1

Major Contribution Proposal

Contents1 Document Information .................................................................................................... 2

2 Proposal ......................................................................................................................... 2

2.1 Description............................................................................................................... 2

2.1.1 Two Modes –Hybrid and Touch ...................................................................... 2

2.1.1.1 Hybrid Mode ........................................................................................... 2

2.1.1.2 Touch Mode ........................................................................................... 3

2.1.1.2.1 Options menu ......................................................................................... 4

2.1.1.2.2 Multi-selection......................................................................................... 6

2.2 Benefits ................................................................................................................... 6

2.3 Schedule ................................................................................................................. 6

2.3.1 Target Release ............................................................................................... 6

2.3.2 Risks / confidence .......................................................................................... 6

2.4 Dependencies .......................................................................................................... 7

2.5 Exclusions ............................................................................................................... 7

3 Q&A ............................................................................................................................... 7

3.1 System impact ......................................................................................................... 7

3.1.1 What packages are expected to be impacted? ............................................... 7

3.1.2 Describe possible system-wide impacts; is for example system level regression testing or staged integration needed? ........................................................... 7

3.2 Major Contribution Proposal Resourcing .................................................................. 7

3.2.1 What parts, if any, of the contribution are not yet fully resourced? .................. 7

3.2.2 List any impacted packages (from section 4.1.1) whose owners haven’t agreed to their proposed involvement with the major contribution proposal .................... 7

3.3 Testing and Quality .................................................................................................. 7

3.3.1 Are there specific requirements on the community for testing this feature? Is IOP testing needed? Is additional test equipment needed? ............................................ 7

3.3.2 Describe any external contributions needed to achieve a good level of quality 7

3.4 Additional Contact Points ......................................................................................... 8

4 Revision History ............................................................................................................. 8

5 Appendix ........................................................................................................................ 8

1 Document Information

Remove Double Tapping from Platform Applications

Feature sponsor / Document author Ilkka Syrjälä, Ixonos Plc

Lead Technology Domain User Interface

Lead Technology Domain manager Scott Weiss

Revision number 0.5 Last revised date 23.09.2009

Major Contribution Proposal ID

<Insert ID> Status Draft

2 Proposal

2.1 Description

Nokia S60 5th Edition platform introduced a touch interface used by products such as Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97. As Symbian^3 will be based on S60 5th Edition Platform, it will also derive the touch user interface functionality.

The S60 5th Edition touch UI uses mainly single tap inputs. However, there are places where double tapping is required and this breaks UI consistency. This document proposes removing the need for double tapping from the Symbian^3 platform.

The proposed change will affect both the platform applications and the Symbian Platform Middleware layer as well. The non-touch UI, i.e. hardware only input functionality, will not be changed.

Nokia N97 touch phone is used as reference device in this proposal.

2.1.1 Two Modes –Hybrid and Touch

The user can interact with the touch device in two ways depending how the device is used. When hardware keys are hidden or they don’t exist in the device, mode is regarded as touch mode. When user enables hardware keys the input mode is regarded as hybrid mode. In N97, hybrid mode is enabled by pushing the screen forward so that the QWERTY keyboard becomes visible.

The mode is determined from a Publish and Subscribe key, so this will not add new dependency for existing applications.

The list component is the most common place where double tapping is used, so it is used as an example.

2.1.1.1 Hybrid Mode In hybrid mode, a selection is visible in lists just like it is currently implemented in 5th Edition platform. User can move the highlight using hardware joystick, open item or use an action for the selected element from the option menu.

Figure 1 Selection can be moved using HW joystick

User can also use touch to open an item. Double tap is removed so that single tap on a list element will automatically open the tapped target. Figure 2 demonstrates how single tap works in Contacts application. Initially the highlight is on a contact named andy. When user single taps contact ilkka the contact opens immediately.

Figure 2 Single tapping a list element will open it

2.1.1.2 Touch Mode The touch mode removes static highlight on lists. The highlight is shown only shortly when user single taps a list element. Because there is no active highlight, the options menu and its elements will be updated dynamically.

Figure 3 demonstrates a use case where a contact is opened using single tap on touch mode. The initial state of contacts view does not highlight any item. When the user taps contact called ilkka following steps happen:

1. Contact ilkka is highlighted when finger or stylus hits the screen

2. When user pulls stylus from the screen the contact opens

3. In single contact view no list items are highlighted

When switching between the two modes, list selection should be preserved, i.e. even if it disappears when switching from hybrid to touch mode, it should reappear when switching back.

Figure 3 Opening a contact on touch only mode

2.1.1.2.1 Options menu

The options menu will be affected also when sustained highlighting is removed. When there is no highlight, context specific options are hidden.

Figure 4 Context sensitive items will be hidden from Options menu when list item is not highlighted

Context sensitive items can be accessed via context sensitive pop-up menu, which can be launched by a long press of a list item. For example Contacts application contact list supports this feature already in the S60 5th Edition. This feature supported by the platform can be utilized in all applications where seen reasonable. Of course this requires some modifications to the application, but the implementation should be quite trivial.

Figure 5 Context sensitive pop-up menu opened with long press

2.1.1.2.2 Multi-selection

Single click functionality will have an impact on multi-selection capability in touch only mode. This chapter enumerates few of the possible multi-selection options on high level, but leaves the implementation options open. The multi-selection functionality can be specified in detail in the Technical Solution Description.

Multi-selection mode could be activated from Options�Mark/unmark�Select. When the multi-selection is activated, user can single tap elements in the list to select them. Once the wanted items have been selected, user can launch an action on the selected set of items via the options menu. After the action has been launched the list functionality reverts back to the normal single click mode. If user wants to cancel multi-selection (instead on launching action), it can be done via Options�Mark/unmark�Unmark all. The same functionality (mark/unmark) could also be accessible from the context sensitive pop up menu, in addition to or instead of options menu.

Another possibility could be to modify the list items to have tap zones for selection togging. Markable list items could be modified so that by clicking the tick mark area (right end of the item) would toggle the item selection and the rest of the list item area would respond to normal single clicks. Similar functionality could be implemented in the lists with visible checkboxes. The potential problem with this approach is that there is no hint in the UI of this possibility although it might be quite intuitive once learned by the user. Also depending on the screen size and layout the hit area may be too small for finger use. This would most likely impose changes on the UI framework itself.

There may also be other solutions to this issue which could be utilized instead of or together with the ones mentioned above. As mentioned before, multi-selection is an issue that requires further analysis.

2.2 Benefits

The focus of this proposal is to remove the double tap list behaviour inconsistency from platform applications and to make the behaviour consistent with single-tap behaviour in the S^2 Homescreen. There will not be a compatibility break in source, binary or usability for all the 3rd party applications developed for S60 3rd or 5th Edition.

Benefits of this solution are:

• Non touch UI functionality stays as it is currently

• No source, binary or usability breaks with 3rd party applications or Java

• The change supports devices with both keypad and touch

• 3rd party developers are not forced to change their current and old S60 3rd edition 5th edition products to support new UX

2.3 Schedule

2.3.1 Target Release

Symbian^3 is the target release for the proposed change.

2.3.2 Risks / confidence

Once the changes are made to the framework, there might be a risk of compatibility break in

some rare use-cases. This risk can occur if an application receives and manipulates pointer events or list elements against how it is defined in Symbian programming guidelines.

The implementation changes are initially estimated to be quite intense in the platform framework while smaller modifications are required in the application level.

2.4 Dependencies

None

2.5 Exclusions

None

3 Q&A

3.1 System impact

3.1.1 What packages are expected to be impacted?

Classic UI and most of the platform applications such as Menu, Contacts, Calendar, Messaging, File Manager, Gallery, Settings forms, Setting items.

3.1.2 Describe possible system-wide impacts; is for example system level regression testing or staged integration needed?

All platform applications must be tested for the new functionality and regression. If Symbian Foundation utilizes automated UI testing tools, the test cases need to be updated accordingly.

3.2 Major Contribution Proposal Resourcing

3.2.1 What parts, if any, of the contribution are not yet fully resourced?

Contribution is fully resourced.

3.2.2 List any impacted packages (from section 3.1.1) whose owners haven’t agreed to their proposed involvement with the major contribution proposal

Platform application package owners have been contacted and they do not have any objections about the change.

3.3 Testing and Quality

3.3.1 Are there specific requirements on the community for testing this feature? Is IOP testing needed? Is additional test equipment needed?

Regression testing of all modified applications needs to be conducted. Changes in the platform code, applications and dependent frameworks (e.g. Java) must be regression tested. Automated UI testing tool test cases (if any in use) need to be updated to conform to the single tap paradigm.

3.3.2 Describe any external contributions needed to achieve a good level of quality

No external contributors are required for this MCP. Since the changes affect many platform applications all testing work contribution provided by community is greatly appreciated.

3.4 Additional Contact Points

4 Revision History Revision Author Date Description

0.01 Ilkka Syrjälä 31.8.2009 New doc created based on MCP template version 1.1

0.02 Ilkka Syrjälä 9.9.2009 Updated version based on further analysis and comments by Scott Weiss

0.03 Ilkka Syrjälä 10.9.2009 Updates based on review comments

0.04 Ilkka Syrjälä 14.9.2009 Updates based on review comments

0.05 Pavol Pavelka / Martin Komara

23.9.2009 Proposal now assumes changes also in the platform.

5 Appendix -