...That assumes that there is a focus element on screen. Look at the iPhone UI, for instance. There is no focus element there. For a proper touch UI, you shouldn't have a focus element.... Another style is to have no focus on lists and menus: first click always selects whatever you click. But you can't really mix these styles together very well... If you have no focus, then you cannot do UI's like that, but must set the commands differently... It makes good sense for HW keys, but not really for touch screens. The more you try to stick on to hard key based navigation, the less you can optimize for touch UI's. It's really that simple, fortunately or unfortunately.
ragnar, you're working awfully hard to argue against something that many users highly desire. Why?
Do you realize that no matter who 'wins' here, device products are designed by other teams taking into account many other considerations? ... ragnar is basically saying that the Maemo platform needs to be prepared to support a UI without a hardware D-Pad. Then the device programs willing to use Maemo can decide. As they could decide to have lock screen key or not, camera button or not and etc.
I think that this would be a great way to create the UI because it would at the same time allow for -great touch UI built by Nokia AND -continued easy porting of open source software I fear that if the focus elements are removed from UI, it will make porting applications that rely on them difficult. Of course I'm not a developer so this might not actually be a problem.
But how far does naysaying get a product? How far does a "can't do" attitude go?
...so far all I've seen are protests of how difficult something might be. I'll be swayed by data and sound logic, but not by impassioned opinion-- at least not in a case where functionality is being removed.