531974 - Always retain a border around the edges of the screen to be used for panning

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 441590

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Panning/Zooming, defect)

Description

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Vlad's idea, mostly, but looking at other UI mockups reminded me of it so I wanted to get this on file.

When link targets or large interactive areas run up against a screen edge, it can be hard to pan using a touch based interface like Fennec's. Instead, we should preserve a border, perhaps half a finger width wide, all around the screen and declare that any touch action in that border will go to panning instead of any link or target that might otherwise be underneath:

 .-------------------------------------------------------------------.
 | .---------------------------------------------------------------. |
 | |                                                               | |
 | |                                                               | |
 | |                                                               | |
 | |                                                               | |
 | |             in here, targets                                  | |
 | |             work normally, interactive                        | |
 | |             areas like maps pan within iframes                | |
 | |                                                               | |
 | |                                                               | |
 | '---------------------------------------------------------------' |
 '-------^-----------------------------------------------------------'
         |
         | drags that start in this border always
           result in panning operations

Comment 1

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

I like this approach.  We'd discussed something along these lines for the case of how do you get out of a pannable area when it's larger than the viewport.  I think it's worth trying out and seeing how well it works.

Comment 2

[Ben Combee (:bcombee)]

This is pretty interesting and a nice approach.  I've also thought about something similar for access to the sidebars -- if you swipe left-to-right or right-to-left from the far edge of the screen, always be able to complete the pan with the sidebar visible, but if you start near the center, move slower to match the zoom level.