Helllo! I am Russian, my English is not very good, but I have not success with my idea in my country (nobody cares about health).
I want to talk about absolutely another way for health caring, if you compare this with traditional design and usability.
Now we have a LOT of people with glasses. People take their first glasses in childhood, and most of them using tablet or PC very often, and this is really bad. Also, we can see something like this (it's not me , and it's very bad to.
Why his back is a curve? It's not only "bad habbit" of one man, it's a problem of many people . I think that the reason of bad back and glasses is very simple and stupid - he (we) physically can not see text well, and glasses or curve back it's a trying for compensation!
So, if we want to have health people, developers should rebuild old methods of text displaying, because they are not compatible with our health!
Most of Russian spend a lot of time for sitting in our social network. VK.COM . If we talk about PC (not mobile phone or tablet), it uses 11px font by default! It's not only very small font, it's very low detailed font, especially, if we remember, that "program" DPI is 96 (in paper this is 300). Really display DPI in windows does not matter - font drawing in 3 times less.
I want to say we should use 16px/12pt font size by default, and stop use small font size. It's something like this (if we say about detalization)
Why 16 px? Firstly, it is compatible with 12 pt (12pt*96dpi/72=16px). So, we can use 16px not only in web, but also in Window interface. Secondly, I want to say that "bigger is better", but 18px (for example) in most of font look absolutely different (bolder) with 12-17px, it is unusual for some people.
Also, I want to say about features of human text perception. Long line length (more 100 symbols) is not good for us, and text understanding becomes worse. If we read books, line length physically can not be very long, but in the Internet a lot of text (for example, Wikipedia) do not consider this. Bigger font size can reduce line length, but developers should to consider it.
I mean, that most of children hate reading, because this associated with big eyes's strain (small font-size), curve back and inability to get text well (loong line-length).
Also, some rules are existed - if we use bigger font and shorter line-length, we should reduce line-height. Default line-height is 150%, I think we need to reduce it to 136%.
So, these principles can be simple realized in CSS:
*{font-size:16px;
line-height:136%}
I called it ESI - eyes saving interface, and it have realization in plugin, which load custom CSS for sites. There is not only font-size and line-height, it includes rebuild site rebuilding. I does not make it good, but something like this:
It's usual VK
It's ESIed VK
It can looks unusual and bad, if compare it with traditional representation of design, but I believe it's better for health.
ESI is better, than scaling, because we don't lost information, and ideally we can control base FONT-size.
It's YouTube
It's ESI YouTube.
Ideally, user need to have an opportunity for manual tuning of base text parameters.
It's wikipedia's control (prototype). You can choose font-size, line-height, max-width, and you can change font-family (for big texts it's preferred use serif, but apply it for every element it's too global)
Also, ESI realized to Windows in themes, you can download it and try. You can apply it correct to the Windows 7 (maybe Vista) only, because Windows 8 has independent font setting.
But Windows have some "bug" - you can set 12pt for icon's text, but horizontal spaces are not in theme. It means, that icon's names will look like
«Wind...» int 12 pt, not «Windows» in 8(9?)pt. In Windows 7 you canenlarge horizontal spaces to 85 (I prefer numbers that are divisible by 17) or something, but in Windows 8 you can not control it, maybe in registry.
So... I think that ESI idea should have some support. Suppose I can rebuild every program and site for comfortable of my eyes, but it's quite hard and eats my time. I'll still see people with poor eyesight and curve back, who hate reading, and I believe, that some developers can affect on it.
Now, you can test ESI with my plugin (it's Stylish with little mod) and give your opinion. You can install it using google chrome bit.ly/esi_c or bit.ly/esi_o for opera. Then you can find esi styles for some sites, Facebook (I did not work on it), Wikipedia, YouTube...
I can not post external link for images...
It's good someone's passionate about this and I think it would be a good idea. I hope one day you vision is achieved (no pun intended)
you can do it!! :silly:
Related
I guess I'm hitting on a topic that has had endless discussions and has just plain been posted thousands of times, so it's probably a big annoyance for most of you; however, I have yet to see a concise and informative post or even a website anywhere that helps me get applications for my first Pocket PC, an AT&T Tilt. So if it's not too much trouble could you guys please help me out here? Please follow this format for each application you post:
[Category] - Pricing/Freeware
Application:
Description:
Positives:
Negatives:
Rating: 1 being worst - 5 being best
Where to get:
Example...
[Scheduling] - Freeware
Application: TodayAgenda
Description: TodayAgenda displays appointments and tasks on your today screen up to 30 days in advance. It replaces the default Outlook plugin with a lot of more features. (Straight from the site)
Positives: Great features, Very customizable.
Negatives: Can lag a little bit sometimes, Some features that Spb Dairy has that it lacks.
Rating: 4
Where to get: http://tiews.info/index.php?show=&lang=en
I think if we follow this format, we can give this thread a longer life expectancy as well as alleviate many of these types of posts. Even though I expect this to be an thread for great applications, if you feel the need to criticize another application please do so in a thorough manner following the format. Thank you for taking your time to read this and I hope to see some amazing applications!
[PIM Manager]: $29.95
Application: Manages your contacts, tasks, diary & Todo lists.
Description: An impressive all round product to help assist with managing your data in a simple but complex interface. Pocket Informant doesn't just simply let you work with your daily events through lists and grids, but with the new Events and Journal views you can look at your life's past and future in an easy cohesive environment. Even create contact links within your appointment or tasks' subject and notes let you quickly access a named contact without having to resort to links or a search. Most suprisingly, this power doesn't come at the cost of a complicated, cluttered interface.
Positives: Very customisable, easy to use, all in one management.
Negatives: None that I can complain about
Rating: 4
Where to get: http://www.pocketinformant.com/
For me the best application which in fact has prevented me from shifting to Symbian is SoftMaker's Office.
Category = On purchase. This is a suite of Spreadsheet and word processor.
Positives = So powerful that it can do almost what the PC counterpart can do. I need extremely complex spreadsheets even including conditional formatting and drop down lists. Never once I have encountered a situation where there was a mismatch between the desktop and the device. Round trip integrity of documents is just perfect.
Negatives = Not really many except for the steep price but I guess I do not mind this much as the overall functionality it provides is just great.
website = www.softmaker.com
[Category] - Pricing/Freeware - $40.00 - $60.00
Application: - CalliGrapher
Description: - Writing Recognizing Program
Positives: - Actually works...It has a function call Write Pad which allws fast printing across the bottom of the screen. I can take meeting notes very quickly during meetings. I gave up my Palm TX to go back to a PPC speciffically because of this ability.
Negatives: - There is a learning curve.
Rating: 1 being worst - 5 being best - 5
Where to get: http://www.phatware.com/calligrapher/index.html
[Taskmanager] - Freeware
Application: wkTask
Description: Task- and discrete Batterybar
Positives: Very nice and customizable, uses almost no CPU (especially compared to MagicButton which does the same but is quite ressource hungry)
Negatives: Notification icon might get hidden behind the taskbar (just set it such that there's enough space, still automatic would be nicer )
Rating: 4.5
URL: http://soft.photoracer.net/docs/wktask_en.html
Business (power user) - Worldmate FREE Worldmate Pro $74.95
Application: Worldmate
Description: Multiple apps for travel..Weather, Conversions, flightinfo and organiser
Positives: All of it.
Negatives: renewable yearly license (covers data subscriptions for weather and realtime flight info)
Rating: 5
Where to get: Online.
UTIL - Freeware
Application: MOJOPAC
Description: Used in conjunction with Softkick card export, gives a carry around vitual PC.
Positives: Carry more than just a Pocket PC
Negatives: Really needs a large SD card to be fulfilled.
Rating: 5
Where to get: Online
Tomeraider
oops - doublepost
Tomeraider
[db / ebook reader] - £19.95
Application: Tomeraider
Description: "TomeRaider is a text database browser and reader for handheld devices and Microsoft Windows made by Yadabyte"
Positives: Not just an eBook Reader but SO much more. On my SD card, I have a file containing the whole of wikipedia - it is very, very fast too. You wouldnt know that there were literally millions of articles. I also have IMDB on it too - lots of files available (4000 according to the site) - you can even author your own
Negatives: None found as yet
Rating: 1 being worst - 5 being best: "5+"
Where to get: http://www.tomeraider.com
[GPS navigation] - around $150, depends on country
Application: iGo MyWay Plus
Description: excellent GPS navigation software
Positives: Best interface that I've ever seen in any GPS software. Extremely convinient and easy to use. Fast, reliable. A lot of infromation on the screen, yet nothing is ever covered by anything, you get the whole view. Has a very large selection of maps. Not sure about others, but California map is very well detailed - last update was in Jan 08 with over 2 million POIs. Nevada map is ecellent too, other states probably the same. Supports TMC, internal/external GPS, speed cameras, excellent voice guidance, day/night skins, various transportation devices, toll road avoidance, and much more stuff.
Negatives: Does not get traffic updates from the web. Rest is minor glitches: If device goes to sleep, it may not return from it if iGo is running (happens very rarely). If phone is on vibrate - switches it to "silent" mode... although maybe this bug has to do with my config/device.
Rating: 1 being worst - 5 being best
Where to get: http://www.i-go.com/en/
Excellent idea! Should hopefully curb the "Just got my HTC xxx - what programs should I put on it?" posts!
My contributions
[Synchronisation] - £16.00/Free trial
Application: Easy Sync by Pocket Wizards
Description: Excellent program that lets you sync any files from any location on your PC to any location (including microSD) on your PPC
Positives: Much better than Active Sync file transfer. Leave all your files exactly where they are on your PC. Set up a sync partnership for that file using the straightforward wizard and choose where on your device you want to sync the file to. Choose your update frequency and job done - whenever you change the original file, the synced copy also updates. Can set up uni or bi-directional sync, so changes made to PPC version are automatically transferred to your PC file at next Sync. Can be set to trigger when ActiveSync starts up for a fully automated process. Also allows for sync of entire folders.
Negatives: The only one I can think of is that it is compatible with .NetCF 2.0 only, not with 3.5. Other than that, very smooth and stable. Well worth the money.
Rating: 5
Where to get: Handango etc
[Utilities] - Freeware
Application: GroupSMS
Description: Easy way to send SMS to multiple contacts
Positives: Allows you to choose multiple SMS recipients by ticking the boxes, rather than choosing them one by one. Can set this up for different contacts groups too.
Negatives: Can only set up groups via Outlook, although this function is on the creator's To-do list
Rating:4
Where to get: www.shubaroo.com - lots of other great little apps on this website too!
App Launcher
[App Launcher/Today Plugin] - $15
Application: UltimateLaunch 1.2
Description: Tabbed app launcher and today plugin. Animated tab transitions, unlimited tabs, gestures.
Positives: Very customizable, unlimited tabs, custom icons, low memory usage.
Negatives: Learning curve to configure, uses icons instead of png.
Rating: 4
Where to get: http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Launcher-Applications/UltimateLaunch-56169.shtml
[SIP Keyboard] - Usually $19.99. But at the moment, $12.98 for two licences. Give one to a friend like I have!
Application: TouchPal 2.0 Professional
Description: Finger/thumb-friendly predictive keyboard with a special technology called T+ where you tap and slide each key in a different direction for different symbols, letter, case, number etc. Many many features including multiple languages, dynamically-resizable keyboard, fast custom word input. Innovative design.
Positives: way too many to list. accurate and quick predictive input due to design of two letters on one key, powerful, looks great, excellent support people who will consider your feature requests VERY quickly, excellent value. Still looks like a normal qwerty keyboard.
Negatives: Some people not used to predictive input may undergo a little learning curve. Try it, it's much faster and with this one, it usually has the word you want as the first one so you can just keep on typing!
Rating: 5+
Where to get: http://www.cootek.com/
Pros:
SO, i would like to know from you that are engineers or engineering students, how you use your smartphone/pda for.
I am a chemical engineering student and I've found lot of interesting software, most of them calculators, unit conversors and dictionaries. Beside that, using the pda to organize myself and keep information allways with me is great.
So, if you could indicate some more different softwares i would be very happy. I was looking for some app that gives me data that I usually need old fashioned tables for, like steam properties, or fluids porperties at different conditions. Also, what is the best unit conversor, that allow to convert combination of units. And I believe that there could be even other ways to take advantage of my device.
So, I'm waiting for your opinion and indications.
What I can indicate is Space Time, an amazing calculator for advanced calculations, and Math Tablet that would retire my HP calculator if my device's screen could be more responsive. Also, Lexisgoo is a great dictionary to get god definitions for english terms.
Thanks... best regards
Im a computer engineering major (finishing up second year) and i use it to basically take pictures of circuit designs and email it to myself for view on computer. Im very sloppy by hand
Chemistry Bible, sounds like a good software for [email protected]
http://www.vasantham.net/chemistry.htm
Thanks ekw!
This software should be good for chemical scientists, or at least it would be if I had my PDA on the beginning of the graduation...
Chemical engineers are actually concerned more about industrial process conditions, (transport of energy, mass and momentum) and fluid/solid conditions, most of them physico-chemical. Old school chem. eng. would use a lot of tables for various data.
And I bet you could use more your device. It is at least much more powerfull than any other pocket calculator you have.
At the risk of sounding old...I use the HP48GX calculator emulator on my Hermes. I even have all my custom programs from college installed. It also has the default Engineering Library with basic formulas and diagrams. After some years in the industry, I can tell you I pretty much just use Pocket Excel and the HP48 scientific calculator. I also use Outlook tasks to document everyday activities (very important in today's workplace...) and synchronize them to the PDA to have the answers handy, in case I run into one of those manager types.
What would be cool is to run LabVIEW and Matlab on my PDA. Then I would be invincible
dgaud007 said:
At the risk of sounding old...I use the HP48GX calculator emulator on my Hermes. I even have all my custom programs from college installed. It also has the default Engineering Library with basic formulas and diagrams. After some years in the industry, I can tell you I pretty much just use Pocket Excel and the HP48 scientific calculator. I also use Outlook tasks to document everyday activities (very important in today's workplace...) and synchronize them to the PDA to have the answers handy, in case I run into one of those manager types.
What would be cool is to run LabVIEW and Matlab on my PDA. Then I would be invincible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nice!
I've tested some HP emulators... but i've found that they're not so usable since the screen is smaller and the response from the touchscreen is also slower...
I've found other scientific calculators for the PDA that are better, like Math Tablet...
But on class i'm still using my hp 28S calculator (now, that's OLD, it's almost my age but it's still a very nice to use calculator.) that I've got from my brother. Actually, I got my PDA instead of buying another graphic calculator.
Pocket Excel (or better, PlanMaker) is definetly one great tool too, I've used several times already. Matlab and Maple would be awesome, but I've read somewhere that those ARM processors aren't the best for math procedures...
I've just finsihed my Mech Engineering. During my course I mainly used my smartphone for a pendrive. Also for my project guide to check up on my project report using Word and Adobe(not the entire thing of course .) I've demoed a few CAD drawings on it as well. Used the engineering calculator quite a few times. I've video taped a few practical sessions as well for future reference.
Now I'm planning to do my Msc in IT, so bascially I have the C# IDE running and also the MySaifu J2SE JVM, so I can basically test my programs on the go.
I just got a pretty strange idea when i scrolling through the Window folder.
i discovered that all images has 32 bit color depth. 32 bit = 4294967296 colors.
And the Diamond can only handle 65000 colors.
So by reducing the color depth of all image (around 1000 ea) we can save a lots of space and the load time will speed up i think ??!!!
And it wont be possible to see any difference.
So what do you think ???
Sorry for my real bad english
This idea could be great, that's for sure. I've been working with programming in 28 years so I know what I'm talking about.
I'm not entirely sure how good it is though, let's hope for other members opinions.
it's windows mobile that can only handle 65k colours. I'm pretty confident the hardware might be able to handle more. it's weird that the OS-files has more colour depth than the OS actually can show though.
Yeah Microsoft must be the smartest people in the WORLD !!! NOT !!!
could very easy be that wm would
1. fail to use the Image if it's made only to work with 32bit images
2. convert the images before applying them which would result in
more cpu usage
For two weeks now, I've been using my tab 8.9 at work for note taking. I've tried a bunch of apps and stylus and wanted to start a thread where we can share experiences.
I'm a lawyer and need to take a fair amount of notes and sometimes mark up documents. So far my favorite is Supernote 1.4 (the Asus app which I found online) for note taking. I generally like the app, but wish it could export notebooks in .doc format or rtf and wish it some greater formatting options. For now, I don't export notes very much and when I do, I combine notes into a single pdf using ConverttoPdF by tabletsoft (paid version). I really liked Evernote too because it has good formatting tools, but I don't want my notes automatically uploaded to the cloud. If Evernote added a feature to turn off automatic uploading, I would definitely try it again.
For writing, I use a Pogo sketch plus and the swype keyboard app. With a little practice, the keyboard is more pretty accurate and typed words are definitely easier to read than my handwriting. The pogo stylus is a little small, but the foam tip moves the smoother than the rubber tipped stylus I've tried. I only hand write when drawing a diagram or sometimes when providing comments to a pdf.
For pdfs, I use EZ pdf reader (from the market) and insert notes usually using a text box. Text box show up easily when I look through thumbnails of the document.
What apps/stylus have other people tried and liked?
I use Handrite free for writing notes unless I can find something better.
Its pretty decent at what it does though. You write however you like and it will shrink it down to a decent size, I do need to get a decent sketch app though.
Do you not find the tab 8.9 screen impossibly unresponsive? I've dabbled in using mine for notes but never got anything like an acceptable result - including that Asus app you mention.
The screen is unresponsive and I usually don't hand write or draw.
I find the screen plenty responsive to use the Swype keyboard. When hand writing or drawing I intentionally move slower than normal and use larger letters.
Jeremy
I can write text all day long about .5 to .75 inches high, printed, with no issues. I use the pogo sketch stylus and have used another cheap rubber tipped on with similar results. SuperNote makes it really easy to capture notes and I've found another called Quill that works pretty nice as well. Landscape gives you more room obviously. The 8.9 touch screen is just as responsive as the iPads (I've tested both) and so you get the same experience (with the same limitations eg. no palm rejection and you need to write kinda larger than you normally would on paper).
Finally! I found it! Check this out everyone, I might fork this to make it work a bit better for my plans but it's pretty incredible already. I have it running on Maxathon browser in fullscreen and it looks very good!
I'm not sure about how it's going to update, etc; throughout the day but this could also be fixed.
https://github.com/matopeto/kindle-weather-dashboard
The page to use it is http://kindle.hrincar.eu/weather/ and it's open-source! So sweet.
Possible improvements:
1. Icons for me are showing ??? so it's not loading something (Maxathon Browser)
2. I'd like to modify the layout or have another layout with a large time (perhaps only 1,2, or 5 minute updates or something)
3. Ability to use a chart for the weather instead of 3 hour blocks (3 day chart taking the whole horizontal section, perhaps a smaller option too)
4. SOLVED, It's refreshing every 30 minutes. Perhaps this could be selectable (I'm not sure if it's refreshing, so perhaps a partial refresh somehow)
andjohn said:
Finally! I found it! Check this out everyone, I might fork this to make it work a bit better for my plans but it's pretty incredible already. I have it running on Maxathon browser in fullscreen and it looks very good!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow! Looks pretty good although I, too, get no icons. I'll need to look at the HTML and the documentation to try and sort that out. Would also prefer am/pm time. What is really needed is to localize the entire thing before it disappears. I like my weather widget app, but this is a different thing altogether.
With Opera Mobile the URL for the weather display (as opposed to the dashboard) can be added to speed dial or the homescreen.
Now for some tinkering
nmyshkin said:
Wow! Looks pretty good although I, too, get no icons. I'll need to look at the HTML and the documentation to try and sort that out. Would also prefer am/pm time. What is really needed is to localize the entire thing before it disappears. I like my weather widget app, but this is a different thing altogether.
With Opera Mobile the URL for the weather display (as opposed to the dashboard) can be added to speed dial or the homescreen.
Now for some tinkering
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome, someone else is still around! Ya, with this awesome start we can make these Nooks look really good. I am good at expanding code, not so much writing from scratch...so this is perfect I'm imagining like a bunch of options etc. AND it can be self hosted
The maintainer emailed me after my issue, and it appears like the css is calling a custom font, so perhaps our Nooks can't load the custom font. If we could put the font on the device directly, and then use that; perhaps it might work...
andjohn said:
Awesome, someone else is still around! Ya, with this awesome start we can make these Nooks look really good. I am good at expanding code, not so much writing from scratch...so this is perfect I'm imagining like a bunch of options etc. AND it can be self hosted
The maintainer emailed me after my issue, and it appears like the css is calling a custom font, so perhaps our Nooks can't load the custom font. If we could put the font on the device directly, and then use that; perhaps it might work...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, my heart sank a little when I saw all the css in the page. When I was working with HTML on a regular basis, I sort of pre-dated the big push to css, so never learned much except tinkering on the margins by trial and error. Firefox can resolve the css url for the font on my PC and Opera Mobile is generally pretty good at css, but it's not clear where the info is coming from. If it's an actual font call, then we are SOL, I think. The only way to add a font to the NST, according to my understanding, is replace one of the existing fonts with the new font renamed as the old font (gee...that syntax is awful...).
The font he is using is the same one I use for the NST Weather Widget app so I already have it on my device, but its not with the rest of the fonts and is not seen by the system. It's called by Minimalistic Text to create the widget condition icons (since it is actually a font). Not sure if the css could be adapted to a situation like that.
Hmm...looks harder than I had hoped.
Edit: so here's a quote from the weather icon font creator on implementing:
To use the Weather Icons, place the main CSS files in your CSS directory, and the font files in a "font" directory on the same folder level as the CSS director. Once you've done that, all you need to do to reference an icon in your HTML is type <i class="wi wi-night-sleet"></i>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Therefore, if the HTML page were to be localized, and hence the css references changed, perhaps it would be possible to simply point to a local folder containing the font.
Figured it out! I just have to map each reference to the specific icon in the folder here https://github.com/manifestinteractive/weather-underground-icons/tree/master/dist/icons
So, I'll have to test it, and then send him a pull request for 'Nook mode', however I have to learn how to do a pull request and how to use git lol. Here's the relevant information:
Image Usage Instructions
If you just want to use the image files directly, and not use the CSS file you can just copy over the images directly from the dist/icons folder. See the Icon Key below to see which icons will be used.
nmyshkin said:
Yeah, my heart sank a little when I saw all the css in the page. When I was working with HTML on a regular basis, I sort of pre-dated the big push to css, so never learned much except tinkering on the margins by trial and error. Firefox can resolve the css url for the font on my PC and Opera Mobile is generally pretty good at css, but it's not clear where the info is coming from. If it's an actual font call, then we are SOL, I think. The only way to add a font to the NST, according to my understanding, is replace one of the existing fonts with the new font renamed as the old font (gee...that syntax is awful...).
The font he is using is the same one I use for the NST Weather Widget app so I already have it on my device, but its not with the rest of the fonts and is not seen by the system. It's called by Minimalistic Text to create the widget condition icons (since it is actually a font). Not sure if the css could be adapted to a situation like that.
Hmm...looks harder than I had hoped.
Edit: so here's a quote from the weather icon font creator on implementing:
Therefore, if the HTML page were to be localized, and hence the css references changed, perhaps it would be possible to simply point to a local folder containing the font.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse