Database Users

Why are on-screen keyboards not slightly transparent?

One thing that I find annoying on my Legend is that the screen is small compared to other devices and when I'm in text entering mode, the virtual keyboard comes up and shifts everything else upwards.
In situations like standard text messaging, emailing, internet browser, MSN talk, etc. there is often only a very small amount of room between the top of the keyboard and the top of the screen, where the contents of the app is now displayed. The keyboard takes up half the screen.
I don't see why they don't make the keyboard like 50% - 85% transparent, like a smooth popup which comes over the display instead of shifting it up and cramming it into a tiny space.
People are familiar with QWERTY keyboards, they dont need to see them with 100% opacity on their screen to type with them, especially if they're using something like Swype (Which I am).
I'm not really sure whether it would be possible to make a transparent keyboard app, since it might be hardcoded that any text input system shifts everything up.. I'm not sure. But I just think it's a sort of logical idea... thoughts?

Blindtype

bcpk said:
Blindtype
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Yes I'll look into that.
it'd be cool if swype would make their keyboard transparent too

You could theme it yourself.

[Q] Bored of the "On Screen Buttons" Nexus 7

Hey guys,
I've had my Nexus for just over a month now and apart from a few minor issues I'm really enjoying my experience with my Nexus.
BUT: One thing that really p*sses me off is the total waste of screen real estate being the "on screen buttons". I can sort of understand the device having as few as possible buttons is pretty cool but when it starts invading your screen size that is NOT COOL.
I have a few questions for google: Why oh why did you make the background for the navigation buttons black?? Why not transparent? Or transparent with a blur effect? Personally I would prefer just transparent with faint white back, home and app switcher buttons. It would make more of the screen available to see.
If I were to root my device, are these things that i could schange in the System or Framework RES folders? Or would it be much more complicated than that (i.e. changing color hex's in .xml files?)?

Search for how to enable the tablet UI. I had to enlarge the font to make things a bit more comfortable for me, but I really do like the true tablet UI.
sikodemon said:
Hey guys,
I've had my Nexus for just over a month now and apart from a few minor issues I'm really enjoying my experience with my Nexus.
BUT: One thing that really p*sses me off is the total waste of screen real estate being the "on screen buttons". I can sort of understand the device having as few as possible buttons is pretty cool but when it starts invading your screen size that is NOT COOL.
I have a few questions for google: Why oh why did you make the background for the navigation buttons black?? Why not transparent? Or transparent with a blur effect? Personally I would prefer just transparent with faint white back, home and app switcher buttons. It would make more of the screen available to see.
If I were to root my device, are these things that i could schange in the System or Framework RES folders? Or would it be much more complicated than that (i.e. changing color hex's in .xml files?)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

You can make it smaller.
Here's a guide.http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1844878
Beamed from my Grouper

Hmm, nearly, but I still don't understand why the navbar background color has to be black, I just really don't get what the advantage is. It would just make so much more sense if it were see through.

sikodemon said:
Hmm, nearly, but I still don't understand why the navbar background color has to be black, I just really don't get what the advantage is. It would just make so much more sense if it were see through.
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Maybe it was carried over from the gnex.
It's black on the gnex to take advantage of the AMOLED screen.
Beamed from Maguro

Hi
sikodemon said:
Hmm, nearly, but I still don't understand why the navbar background color has to be black, I just really don't get what the advantage is. It would just make so much more sense if it were see through.
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Click to collapse
Presumably it is because it is dead space. Applications don't/can't expand into that area as it is protected. For example if you had an application open to the maximum behind translucent soft buttons, and that application required you to press something towards its bottom edge, you can't as it is now behind the menu buttons.
Ideally the buttons would be below the display and printed onto the touch screen as they are with my HTC One X, presumably they are not for either cost reasons or flexibility of the design.
Regards
Phil

sikodemon said:
Hmm, nearly, but I still don't understand why the navbar background color has to be black, I just really don't get what the advantage is. It would just make so much more sense if it were see through.
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I'd guess that it doesn't make sense for it to be transparent because there is nothing under the navbar. Its a part of the screen that is separate from the application, if you allowed the navbar to be imposed over the application and transparent then the bottom part of the screen would be unusable in the application because touching it would activate the navbar buttons rather than the applications.
That said on the launcher it would be easy to just extend the wallpaper over the navbar and make it transparent and in apps you could colour the navbar with the average colour of the application background etc, though of course Apple has a patent waiting for that http://www.phonearena.com/news/Appl...xed-video_id34472?ratelimit=-10&sort=threaded

Not true because you can hide the nav bar on certain roms and that space it was using up is definitely usable. Hey OP I forgot what it's called but there's a launcher somewhere based on nothing but gestures so you don't even need a nav bar and you can use that extra screen space you seem to desperately need.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

sikodemon said:
Hey guys,
I've had my Nexus for just over a month now and apart from a few minor issues I'm really enjoying my experience with my Nexus.
BUT: One thing that really p*sses me off is the total waste of screen real estate being the "on screen buttons". I can sort of understand the device having as few as possible buttons is pretty cool but when it starts invading your screen size that is NOT COOL.
I have a few questions for google: Why oh why did you make the background for the navigation buttons black?? Why not transparent? Or transparent with a blur effect? Personally I would prefer just transparent with faint white back, home and app switcher buttons. It would make more of the screen available to see.
If I were to root my device, are these things that i could schange in the System or Framework RES folders? Or would it be much more complicated than that (i.e. changing color hex's in .xml files?)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agreed with you. Is there anyone that can port Motorola's Transparent Software Buttons, so it will be better?

slick_rick said:
Not true because you can hide the nav bar on certain roms and that space it was using up is definitely usable. Hey OP I forgot what it's called but there's a launcher somewhere based on nothing but gestures so you don't even need a nav bar and you can use that extra screen space you seem to desperately need.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
You're both right and wrong. The launcher you're thinking of is probably the PIE launcher available on many custom ROMs, as well as its app equivalent (which I believe is called LMT). But your reasoning as far as hiding the navbar is incorrect. If you hide the navbar on a ROM (or even the way it's done in many games and the YouTube app), the navbar disappears, i.e. it's no longer protecting the screen space that it's not using. Making it transparent would do no such thing, and even if you forced an app to use the space beneath the navbar, you'd wind up with three floating navigation items that would probably conflict with an app's bottom navigation.
Pegasus195 said:
I agreed with you. Is there anyone that can port Motorola's Transparent Software Buttons, so it will be better?
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Click to collapse
If you want to look into custom ROMs, some will allow you to mess around with your navbar icons/actions (the main one I like is the replace Recent Apps with a Last App switcher). Paranoid Android also allows you to change the color (and I believe that includes alpha transparency), including a "chameleon"-style bar that changes color based on the active app's predominant scheme.
Also, to respond to something from earlier: black is better because as a static color, it uses less resources to draw and has the benefit of being power-efficient on AMOLED screens. In addition, while it might look neat, it's pretty well accepted in UI/UX lore that you should keep navigational elements as clearly and visually distinct as possible to make them easier to hit. Shoving white/grey buttons on top of an active-blurred background can create quite a headache.
There's a great example of this in the screenshots of Apple's control center for iOS 7. For some backgrounds, the control center is clearly visible despite the background bleeding through, but on others, you basically can't read the buttons because the blur is too distracting.

J Touch app for navigation rocks

Hey friends
I really don't like the navbar which is reducing the screen to much, so I decided to install J Touch app from playstore.
Loaded a nice looking home button jpeg picture from the web. Give the button a one hit back function, a long press home function and a swipe up for recents.
Please see attached pictures navigating is nice and I whish I could even eliminate the navbar on the homescreen

FridrufHau said:
Hey friends
I really don't like the navbar which is reducing the screen to much, so I decided to install J Touch app from playstore.
Loaded a nice looking home button jpeg picture from the web. Give the button a one hit back function, a long press home function and a swipe up for recents.
Please see attached pictures navigating is nice and I whish I could even eliminate the navbar on the homescreen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keeping one icon appear on the screen all the time may cause burn in I'd be worried about that

big_b0sss said:
Keeping one icon appear on the screen all the time may cause burn in I'd be worried about that
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Click to collapse
No I don't think so. There is transparency setted, the button is popping if hitted and it is shifting up on home screen. You could be as scared or even more about a status bar burn in...
and look how much time is needed:
"Test Results
The iPhone X displayed burn-ins before the Galaxy Note 8 at 17 hours. However, it took 510 hours for the images to become permanently etched on its display which also marked the end of the test.
Compared to that, the Note 8 took 62 hours to show first signs of display burn-in, which is impressive. However, it had permanent marks way before the end of the test. The Galaxy S7 Edge showed signs of burn-in sooner than the iPhone X, however, it showed permanent burn-ins much later than the Note 8 and almost at iPhone X’s 510 hour mark."
From page:
https://propakistani.pk/2018/01/05/iphone-xs-screen-shows-burn-marks-just-17-hours-test/

Ok so would you recommend the app over navigation gesture? The gesture is not polished at the moment I'll give the app a go

big_b0sss said:
Ok so would you recommend the app over navigation gesture? The gesture is not polished at the moment I'll give the app a go
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I think so, you can also activate temporary move, which is helpful is s.th. is hided by the button. So you can move the button away for two seconds. You can hide button always in landscape, it is hiding when you are keyboard typing... it is perfect for 18:9 displays.
If navbar would have a one button control too, I wouldn't use J Touch.
You can also give it an iPhone look but ok I guess everybody is hating apple .
Edit: Ah ok you mean gesture. Sorry I didn't have this option until now.... don't know what is better

Looks like a nice app. I prefer LMT Launcher though as you can set it to do almost any task and only comes on the screen when you activate it so creates a really clean look with extra functionality.

Or you could try Gesture Control from Conena.. I'm very happy with the way the gestures work

es0tericcha0s said:
Looks like a nice app. I prefer LMT Launcher though as you can set it to do almost any task and only comes on the screen when you activate it so creates a really clean look with extra functionality.
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Have you been able to use lmt with stock os? If so, I'd like to know the secret for getting rid of the nav bar

Not sure. Not really a fan of stock. From other forum members, it's possible to disable it with the joneplustool app. Both that and LMT require root.

I've been using Swipe Navigation. It even has long press functionality. Loving it so far.

That looks bat **** ugly, why don't you just download https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.suphi.swipenavigation&hl=en ?

In my kg g6 its eating battery like elephant ??

Xposed Edge anyone?

One UI general discussion

So what do you guys think of the new One UI?
Imho, although it is a start in the right direction, the design feels very work in progress.
1. Round corners; Samsung made corners too rounded. They should follow Googles design language here. Samsungs corners make cards stick out to much from the general picture of a menu/app (best example: Settings menu).
2. Pop ups from the top or the button (like share menu) shouldnt be rounded. It doesnt look coherent (hope thats the right word).
3. They should use the status bar tint from the md guidelines.
4. The navigation bar should show up when you use a keyboard, even when you have gestures enabled. The blank bar is awful.
(About the keyboard itself: Samsung should take a look at Gboard and how it handles suggestions. You can type multilangual on it and it detects the used language almost perfectly. Samsung gives that option in the settings but it works like ****. Also please let me completely disable auto caps. So many suggestions have a capital starting letter.)
5. Notification pop ups are too low on the screen.
What are your issues with One UI?
Gesendet von meinem SM-G955F mit Tapatalk

i am really like pie but am i the only one that thinks that the launcher should share the design language of the one ui? when you open your apps or a folder everything is too high to reach when using one handed. would be nice if the apps were in a vertical scroll instead of horizontal and they started half way down the page. Folders should open up with the first row at the bottom not the very top. seems counter intuitive to what they are preaching with one ui. thoughts?

Gboard buffer space

Does anyone know how to raise the height of the keyboard in gboard so the bottom of it doesn't sit right at the bottom of the phone? I use both an iPhone and the OnePlus and vastly prefer the way iOS handles the keyboard by mimicking a bezel so your hands are more evenly distributing the weight of the phone while typing.

macfan406 said:
Does anyone know how to raise the height of the keyboard in gboard so the bottom of it doesn't sit right at the bottom of the phone? I use both an iPhone and the OnePlus and vastly prefer the way iOS handles the keyboard by mimicking a bezel so your hands are more evenly distributing the weight of the phone while typing.
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Click to collapse
Go to Gboard settings - preferences - keyboard height

Caltinpla said:
Go to Gboard settings - preferences - keyboard height
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Click to collapse
I think that adjusts vertical height. I'm looking for a buffer between the bottom of the keyboard and the bottom of the phone so the keyboard is higher up on the display.
Something that would resemble this

macfan406 said:
I think that adjusts vertical height. I'm looking for a buffer between the bottom of the keyboard and the bottom of the phone so the keyboard is higher up on the display.
Something that would resemble this
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Click to collapse
Man I wish we could do this as well. The only thing you can do I think is turn on the navbar and I don't want to do that because I love the gestures.

You can move gboard up to create a buffer. But it's not full size unfortunately

Reuben_skelz92 said:
You can move gboard up to create a buffer. But it's not full size unfortunately
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Click to collapse
I knew about this feature too but it sucks because it's not full size and I have fat thumbs haha. It would be nice for the buffer like op states. Is there a way to request features if we're not on the beta program?

Doubt there's too much they can do if you don't want a nav bar. I could imagine it would be more Google's side with gboard

I'm ok with not having Gboard. I just want a keyboard that behaves like my Xs Max. I swap phones often to get a good sense on how to use both iOS and Android, and if I could get this to work properly, it would make my OP6T experience that much better.