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#touchscreen

2 posts2 participants0 posts today

Sadly, my parents have to replace their #car

What are the least bad options on the market for aging drivers? Are there any vehicles available in the US that...

1. Have knobs and buttons instead of #touchscreen-only controls?

2. Do not pretend to be "self-driving"?

3. Are not SUVs?

4. Cost less than $40k? (preferably far less)

Thanks in advance!

#CarShopping #Cars

all caveats understood. all cars are bad. older adults should not drive. Yes, noted, regretted, and accepted.

Continued thread

The most "successful #9thGenConsole" is the #SteamDeck, because #Nintendo's #Switch2 is merely a "minor upgrade" compared to the #NintendoSwitch, to the point that I think it should've been called "Nintendo Switch Pro" instead of #NintendoSwitch2, tho some people would call the #WiiU an
#8thGenConsole when in fact it's just an overclocked #Wii with #BD-ROM drive and #Touchscreen #Controller, which in and of itself was just a #GameCube with an overclocked yet smaller size CPU and more RAM.

  • But I'm getting ahead of myself...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_ge

en.wikipedia.orgNinth generation of video game consoles - Wikipedia

Doing a bit of an explore of the desktop environments on the Toughpad to see what's out there that's touch friendly. This is on Debian 12. I'll probably re-visit this when I move to Debian 13 in a few months time.

- #Gnome : tried both #X11 and #Wayland versions, Classic and the present UI… quite inflexible and the UI elements are practically invisible for driving with a stylus. On-screen keyboard is next to useless as it puts digits and symbols on separate pages and does not implement function keys or modifiers.
- #MATE : Seems to have limited screen scaling options and appearance customisation making stylus/touch operation tricky… but at least Onboard keyboard works.
- #Cinnamon : has the best built-in on-screen keyboard seen so far, but summoning it is not obvious and the layout is still sub-optimal for passwords (but ESC, function keys and modifiers are there!). You lose ⅓ of the screen to the keyboard, even if you're not using it.
- #XFCE seems to work pretty well, I was able to bump the size of the panel up a bit, it uses Onboard for the on-screen keyboard, seems to be the best so far.

Just waiting on #LXQT to install… we'll see how that is.

Replied in thread

@blog thx for the #HonestWords.

To me that touchscreen sounds awful.

Most 3rd party products that aim to compete with any established brand at least get the #price lower than the established players if they can't be assed to at least have the same level of #documentation, #quality or #support than i.e. #RaspberryPi.

  • At that insultingly high price I can get a #Pi0W2, an #HDMI + #GPIO / #USB touchscreen of the same resolution and still have change for a decent microSD and Power Supply, and that can display anything.

For €100 I can get some 1080p screen if not a decent #touchscreen if I snipe the right corners and ain't afraid of returns and refurbished parts.

  • At that price point it's absolutely not acceptable that they didn't put even a DSI connector on and included a HDMI driver board in the box. Espechally when it's not an #eInk screen!

I recently drove a car whose whole control and entertainment system was a gigantic iPad-like thing mounted to the dash. It caused me to have a realisation about the #Ui and #UX of touch screens.

There is no way to touch a touchscreen without it treating that touch as intentional. What I mean is: without taking my eyes off the road, I can grope across the dashboard, find a knob or button—by touching it—without activating any function. Touching the volume button or temperature knob doesn’t DO anything until I do it with more force and intentionality. Not so for a #touchscreen.

My mobile #phone (an #iPhone 13) has no dead space in its face. There’s no part of the phone face I can touch without it assuming I meant to do that and I wanted to activate whatever was under my finger. Old iPhones that had physical home buttons also had dead space to either side: a safe space to hold the phone without DOING anything.

Computer keyboard have little raised pips on the F and J keys so you can find them by touch without looking. I do this all the time. But I don’t type the letters F or J. Touch screens have no such affordances.

I look at the #blackberry keyboard in this photo and I see a raised space bar. It’s an #affordance that lets you orient your fingers, and orient how you hold the phone, without looking.

I miss buttons.

mobilesyrup.com/2025/02/15/bla

MobileSyrup · BlackBerry's iconic keyboard patent has expiredLet's all close our eyes and go back to 2009 so we can feel the thrill of typing our first email on the go.

#WhatsMissing:

A modern competitor to #OperaMini with:

Why?

OFC since #Opera #Mini needs a trustworthy proxy backend any "#clone" would need an #OpenSource'd & #SelfHosting-capable #backend (similar to @ActionRetro 's #FrogFind .com as it breaks #E2EE.

Needless to say it would be a godsent for anyone stuck on #EDGEland and slower speeds (i.e. #SATCOM like #Iridium)...

  • Sadly building a #browser is thousandsfold harder than building a Linux #distro...
en.wikipedia.orgOpera Mini - Wikipedia
Replied in thread

@pandora_parrot @nathans I sincerely hope the #EASA & #FAA will ban that shit and refuse to certify it because the only place where a #touchscreen as an interface is good is in a calm, vibration-free envoirment (i.e. flightplanning, pre-flight checklists, etc.)

Guess why #Airbus funded the research for a font designed for aerospace applications?

  • Because this isn't a matter of "corporate design" but being able to read vital data under stress and in extreme conditions.

This is why emergency checklists to this day are printed on paper and kept in the cockpit: Because it's faster and more reliable and more intuitive alternative to a tablet or even eBook-Reader...