Shortcut for Numbers and Special Characters
Our
little effort to improve your productivity
What I shall discuss in the
following text is the typing of numbers and signs. We need to type numbers and signs
(including punctuation) quite often, but such simple stuffs are not that easy
to type on your digital devices due to the limited size of your screen. In
traditional mobile keyboards, we always need to press the switching key in the
corner to type numbers and signs. This could be rather frustrating when you are
typing a lot of them not only because of the extra clicks of the switching key,
but also because there might be a lag once you click the key, making the extra
time you spend in these characters even longer and annoying.
You may not realise how
frustrating it could be, probably as you do not need to type numbers that often
and your daily usage of punctuation is just commas and full stops. But as a
former mathematics major, I would say that this inconvenience could be
intolerable when I was discussing mathematical problems with my mobile phone,
and the default Android keyboard was as clumsy as a sloth. I am sure you know
what I mean, and no offence to sloth lovers.
Our Solution:
To solve this
problem, we redesigned our touch keyboard and inserted shortcuts to numbers and
signs in the letter keys. To type a number or a sign, you just need to long
press a certain key instead of switching to the number/sign keyboard and then
switching back. You do not need to memorise the location of each number or sign
as they are already shown in their respective key with a smaller size. For
example, you simply need to long press the letter ‘p’ for the number ‘0’, or long press the letter ‘v’ for the underscore.
We understand that many
people would long press for accented characters, like the acute é in café or coup d’état. Diacritical
marks might not be rare in English but are important in most European languages
like French, Spanish, and German. To make sure you can always type your chosen
characters, we adapt the number/sign shortcuts to the accented keys. When long
pressing the letter ‘a’ or ‘e’, you can find both the collection
of accented letters, and the respective sign/number (@ and 3). The number/sign
shortcut is positioned in the default position, because in most cases,
diacritical marks are added by either the auto-correction or word prediction
(if you are the language of the keyboard use them). But if you do need to type
them with a long press, just hold and slide to the right character.
With the shortcuts to
numbers and signs, Typany Keyboard significantly accelerates your productivity
and make your typing more enjoyable and amusing. We shall optimise these
shortcuts and make them more intelligent and customised in the future. But we
do need your advice on how we can improve our product and design a
well-functioned and inspiring keyboard application. So, we are really looking
forward to your feedback, attitude or advice on Typany Keyboard. To contact us,
simply reply or visit us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.
New to Typany Keyboard?
Search for Typany Keyboard on Google Play and try our special keyboard app that
is designed for you!
Typany Keyboard Team.
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