user keys

[Han]

(03-24-2014 04:50 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  

(03-17-2014 02:50 AM)Han Wrote:  I am probably in the minority, but long-press is a feature I would rather not have on a calculator. On the HP50G, it was annoying at best, and aggravating at worst.

Here's one non-annoying proposed application of long-press on the HP Prime that would be nice in a future firmware version. Currently, to get help on any menu item, you have to navigate to it using the cursor keys. But it would be cool if instead, long-pressing any menu item would only select it, without executing it, so that you could then press Help. This has already been implemented in the Application Library; you can see the help screen for an app, without actually launching that app, by long-pressing its icon and then pressing Help. Very handy.

My annoyance with long press isn't that it cannot be made useful, but that "long-press" too easily conflicts with a regular click or some other commonly used gesture. For example, I actually like to hold the catalog menu and scroll it -- sometimes pausing before scrolling some more. So that pause could possibly conflict with a long-press. I do this all the time on my phone when presented with a "scrolling" menu. (A quick tap on the menu item followed by the help key works just as well and is likely faster in place of using long-press. Or even a swipe using one/two fingers...)