Better scrolling with smartphones and tablets than by sweeping?

[ital2]

Hi.

I have another questions about smartphones and tablets. I had been in a store in order to have a look, and I liked mini tablets (Apple iPad Mini and Samsung S2 8.0) since you can hold them in one hand, but now that I decided I need the tablet for car navigation, too, it's evident they are both too tiny, so I need a full-size tablet.

But I was very surprised scrolling is as bad as that. Bot iOS and Android force you to sweep to the top if you want to go down to the next page, and while only iOS seems allow for tapping on top of the screen in order to mimic the home key of your pc/Apple keyboard, there is no way, with both systems, to tap somewhere in order to mimic end, pgup and, much more important, pgdn, pgdn being a missing key you would need to press again and again though.

Further web research brought that there are even more and more orthopedic problems arising from this, after years of sweeping, instead of being a tap area in the bottom 10 % of the screen. Some macro apps allow for using the Android side buttons for pgup and pgdn, but these buttons are obviously not made for being pressed hundreds of times each day, and with iOS, there are not even side buttons in needed number.

I suppose that app developers could, individually, put pgup/pgdn buttons in the right top and down corners of their app, but most app developers do not seem to do that, I tried that out with apps on smartphones of friends of mine.

So my question, after having searched for such a solution in vain, is, do you know any macro app, for iOS or for Android or even for both which will put such buttons, or better, a home button in top corner and a pgdn button in bottom corner, onto any app? Or perhaps that is not possible technically since it would imply laying out an additional layer onto the screen, over current app, but in these areas alone, 1 cm2 each would be sufficient, and it would acceptable that any screen element of the current app which is under these areas would not be responsive anymore for that app, but only for the macro app.

Besides, most screen readers, or many of them at least, do have physical buttons for next/previous page, so I cannot understand why smartphones and tablets do not have such physical buttons, so much needed for web browsing, all the more so since most modern pages are now constructed by multiple pages in one big page which calls for scrolling down.

[4wd]

You can get software for Android that will let you remap the soft buttons depending on short/long press, number of taps, etc, eg. Buttons Remapper, there may be one that allows you to do what you want.

Or Tasker, (or Automate, MacroDroid, etc), may allow you to set specific actions against an app depending on action received.

Thing is though, for actions like a 'Home' key the app you want to do it in probably needs to be able to accept such a 'command' or at least a way to mimic it.

BTW, in a navigation type program there's usually a onscreen icon that will relocate the map display to your location.  What exactly do you mean by 'home'?

And normally you can tap the icon to zoom out enough to show the area you want, then tap the screen to zoom in on that area, no need to page around within a map at a fixed scale. That way you have better awareness of the relationship to where you want to look w.r.t. where you started on the map.

[ital2]

Hi.

In the map direction thread, my answer has vanished, will try to repost. This thread I find in Living Room, while I thought it was a software question, but no problem. I am sorry, the Smartphone thread was here in "Living Room", so I myself, inadvertently, put this thread herein, so no chance to find it in the main category "General Software Discussion". So all my fault and my fault alone.

I opened up a second thread because I did not want to mix this general iOS/Android screen navigation issue with map navigation, and as said, I mainly think of navigation in web pages, it's absolutely correct that for maps, zooming in an zooming out would be best, and/or shifting the screen in any direction, but for web pages, most of the time, the smartphone PgDn equivalent is needed.

Thank you for mentioning Android macro apps, I'm not sure they can do what I want. After posting yesterday, I had a second thought.

First, I did not think of lefthanders. So this tap area of 1 cm2 should be in every screen corner, perhaps optionally right OR left or right AND left. Second, functionality would switch with landscape/portrait direction of the device, as with every other app for smartphones/tablets. Third, if the tap area is only 1 cm2 and square, it would be reasonable to have Home (top) and End (bottom) by 2 quick tabs, and PgUp/PgDn by single taps. Home and End being the equivalent to the pc keyboard keys, so Home/End would go to the start/end of the current page, and PgUp/Dn would shift by 1 screen length.

Perhaps I do not understand smartphone programming correctly but since those apps function with a sensitive/touch screen, and apps being independent from each other, I had thought that any tap on the screen could only reach that app which is directly under the pixels of that screen region, so if your browser app has the full screen, normally top layer, I wasn't aware that a second app could be, invisibly, be laid on top of the current app, but with the browser app, which is under it, second layer now, getting all other screen taps etc. notwithstanding, except for a cm2 in each corner, which should react to the macro app.

This evening, I spent several hours trying with Android emulators, Bluestacks, then Andy. According to Bluestacks, my graphics card was fine, but then, installation never went through, and Andy told me, again after downloading the whole program, that there was something wrong with my graphics card - I know that Android does graphics in another way than Windows.

So I was not able to try anything out, let alone scrolling by tapping, by lack of a touchscreen to begin with, but I had hoped I could perhaps mimic that with mouseclicks.

I am not sure I'll be happy with Android since I also need a database, or more correct, an sql database viewer, and here it seems there is better software available for the iPad - hence my unsuccessful tries to try Android at least on my pc, in order to decide upon the OS before buying.

I had hoped somebody already uses some additional app with their browser, for Home/End, PgUp/PgDn and thus could tell that it works, or even that this is possible with Android but not with iPad, or the other way round - by lack of special macro app or for technical reasons, so that such an app is not even possible here or there -, as to make my decision which OS to buy, for me.

[4wd]

I am not sure I'll be happy with Android since I also need a database, or more correct, an sql database viewer, and here it seems there is better software available for the iPad - hence my unsuccessful tries to try Android at least on my pc, in order to decide upon the OS before buying.

Android SQLite Manager - Not just a viewer, it also allows you to edit.

[ital2]

Hi.

You are probably right, Android seems to be more versatile. I could not buy ListPro for Android, though, while I could buy it for iPad, and I would not be that happy about that since I use it daily on my pc, for reference material, and I would have liked to access that in a mobile device.

As for possible Samsung battery problems, I'm not afraid at all. Just today, they published a very neat explanation for their exploding smartphones (in English): https://www.androidpit.it/ecco-la-causa-dei-problemi-del-samsung-galaxy-note-7 which clearly indicates that such things will never happen again. There are other makers, but as said, I had compared iPad mini and Galaxy S2 8", and the latter was even cuter than the iPad, so for me, Android will probably mean Samsung, others' mileage may vary.

(I had to rectify my post above, not finding my question had been all my fault.)