

Introducing Slide-to-Select - kampopat
https://medium.com/@kampopat/click-click-click-drag-tap-tap-tap-slide-75fc1ad370fd

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preya2k
This has been around for a while. An app called Loom had this like a year ago.
You can look at it here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B8KTDqCKx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B8KTDqCKx8)

App is not available anymore, because it got acquired by Dropbox.

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ukd1
I'm pretty sure that they would have patented it too. Guess we'll find out if
this gets pulled.

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ttty
But nobody shows how to scroll in select mode.

Edit:

>Tested it out. Using spreadsheet terms, it seems that when you want to select
A1 to A2 it will scroll unless you have already started a horizontal select.
The whole workflow is actually really nice and smooth. I personally like it. I
would recommend others to try it out.

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Goonbaggins
Looks great for a static screen. How does it handle scrolling?

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paulmalenke
Tested it out. Using spreadsheet terms, it seems that when you want to select
A1 to A2 it will scroll unless you have already started a horizontal select.
The whole workflow is actually really nice and smooth. I personally like it. I
would recommend others to try it out.

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aidos
Cool! That's actually a great solution.

As with all of these things it's not obviously discoverable but once you know
how the interaction works it's really useful. Seems like one of these features
that you'll forever find yourself wishing for in every other app where you had
to select a load of things.

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kampopat
We're going to introduce a short tutorial that makes users aware of the
interaction when they first open the camera so that should make it more
discoverable. Another thing that isn't obvious yet is you can deselect all the
images by shaking the device! We'll make that obvious in the tutorial too.

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paulmalenke
It might be good to have a deselect all button. Without knowing that I could
shake, I deselected around 25 photos manually.

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afandian
EDIT 2: Author removed the image.

I clicked on the link. It shows me a full-screen image with some text telling
me to click and drag and tap and slide. So I clicked on the text and dragged
and ... it's text.

I pressed space (probably subconsciously) and found out that it scrolls and
it's an article about user interaction. But the only thing I saw at first is a
picture and a title. It seems like they went out of their way to destroy
usability so it looks nice. Especially ironic in an article about user
interfaces.

I don't think it would really hurt to put "scroll down to read some text" on
there, so you know you can scroll.

EDIT: this is what I see:
[http://i.imgur.com/euC9MeN.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/euC9MeN.jpg)

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userbinator
_" scroll down to read some text" on there, so you know you can scroll._

I saw the picture and text at first, but also the scrollbar that indicated
there was more content, so I knew I should scroll down.

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afandian
The problem is, Mac OS (I don't know about others) don't have a static
scrollbar anymore. There's no way of knowing. The people that make medium.com
surely must know that in Mac OS there will be no indication that there's any
content to read, and that if they fill the screen with a large image without
showing any content, they should at least say "there's some content below".

(Granted you can enable it in the System Preferences, but that's not standard)

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cookingrobot
Windows Vista did something similar to support both panning and selecting with
touch screens.*

A vertical drag would pan the content, and a horizontal drag would act like a
mouse: select or drag-drop the content.
[http://youtu.be/roP3YtLvblE?t=2m22s](http://youtu.be/roP3YtLvblE?t=2m22s)

I thought it worked well, even though it made horizontal scrolling harder (had
to use 2 fingers).

Windows 8 uses tap-drag for selection instead.
[http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/touch-
mouse-a...](http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/touch-mouse-and-
search/using-touch-gestures-tap-swipe-and-beyond)

(* I worked on this feature at MS back in the day)

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userbinator
This sounds like it would have to be a separate mode, since otherwise it would
be very easily confused with scrolling which the slide gesture is already used
for - and this could make selections more difficult if they're not contiguous
and located far apart; compare

1\. Scroll to the first item; tap to select it; scroll to the second item; tap
to select it; perform the desired action with the selection.

2\. Scroll to the first item; enter selection mode; tap to select it; exit
selection mode (and hopefully it still keeps the selection!); scroll to the
second item; enter selection mode; tap to select it; perform the desired
action with the selection.

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kampopat
OP here. It's actually a single mode. Since the view doesn't have a horizontal
scroll, the selection is activated as soon as you slide your finger
horizontally and will continue (horizontal or vertical) until you lift your
finger. Of course this means that only the visible cells on screen can be
selected in one go before you'd have to release (it will keep the selection)
and then scroll down before selecting another group. Hope that clears it up!

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adevine
This interaction looks like it could be confusing as everywhere else people
are used to the drag-and-drop interaction (or, in mobile, tap-and-drag).

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girish_h
This is a really cool implementation.. Definitely a time-saver.. Like another
user mentioned here, i am curious to understand how you handle vertical
scrolling..

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kampopat
Vertical scrolling isn't affected. A horizontal slide of your finger will
activate it and then you can slide over any photo you want to select
(horizontal, diagonal and vertical). Once you lift your finger you can scroll
down as you normally would. We take into account the angle at which you're
scrolling so it is possible to select say 3 photos in the same column by
sliding your finger over the top one at an angle and then sliding down. Try it
out if you have an iOS device.

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peterchon
every interaction should have a logical purpose behind it. clicking is a
natural form of selection, swiping is more geared towards movement.

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umangd
Tidy (an iOS app for organising your photos) has this as well. Dont know how
they do it, buts its really neat.

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jpl56
I can already perform a slide to select on my old iPad 1. Did this disappear
in recent versions of iOS?

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aligajani
Wish Apple sees this.

