1053672 - Symbol UI changes aftermath: bad for UX

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::Keyboard, defect)

Description

[Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (inactive)]

In bug 1015309 the symbol panel has been changed. Some of these changes are not good for UX:

1. Prior to this change the last three keys of the bottom row were: |/ ? BACKSPACE|. Now it's |? ! BS| . This breaks muscle memory of every current Firefox OS user that uses the ? key (my most used alt key). It's also inconsistent with stock Android keyboard where the last two keys are also | ? BSP |. ? and ! should be swapped.
2. The keyboard now has keys for °C, °F and °. °C and °F should be omitted. They are not one symbol, are used approximately 0 times a year, and can be typed by using the ° key. Plus having °F makes no sense at all in every European layout. Plus they don't fit in the key.
3. Dutch keyboard now has $ key on the first symbol panel, with ¥ as first alternative. Doesn't make any sense. Should be €.
4. |" '| and |: ;| also have been switched. Same thing with muscle memory, and also inconsistent with Android. But I use these less so don't really care.
5. The plus sign had it's own key on the first panel (like Android), but has now been omitted in favor of _. I think underscore is only used in e-mail, and plus in more cases, so I'd vouch for bringing back +, and making underscore first alt for -.
6. The second alt panel in Dutch has YEN, POUND symbols. Which makes no sense. Should not have its own key. Similar with the ¿ and the ¡. These only make sense in Spanish.
7. We have + and - and = symbols. I'd expect (als alt key or something) to have access to × and ÷.
8. Same with (C) and (R), we have those but miss the (TM) sign. Maybe as an alt.

Comment 1

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

Jan, 

Thanks for the feedback, I can see many good suggestions here.
Some comments inlined,

(In reply to Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (Telenor) from comment #0)
> In bug 1015309 the symbol panel has been changed. Some of these changes are
> not good for UX:
> 
> 1. Prior to this change the last three keys of the bottom row were: |/ ?
> BACKSPACE|. Now it's |? ! BS| . This breaks muscle memory of every current
> Firefox OS user that uses the ? key (my most used alt key). It's also
> inconsistent with stock Android keyboard where the last two keys are also |
> ? BSP |. ? and ! should be swapped.
> 2. The keyboard now has keys for °C, °F and °. °C and °F should be omitted.

My bad, just realized we have "℃" and "℉" unicode chars, would changing them into the unicode chars make sense?

> They are not one symbol, are used approximately 0 times a year, and can be
> typed by using the ° key. Plus having °F makes no sense at all in every
> European layout. Plus they don't fit in the key.

See below for the symbol panel 2 (after you press [Alt])

> 3. Dutch keyboard now has $ key on the first symbol panel, with ¥ as first
> alternative. Doesn't make any sense. Should be €.

This is because Dutch layout does not define symbol panel 1 and 2 with "alternateLayout"/"symbolLayout" properties in its layout definition file.
So, it would inherit the default symbol panels, as what you saw.
I think per our current design, we would need to specify "alternateLayout" only to override the '$', and this is tedious sometimes. Hope I can find a better way to deal with this.

Comment 2

[Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (inactive)]

> My bad, just realized we have "℃" and "℉" unicode chars, would changing them
> into the unicode chars make sense?
Just a question, have you *ever* felt the need to type this in?

> This is because Dutch layout does not define symbol panel 1 and 2 with
> "alternateLayout"/"symbolLayout" properties in its layout definition file.
> So, it would inherit the default symbol panels, as what you saw.
> I think per our current design, we would need to specify "alternateLayout"
> only to override the '$', and this is tedious sometimes. Hope I can find a
> better way to deal with this.
Yeah, this is problem for every (at least European) language.

Comment 3

[Omega Feng [:Omega] [:馮於懋]]

(In reply to Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (Telenor) from comment #0)
> In bug 1015309 the symbol panel has been changed. Some of these changes are
> not good for UX:
> 
> 1. Prior to this change the last three keys of the bottom row were: |/ ?
> BACKSPACE|. Now it's |? ! BS| . This breaks muscle memory of every current
> Firefox OS user that uses the ? key (my most used alt key). It's also
> inconsistent with stock Android keyboard where the last two keys are also |
> ? BSP |. ? and ! should be swapped.
Good point. We should swap ? and !.

> 2. The keyboard now has keys for °C, °F and °. °C and °F should be omitted.
> They are not one symbol, are used approximately 0 times a year, and can be
> typed by using the ° key. Plus having °F makes no sense at all in every
> European layout. Plus they don't fit in the key.
Like Rudy mentioned, ℃ and ℉ should be single characters, so we decided to keep them.

> 3. Dutch keyboard now has $ key on the first symbol panel, with ¥ as first
> alternative. Doesn't make any sense. Should be €.
Considering our markets are more European then China/Japan, I'll change the alternatives order from |$ ¥ € £ ¢ ₠| to |$ € £ ₠ ¢ ¥|.
And just like Rudy mentioned, Dutch layout can still define the symbol panel if necessary.

> 4. |" '| and |: ;| also have been switched. Same thing with muscle memory,
> and also inconsistent with Android. But I use these less so don't really
> care.
When using multi IMEs, that row is |, : ; " '|. It's better to put |,| next to |: ;|.

> 5. The plus sign had it's own key on the first panel (like Android), but has
> now been omitted in favor of _. I think underscore is only used in e-mail,
> and plus in more cases, so I'd vouch for bringing back +, and making
> underscore first alt for -.
When using single IME, + has it's own key at symbol panel 1.
_ is useful in email, URL, and emoticons. (e.g. *_*)
So we will keep this one.

> 6. The second alt panel in Dutch has YEN, POUND symbols. Which makes no
> sense. Should not have its own key. Similar with the ¿ and the ¡. These only
> make sense in Spanish.
It's a good idea to remove ¿ and ¡ since it's already in the alternatives of ? and !. We can use |« »| instead of |¿ ¡|.

> 7. We have + and - and = symbols. I'd expect (als alt key or something) to
> have access to × and ÷.
We can use |- × ÷| as alternatives of +.

> 8. Same with (C) and (R), we have those but miss the (TM) sign. Maybe as an
> alt.
We can use ™ as alternatives of ®.

Comment 4

[Omega Feng [:Omega] [:馮於懋]]

Hi Jan,
How do you think about comment 3?

Comment 5

[Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (inactive)]

Yep, makes sense.

Comment 6

[Omega Feng [:Omega] [:馮於懋]]

Please see bug 983043 for UX spec update.

Comment 7

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

Jan, do you have time to work on this?
If not, I am willing to steal it from you to wrap up the symbol refinement work and make it into v2.1.

Comment 8

[Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (inactive)]

Yeah, steal it. I don't have time this week to do much.

Comment 9

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

Ok, will try to provide a patch this week.

Comment 10

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

After re-reviewing the spec, I found that ₠ seems not necessary,
ref. http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/20a0/index.htm

And I cannot find this symbol on Windows phone and Android symbol panel, so I would suggest we remove it from default symbol panel.

Omega, could you please help confirm this?
Thanks.

Comment 11

[Omega Feng [:Omega] [:馮於懋]]

Let's remove "₠" from alternatives and Symbol panel and add "·".
See bug 983043 for the updated UX spec.

Comment 12

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

Attachment: Patch V1

With this patch, I refined the symbol pages again according to the updated spec.
Also amend some issues around the layout definition files.

Tim, Omega, please help review this change.
Thanks.

Comment 13

[Omega Feng [:Omega] [:馮於懋]]

Comment on attachment 8489863 [details] [review]
Patch V1

LGTM, but the alternative bubble of 'R$' in Português layout breaks. I think we can have another bug to fix this problem since it's more like alternative overflow.

Comment 14

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

the issue mentioned in comment 13 has been fixed.

Landed to Gaia master,
https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/commit/879bd62dd19e7966274bc0418b8821ba5a51d6d4


--
Thanks for the review.