Menu Poll

[runewake2]

I have been trying to envision a better way to do a keyboard on mobile devices. Currently they seem to be too small or hard to use. In doing so I came up with this idea, which is similar in many ways to a tree ADT.

Now you may not understand what I said, but don't worry there are pictures later!

Anyway. The idea was that I replace the normal menu and keyboard with a radial selector. How this works is that a menu would appear centered at the top of the screen, center or bottom (centered by default). It would contain where you are in the center and have up to 6 nodes that you could tap to access. Each node could then, in turn, hold additional menus. To move backwards through the menu hitting the middle would accomplish that.

My question is this: should I bother? If this feature was added to ZNA would anyone prefer this over a standard keyboard / menu?

This idea is in very pre beta and has not even been started in C#, as such suggestions are wanted. The biggest problem right now is that containers do not fit well in a circle. It is really hard to get text to fit and not have the containers overlap. I need to find a solution to this, suggestions are appreciated.

The alternative is a normal keyboard made of multiple buttons similar to the default Zune keyboard (minus the odd bubbling effect).

Sample Pictures:
NOTE: Graphics will change for Zune version. These are just quick mock ups.

ZNA can be found here.

[Justananomaly]

Trippy, I like the concept, wish I still had my zhd!

[Charge]

You could use this concept.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=28KEVi5rbcs

You Tube

You Tube

[runewake2]

That seems sooooo confusing. Based on looks? With mine it might take two taps to type a letter, but you can do that really easily. The buttons would be visible and, since it is orientated around a circle, you could rotate your zune and it would always work.

Besides, I don't want to write a dictionary and have ways to look up words. That is long and boring. Also, ZNA is designed primarily for games. As such interfaces that you can't see are not easy.

With my concept your entire game menu could be contained here! Settings, Gameplay, quitting, etc. All in a circle. You could even write a storymode that allowed you to investigate certain areas (one of those choose your own adventure things) and would need nothing but the circle menu.

[Charge]

I think the original is easier to use than a new model to get used to. The zune menu works because it makes more room for the letter when you click them. You can look into better ways to design the normal zune keyboard, like click the line, expand. I really don't know it's hard to vision.

[Carpe Diem]

It's an interesting concept, but I feels that it's definitely slower than the full keyboard. I think that in games, if it's not heavy on the typing, it wouldn't make much of a difference either way.

[boohbah11]

Interesting idea, but I don't think its very practical, and using it as a keyboard would require too much thinking on the users part

[runewake2]

Perhaps it would not be a great idea for a keyboard... I actually pulled the idea off a reddit post a while back for xbox 360 keyboard.



I think I'll still make a quick version of this for game menu's etc. Making it a keyboard would not be that hard anyway.

[Charge]

Yea that idea works quite well looking at it, you could easily memorize it.

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