Most people tend to see toolbar buttons as one-trick ponies. They do one thing, and they usually do that pretty well. However, tejpWriter’s developer Peter Thorstenson has a very interesting approach to toolbar buttons.
The image above looks a bit confusing at the first look. If you quickly tap a button, it acts like every other toolbar would. However, a long tap opens up a menu, and this is where the stunt starts.
Each of the actions has a ‘stroke’ . So, for example, in the example above, if you put your stylus on the toolbar icon and pull it off to the left, you toggle a different action with a single stroke. This way, one icon has 5 functions, one could easily expand it to 9.
Novice users will not be annoyed by those hidden functions, while expert users will understand them once informed about it. A few hint dialogs and a passage in the manual will be sufficient…
Overall, this is an impressive concept that many more PalmOS apps could benefit from. Congratulations to Peter Thorstenson!
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