So I'm sure that most of us agree that sooner or later, a Kindle will come out with touch screen support. However, many people, me included, like using the physical buttons on the keyboard.
I think a good compromise would be to only include these buttons:
- Turn Page Forward/Backward
- Home, Back, Menu
- Five Way Controller
The menu that opens could be modified to have options to choose the font style and open the keyboard (navigated similar to how the Sym button works now). I hope that Amazon keeps the slider because it's much nicer than the 'modern' lock button that many devices use.
If designed well, these buttons would take very little room (maybe one row), and provide people with enough buttons to use the full functionality of the Kindle without ever having to utilize the touch screen.
Practically every feature would be available just as easily except for creating notes and buying books. So if you skip the whole social commenting stuff, you will only have to use the on screen keyboard once every several hours (on average).
People who are willing to utilize the touch screen will then have the ability to more easily browse the web, select books/menu items/etc with greater efficiency, and play new types of active content. (With most current active content games, I feel like I spend more time trying to select what I want than actually thinking and enjoying the game.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I think Touch would alienate some users, too. My seventy-three year-old father would throw a touch-screen e-reader across the room (I saw him do it with an iPhone that his one of his grandchildren thought he would use). But he absolutely loves reading on his Kindle 3. Why would you alienate that entire demographic by requiring more manual dexterity to operate it (in the case of reduced size and the number of buttons like you suggest)? Just keep a basic, non-touch e-reader available--in addition to the latest & greatest whizbang--and everybody will be happy... no?
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I think that the compromise that I mention in this case would be fine with your father. Reading a book will be just as easy (if not easier, because of size) as before. Only the situation of buying a book will be slightly more complicated (I'm assuming that your father does not tweet about his books).