Since I woke up this morning, I’ve been thinking about the patterns and new UI concepts that we are becoming accustomed to with this first release of the iPad. Like a lot of others, I’m intensely interested in the productivity apps: pages, keynote, brushes, sketchbook pro, omnigraffle. The ipad applications that reach beyond the brief interface available and so effective on the iPhone. The applications that work on documents stored on the iPad (although like many others, I wish they were stored in the cloud instead).

This past Thursday evening, after a very packed Seattle Xcoders meeting, i was chatting with a couple of fellows from Omni. They mentioned that in the creation of omnigraffle, they had focused on gestures that could all be quickly explored and were obvious: tap, double-tap, tap-and-hold. That all the functionality of the application had to be accessible from that basis. It makes sense, especially when it comes to needing to test without a device! And what I’ve seen in the applications so far is that most apps can be run with this basic set of gestures.

Keynote and Pages had an introduction document that was a sort of README for the basic use of the application. Omnigraffle followed that same suit. SketchBook Pro, on the other hand, had a little embedded video to show the functions, and in fact is probably the most complex from a gesture perspective. A three-finger tap brings up the controls, which otherwise fade from the pallete to leave you focused on painting. The two finger pinch and zoom functionality appears to be getting generally added with rotational effects in many applications now too.

The downside of the tap and do something sequences, which appear to have a good general traction for pulling up those damned handy pop-over menus, is that it appears to me to be slowing down the interface. The trickiest of these sequences is the tap-to-select followed by a tap to bring up that menu. I find myself wanting to race forward, and the gesture/sequence gets confused with a double-tap gesture instead. I have to slow myself down to make sure I’m not confusing the system. The kicker is at instead of thinking about what I’m drawing or sketching or writing, I’m now thinking about the interface. That’s the last thing any application developer wants.

Tap and hold is a little inconsistent at yet. In editors, you commonly expect it to pull up a spyglass for detailed positioning. I really like what omni did with it, allowing a tap-and-hold followed by a drag to be a selection box mechanism. I don’t know if many are doing it, but I’d love to see a three finger tap-and-hold as a general “select this area of things” mechanism. Ad yeah – riffing that idea straight from the iPad game command-and-conquer.

ps: sorry for the relative lack of links. I’m writing this with WordPress for the iPad and it turns out the making HTML links on text is a complete pain in the butt. The built in text keyboard is just very ill suited to the effort. Although props to WP developers, the text editor saw i was trying to make a link and intercepted the effort and helped me place it down. Another place where that upcoming multitasking will be damned handy – look up a link, come back and paste it in to place.

I haven’t spent quite as much of today with the iPad in my hands, but I’ve been thinking and mulling over elements about it all day.

It’s the Mail application, you see. It bugs me. Well, it bugs me in portrait mode especially, but in general the gestures and constants that I’d sort of hope to see aren’t really nailed down well as yet. Here’s some of that detail -

In portrait mode on the iPad, everything you do with Mail.app is controlled by these relatively tiny buttons at the very top of the iPad, and not near the edges. I don’t know about you, but I can’t even imagine holding the iPad from the top of it while using it, so the “delete” button in particular (which I use a lot with email) is kind of a pain in the ass to get to. On the iPhone, it’s centered at the bottom of the page, which makes it really handy to press & swipe down on the iphone, like you’re pulling off a sheet of paper or something, and it’s a great gesture to just nuke the email and move on. Nothing like that exists on the iPad right now – although I wish it did.

The other common need is something to quickly move to another message. On the iPad in portrait mode, it’s another tiny button, again at the top. I sort of hoped that a swipe gesture (either 2 or 3 finger swipe) would move me to the next message. Since I’m a native english speaker, the idea that a swipe-left gesture would move me to the “next” message would be ideal – but regardless of wether it went up or down the stack of messages sorted by received time doesn’t matter – so long as I could flip through them fairly quickly. That’s exactly the metaphor used in iBook, by the way. I want that same gesture metaphor in Mail.

In landscape mode it’s a little better, but you still can’t quickly jump up or down the queue of messages. A swipe gesture, ideally something that you could do with your thumb would be ideal. In iBook, you can just tap the right side of the page to move it forward too – that’d work, especially as the right-thumb tap in my case. Simple, quick, and I can process the information without having to tap around the screen all that much.

And yeah – for anyone from Apple or other developers, I’ve submitted the feature request: radr://7826844

I made this same feature request to Brent on NetNewsWire for the iPad. He’s got a great “next unread” icon in the upper right of the RSS reader, including a nice indication of if it’s the last unread article in a feed. And it’s in the upper right corner of the screen. I’d love it in the lower right (or lower left) – where my thumbs can tap at it quickly.

Gestures…

In general, the gestures aren’t common place as yet – although I expect them to become more common in the near future. What you use for 1 vs 2 vs 3 finger gestures is a damn good question – something to be sorted out as yet. Three-finger swipe left and right seem to be coming down as “undo” and “redo” respectively. 3 finger tap – bring up some overall control panel. But I’m basing this off a limited number of applications, and some of those drawing applications on the iPad. I haven’t even checked out what Keynote, Pages, or Numbers uses in this respect as yet…

Like a huge number of other folks, i wrangled an iPad for today. I pre-ordered it and waited for UPS to deliver it this morning. It made it into my hands just after noon, and I’ve been poking at it and trying out applications since about 1pm.

Here’s some thoughts and notes in no particular order about my first day with it:

This ain’t no kindle killer… the iBook functionality is nice, but the device is not a one-hander. You’ll prop or couch the device to be comfortable, and you’ll spend a lot of time with it horizontal, just because you get better functionality from a lot of apps that way. IBook is good, but I’m subtly disappointed with it’s interface (it felt kinda slow and “pause”-y) and there wasn’t much of a selection of science fiction… My technical books from PragProg loaded up great though.

Just because it’s not a one-hand-kindle reading killer, this thing is absolutely going to transform media. As a browser, it’s amazedly fast. The media applications, from the WSJ to NPR to ABC and USA Today have all embraced something that’s almost wholly new in this format – a touch beyond what you can do in a browser, and the overall experience with this super-focused interface makes it something different. Just from the day one launch apps, i can see more possibilities coming on the horizon for this kind of content.

iPhone and iPod apps work – but really, really feel like second class citizens next to the apps that have designed for the larger interface. Facebook, for example, is almost more usable directly in safari than through the Facebook application.

The larger screen real estate is wonderful, especially when viewing pictures or video. Some of apple’s own apps aren’t obeying the “turn anytime” rules of the iPad HiG, and you’ll find yourself in landscape rotation just because you get more immediate functionality in most apps from it.

The drawing apps are really nice, as is Pages and Keynote. They are not, however, always super intuitive. They do a good job introducing the interface, but it’s going to be one you learn. Especially Brushes and SketchBook Pro.

Typing in landscape isn’t too bad, but just typing on your leg is a pain because the device is light enough to flop around a bit, making the typing difficult. In portrait mode, you’ll be doing the two finger hunt and peck routine. Hitting the space bar to speed typing is proving difficult for me.

Spelling checking is nice, but ironically the replace mechanism doesn’t always seem to function properly. Dunno what that’s about.

All in all, I love it. It’s the device that I’ll have near the couch all the time, or sitting on the bed stand. I might drag it around a bit just too see how much of a pain that will be, but it really feels more like a hardback book that you’ll keep handy for reading rather than something you might haul where ever like a battered paperback.