Notices

Finger-friendlines is good but it's not always needed, for we have the advantage of the stylus. We lose all the advantages of the high dpi if we code finger friendliness in all apps. GNUmeric for example and gFTP are being hindered by big controls. Anyway it's impossible to use them without a stylus, (try to use quicksheet on an OMNIA HD capacitive screen and you'll see that you can't hit the right cell, and the lack of scrollbars adds one click to every edit). Anyway, if I want to edit my website while on the N900 I am willing to pull the stylus out for sake of speed. I have the same resolution on my eee and I say you can do about anything.

Why just not create another website with the same database connection and more portable design? Why do we need an app for everything? Handhelds should be the first that adopt the remote computing idea. It trades connection speed for processing power, I know and both are limited and energy-expensive on a handheld, but I'd rather outsource the computing.
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Children Zoloft

Not a good idea- i'm sure the N900 is the last maemo/meego device featuring a resistive screen. And it starts fall this year...

Isn't it possible to use a stylus with a capacitative screen? I suppose it just needs to be from a conductive material...

the problem is, that capacitive screens aren't as accurate as resistive ones..

Well feel free to contact me if you need GUI designs for your applications.
I work as a freelancer.

Indeed!

It really depends on what the device is designed for.

If it is something like the n900 then a resistor-type screen makes sense - the n900 is more for general use, some of the applications need more accuracy (e.g. vncviewer) - you really need a stylus to get the most out of it.

If you are talking about something like iPhone then a capacitor-type screen makes sense - the iPhone is more like an entertainment device and needs to be more accessable.

E.g. You can use finger, stump or body-part not under restraints (e.g. use nose when you are secured in strait jacket shouting "Steve Jobs is the messiah all hail the iPhone!")

Is that really the case? Accuracy?
I know that the popular implementation of capacitive screens needs larger surface contact area to register the input, but less accuracy..?

I'm going way off topic, but we're there already, so here goes.

I think the popular implementations of both technologies reach sufficient and comparable accuracies from the hardware.

The question then becomes, how to make use of the information provided by the input device. This in my opinion is what can make or break the illusion of the accuracy of the input, and the "smartness" of the device.

One thing I dislike about the N900 touch screen input processing, is that the input given by the touch sensor is taken literally by the OS, as it would be if I was using a mouse.

E.g. There's one small link in a middle of a web page I'm viewing, and it's the only clickable item on the screen. I try to click it with my thumb, and in the process, cover it from my view. What happens, is that I miss by 2 pixels, because the thing covered by my thumb and I cannot see it. Now, the OS knows I clicked, and makes the click sound. It just isn't smart enough to know I tried to click on the link 2 pixels away, making both it and me look stupid.

In some way, this developer lazyness maybe caused by the resistive touchscreen technology, as it gives an "exact" point which was touched. Capacitive, OTOH, senses the whole touched area (and a bit more), and it's up to the OS driver developer to find the center of that area (or if there were actually more than one area, meaning multitouch). While doing that, it's a natural thing to check if there was anything clickable inside the *area* that was touched and activate that, making it act closer to the "do what I think" ideal.

Given that UI elements are far enough from each other, there's no reason why a "larger touch area" could not be implemented and properly working on a resistive screen. Someone's just been slacking off.

Yeah ive always like the look of the iphone apps, but i hate apple. Wonder if we will ever see nice looking GUIs on our N900s

I think that the capacitive craze is fashion and just that. I think that the very small amount of extra pressure needed in resistive screens is nothing to compensate the lost accuracy, and the need to lift your finger away from the screen when multitapping (not to mention ability to draw, handwrite or otherwise keep memos on the screen). All the reviews exaggerate this with statements like "swiping, or in fact push and drag". It is true resistive screens have come a long way, it was like that the old days, and some of them even had a considerable distance between the film and the lcd making taps less accurate, but most of the non geeks I know, can't distinguish between capacitive and resistive screens by the touch, and I have to tell them the fingernail trick.
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EmberReigns cam