About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

(Finally!)

The iPhone keyboard doesn't suck

This began as a quick reply to a discussion on the Well about a recent posting from John Gruber which links to a hit list from Crackberry.com about the iPhone. Gruber focuses just on the keyboard issue, about which I found I had this to say:

With the built-in spelling correction, I can type close to 30wpm on my iPt keyboard. This is faster than I ever was with Graffiti, which I used for about 8 years and was pretty good at if I say so. Most of the stuff I do with the device doesn't involve the keyboard, and then I'm really happy not to have a hard keyboard.

It's also nice to be able to choose the keyboard size/orientation (though I want to have this option outside Safari). And the utility I've gotten from third-party software already makes me optimistic that more improvements to the input UI can and will be made -- improvements not possible with a hard keyboard.

Along those lines, I disagree with Gruber that T9 is a "gimmick". I had an old PDA that used it and I like it a lot. I could do about 25-30wpm with that too.

I'm sure I'd be a bit faster with hard little buttons, and I'd like the mechanical feedback. I've used the Blackberry. But the tradeoffs (device size, screen size, weight, wear, aesthetics) are not worth it to me. I admit it. I am a weeny-keyboard snob.

It's absolutely possible to type one-handed (one-thumbed) on the iPhone/iPt keyboard. I've written quite a few emails that way while walking the dog or strolling into town or eating lunch. I've even done work on my book manuscript (I 'svn up' on the way out the door and 'svn ci' when I get home).

(The Crackberry guy also says that you have to do the "funky pinch" to zoom pages in Safari, which is not true. Pinching is a last resort. Double-tapping on any HTML block element -- a paragraph, a heading, a sidebar, an image -- maximizes that element and another double-tap zooms back out.)

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
apple + design + hardware + interface + iphone + mobile + rants + the well + vcs + writing

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