The vast majority of Windows Mobile devices being sold today has to be HTC Touch models, closely followed by things like the Samsung Omnia and other models that are starting to add very nice touch interfaces over Windows Mobile. They are beginning to approach the iPhone in both appearance and (partly) in usability. The touch functionality is pretty reliable and finger oriented and works remarkably well in most cases considering they don't use the iPhones type of touch screen (which is both good and bad; good in that a stylus works and you can ink, bad in that sensitivity is a bit lower.)
It is very encouraging that touch support has appeared in uBook in the latest beta, but it is much, much too ambitious and because of that it doesn't work very well, in my opinion.
First of all, I would assume that in 99,99% of the times one interacts with an e-book reader, one wants to change the page. That's all the touch screen should do out of the box - touch it on the right side of the screen, go to next page. Touch it on the left, go to previous. Easy, reliable, quick, unobtrusive and intuitive. That would also mean uBook wouldn't have to try to figure out if you want to change the page or do something entirely different, with mixed results like now.
Now, instead we get swipe up, down, sideways, across, around, do the conga, then the cha-cha-cha etc... ugh. I for one don't need all that. I need it to change the page in a way that I don't have to think about or consider so I can focus on reading. This is becoming even more important now that WinMo models without d-pads are showing up, like my new Touch HD. The Samsung Omnia also seems low on buttons too and I'm sure that trend will continue.
I loaded it up on the Touch HD, which has no d-pad navigation keys. Due to the way HTC has the four keys on it set to interact with the add-on TouchFlo interface, uBook doesn't "take them over", either. That means any Touch HD owner is pretty much going to have to rely completely on the screen to interact with uBook.
I find I can read ok by swiping my finger down the screen; it works about 80% of the time on the first swipe if you focus on swiping arrow-straight down and at an even pace, but if you just sloppily swipe with your thumb it can do stuff like start switching cursor modes, refusing to switch pages at all and in general annoying the tar out of you, the last thing you need when trying to enjoy the experience of reading. The book reader should just "vanish" and leave you to read... right now, it's a constant source of minor irritations like that.
One of my swipes somehow made uBook switch into some other mode on the touchscreen where it refused to follow links. Now, after rechecking the website with the long list of touch features in the beta, I learned that by dragging a long arrow-straight swipe from lower right to upper left, I can switch that to something that allows me to click on links too (after several swiping attempts, usually), but at the time I was honestly wondering how to load a new file without having the ability to change the cursor mode or click a link.
On a machine with a d-pad you can press the center of the pad and hit left or right a few times to get to a mode where it does follow links, but on the Touch HD I really thought it couldn't be done for a brief while.
However, there is ONE button that can be mapped - long keypress on the dial button. I mapped that to input panel, got up a keyboard and could use that to get back to a state where I could both tap links and scroll via the touch screen.
Bottom line however is that the touch interface needs to at the very least have a toggle in the settings for advanced functionality or not. Out of the box, it should just check what part of the screen was touched and then change the page, much like the Kindle has huge buttons on either side to switch pages. That's all that's needed in the vast majority of times one touches the screen - changing the page. Reliably. Quickly. Like tapping it lightly once, anywhere on about half of the screen area.
If the current mode where you can do more is needed, and personally I'm not even a little convinced of that, there should be something like four options in the settings:
1. Simplified mode - touch screen on either side to change page
2. Simplified mode in reverse, for lefthanded people who prefer touching the other side of the screen when holding the device in their left hand
3. Simplified mode except touch top or bottom half of screen instead of left or right
4. Current overly complicated unreliable mode for whoever needs that stuff, I know I don't.
Linear Mode
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