Gboard Testing Circle, Pill-Shaped Keys On Android (9to5google.com) 36
Google Gboard for Android is introducing circle or pill-shaped keys for some beta testers today. "Instead of the key borders being rounded rectangles, Gboard is switching to circles and pills for letters, while the space bar and other keys are now pill-shaped," reports 9to5Google. "While there should be no functional change to touch targets, these new shapes really shift the look of Gboard for Android." From the report: On paper, it's a bit more modern (and rounded) compared to what came before. However, it's a bit cramped if you have "Long press for symbols" enabled, which goes from the top-right corner to being directly above the letter. The physical analog Gboard is moving away from is how most keys on laptops and desktops are square.
Yea that's a nope. (Score:2)
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they want round keyboard button on a phone.
I tried it on a physical mech keyboard of decent quality and it sucked this would be x10 worse.
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I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they want round keyboard button on a phone.
They wouldn't sell physical keyboards/keycaps with round keys if there was nobody that wanted them. I'm sure there is likely a subset of themers that would appreciate it. I see nothing wrong with giving people options, as long as it actually is an option.
I tried it on a physical mech keyboard of decent quality and it sucked this would be x10 worse.
From a preference standpoint, I would agree. From a purely functional standpoint, I wouldn't.
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They wouldn't sell physical keyboards/keycaps with round keys if there was nobody that wanted them. I'm sure there is likely a subset of themers that would appreciate it. I see nothing wrong with giving people options, as long as it actually is an option.
Marketing departments come up with plenty of silly ideas nobody asked for. It rarely has any success but sometimes it works. I guess it's a try and error principle but I don't really agree with your premise excepted sure, it's nice to have options.
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Marketing departments come up with plenty of silly ideas nobody asked for.
I didn't say they were trying to sell them. I said they were selling them. People wouldn't be buying them if they didn't want them. And yes, people do buy them. I don't know just how big of a market there is, but there absolutely is a market for them.
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Sure, that was covered in my post by "but sometimes it works" although as you suggest, the market for them has to be big enough to recoup design and production costs otherwise, they discontinue the product after a while.
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They wouldn't sell physical keyboards/keycaps with round keys if there was nobody that wanted them.
I'm sure there's a huge untapped market for people who want keys that look like the ones on early-1900s cash registers [etsy.com].
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Of course, that could still be the case and these are just the "labels" in the centre of that rectanglar contact area and not mark the boundary of the contact area itself
The summary mentions this change doesn't affect the touch targets. Further, I just found out that these are just the key borders that can already be turned on/off with the current keyboard. They just changed the design of the border. The question is whether they will give an option to switch between the type of key borders or if it'll just stay an on/off setting.
Re:Yea that's a nope. (Score:5, Informative)
How would the experience using a touchscreen keyboard would be any different with round outlines, pill-shaped outlines, square outlines, or no outlines at all? It's just a matter of personal preference for what it looks like, that's all. And if you like the layout or not.
Re: Yea that's a nope. (Score:2)
Ultra Modern UI (Score:2)
This is a step above Sun's OPEN LOOK design. Well done, 1995 won't know what hit them!
Just like the original Speak and Spell (Score:3)
It's Fashionable (Score:2)
The physical analog Gboard is moving away from is how most keys on laptops and desktops are square
In harmony with today's national trends, they're harking back to the Roaring 20s, when a handful of industrialists called the shots and the mechanical typewriters had round keys.
Your keys have shapes? (Score:3)
I just turn outlines off since I'm either swiping or taping directly on the letters. Seeing them in a row and nothing more is fine.
Also, sounds like some UX designer at Google has been looking too much at old early '60s typewriters.
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You mean pre-60's before the boomers fucked the world over.
"Please don't fire me" (Score:2)
Literally, topic. This seems like a lot of UI designers desperate to justify their salaries doing random but highly visible shit.
Blast from the past (Score:2)
I can vaguely remember Palm Treo 650 phone having these. Correct me if my memory failed me.
Re: Blast from the past (Score:2)
Seems I was wrong. Only pushbuttons on dialog boxes were round/pill-shaped on the Treo 650. Sorry.
Wow Google made something (Score:2)
$45 billion dollar R&D budget and at least they are able to show something for it.
Pill formed keys on an online keyboard. Amazing.
Maybe next they can fix Google Home into something that actually works?
Gboard is not very good. (Score:3)
It's still worse in almost every way than Swype, and that hasn't had an update in a decade, maybe more.
Swype had a really nicely designed UX, but sadly been killed by free knockoffs.
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It's still worse in almost every way than Swype, and that hasn't had an update in a decade, maybe more.
With the semi-exception of Hacker Keyboard (which I use when I'm using a CLI on my phone due to it having all the useful CLI buttons that most other keyboards don't), Swype is *still* the best keyboard on the market, and it saddens me that I can't seem to get it to run on Android 15, even with the custom APKs from XDA and installing via USB Debug with the SDK override...
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Your phone could be my phone...
Yep I have the h4x0rz keyboard for when I need a coding keyboard, and I too have failed to get Swype working on the latest OS.
Things I love about swype:
You could have symbols in the swipe pattern.
It would take in almost any string and recognise it so I could swipe out my email address complete with @ and it would work. Google are particularly scummy in this regard: they will only autocomplete emails associated with a google account. If you have a non google email address, they
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Hacker Keyboard..
I have to do a lot of SSH things from my phone. I use JuiceSSH which adds a row above the Android keyboard with some useful CLI buttons.
I didn't know about Hacker Keyboard. Sounds interesting, but would you recommend it in portrait mode, too? Is it really better than what JuiceSSH does?
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I didn't know about Hacker Keyboard. Sounds interesting, but would you recommend it in portrait mode, too? Is it really better than what JuiceSSH does?
yes, because it also has a row of common symbols, as well as completely disabling autocorrect. No more adding exceptions for sid, awk, and capitalization...and it ALWAYS has an 'enter' button, which i appreciate even outside of JuiceSSH because I can always create a new line in apps that replace 'enter' with 'send'.
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GBoard seems the only keyboard that manages two languages at the same time with seamless mixing of words (i.e. allowing for English quotes or anglicisms when writing in other languages).
Modern? Checks Royal typewriter (Score:2)
From current to retro (Score:2)
I'm not sure that changing from square keys (with room for alternate symbols in the corners of the keys) to round keys is any kind of useful thing.
Mid-century typewriters and keypads had that, but unless you're trying to produce a facsimile of an Enigma machine, why would you do that?
CAPS LOCK (Score:1)
Gboard isn't the worst of the virtual Android keyboards but it lacks CAPS LOCK.
[If this was Reddit someone would post a magic 3-key undocumented method to enable it]
FUCK round buttons or SQUARE or SQUIRCLE buttons. I just don't care. Give me caps lock!!!
E
Shift-Shift (Score:2)
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That's what happens when you don't bother to read the documentation. Or ask around.
Fear not, you have been informed.
What in the actual eff? (Score:2)
A) Who the fuck is wasting time changing virtual keyboard button shapes?
B) How the fuck is this marketing fluff worthy of a story?
C) How sad are we as a specie that this is now considered innovation?
D) Marketing and sales needs to fuck all the way off and let the world start to focus on something other than, "OOOOOOH, SHINY!" for long enough to actually start progressing again. Fucking up user interfaces and calling it innovation is desperation, not progress.
gboard is malware (Score:3)
There are plenty of open source alternatives that don't spy on you.
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Sadly they all suck. The latest one I tried was the Futo keyboard, but its swiping abilities are horrible.