Finger vs. stylus based apps

[Shawn Rutledge]

On 9/7/07, Richi Plana <myopenmoko at richip.dhs.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-09-07 at 23:46 +0100, Giles Jones wrote:
> > Do your best to make them useable with fingers.
>
> So unless the screen edges don't raise on a bevel, those edges and
> corners shouldn't be used in the UI.

Actually I think edges and corners are still just as good, because you
can find them easily with your fingers, without paying much attention.
 But the targets which you need to hit with your finger, near the
edge, need to be large enough.  (Just as with everything else.)  A bad
example is a scrollbar on an old Palm along the right side of the
screen (you needed to use the stylus or your fingernail, because it
was so narrow that your finger was propped up by the frame around the
touchscreen and did not make contact).  (And we don't need scrollbars
anyway on this UI, with the drag-scrolling method in use.)

E.g. the menu which is brought up by tapping in the upper-right, needs
to be a big enough target that you can hit it with a finger, but also
needs to go all the way into the corner, so that Fitts's Law is
satisfied when you are using the stylus too.  The touch-sensitive
target area does not have to coincide with the boundaries of the
actual widget - it can be larger.  (But I don't know if you can do
that with GTK.)