC, without a mouse, back in 1988. :-) (yes I could draw decent monochrome pictures with only the keyboard. I sure was glad when that guy whose lawn I was mowing finally gave me a surplus optical mouse, though.) Interaction design always has room for improvement, and major new technologies like this really open up the possibilities. _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community