479975 - add an explanatory UI for the gesture engine

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Many the comments in bug 476425 discuss this, but that bug is specifically about the gesture engine itself, on top of which we can build some UI to help explain the system and make gestures more discoverable.

Specifically, the following comments to that bug are on this topic:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476425#c21
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476425#c22
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476425#c25
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476425#c26
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476425#c30

Comment 1

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Hey Madhava, where do you think that the development of this UI should iterate now? Creating an explanatory learning mode? Creating overlays of possible gestures, suggested gestures?

As soon as we decide where to go next I'll code some working prototypes 'cause I like to have it running and testable so we can focus on making the UI pretty and nice =)

Comment 2

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Attachment: Screenshot of current experiment

Hey there! I was playing around with the UI a bit, trying to bring some feedback during the gesture process, and it occured to me that with this we could easily do some composed gestures, for example the zoomout gesture that goes increasing the zoom level depending on how much you rotate.  (this works cool too because it was too difficult to do a whole circle for every zoom step wanted)

I quickly implemented a mockup and did some more polish on the gesture notification display, putting some icons and positive feedback, and I'm now doing some engine modifications to accomodate that.  This screenshot shows the current state of this prototype.

Feedback welcome =)

Comment 3

[Louis-Rémi BABE]

It looks great, well done!

Have you seen the gesture recognition of the last Viliv (a corean PMP/GPS): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbBKl7-nB6s

It has letters recognition. For example draw a P and it will open the Photo application. I think that drawing a star to bookmark a page might be too complicated. You've probably get used to it but drawing a b is probably easier for a beginner.

Comment 4

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Very interesting video, I hadn't seem it before. That device seems really good, specially the preciseness of the touch screen. And the gesture recognition seems to have various similar concepts.

About the star, I agree: it's complicated to draw a whole star just to bookmark a page! I'm keeping it for now just conceptually, for engine testing purposes. One possible simple gesture for the bookmark could be a diagonal up ↗, kinda pointing to where the Star button is in the UI. I learned this idea from a madhava's post on the wiki about how the download notification could come aligned with the corresponding button in the UI for the download manager.

another possibility: ✔

Comment 5

[BMO Automation]

Closing all opened bug in a graveyard component