Comments on: Crocodile Keyboard Coming December 7th

By: johno

johno — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:03:49 +0000

Has anyone found a way of putting a Dvorak layout on a phone keyboard? Preferably without having to do my own code-writing!

By: droidismyhusband

droidismyhusband — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:49:09 +0000

I actually had the Shapewriter Keyboard and fell in love with it, then they took it away from me after 30 days trial :( I’m tempted to buy it, but Swype beta is available for download (via webpage) although it’s not guaranteed to be stable. I’m kinda toying with just doing that or waiting for SlideIt Keyboard to come out with a version for android. I hear SlideIt will destroy Shapewriter and Swype, or any other keyboard for that matter. It looks really good on their website.

By: Geo H.

Geo H. — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:26:26 +0000

Look at the subsequent reviews of the keyboard now that it is in the Android Market. They are not good.

By: andyclap

andyclap — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:25:02 +0000

A while ago I started developing a transparent fullscreen keyboard with a hexagonal layout (cough, prior art…) Problem was WinCE IME SDK was ghastly, hit too many brick walls and gave up.

Might have to have a play on android as people still seem enthusiastic about experimental input methods.

By: Chad

Chad — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:40:28 +0000

@Jared, No prob! I hadn’t heard of any of the swype-type keyboards until I read Buckwad’s comment. I’m glad you like ShapeWriter so much. Personally, I’m not sure I’m ready to pay $10 for it just yet… as I still favor the Hero’s stock keyboard with its predictive text. I’ve really enjoyed using ShapeWriter though and will undoubtedly miss playing with it when my trial runs out. Also, while Swype and ShapeWriter are VERY much alike, I think Swype may be a bit more powerful in how it handles special characters, capitalization, and double letters. If ShapeWriter dropped it’s price to $5, I’d jump on it in a heartbeat. You gotta give them some props for already having it in the market, too.

By: Jared

Jared — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:21:09 +0000

@Chad I totally agree, I had previously bought the crocodile keyboard, but I was never able to install it because I was getting the “Download Unsuccessful” error :-( , however, I read your post about the ShapeWriter and I gladly paid the $9.99 for it after trying out the trial for just a few minutes. I really wanted the Swype keyboard but it appears that Shapewriter is the same thing and it’s available now :-D

Thanks again for the post Chad :-)

By: replicant

replicant — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:39:50 +0000

Looks like it’s not that great according to the reviews in the Marketplace. :(

By: Carl C

Carl C — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:08:27 +0000

It’s available now on the Android Market for UK £2.00

By: Jarett

Jarett — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:57:08 +0000

Might be kinda cool, but the spelling correction that’s (I assume) part of Sense is already good enough for me. I can hit half of the wrong letters and it’ll still know what I meant. I don’t even bother taking the time to hit the correct keys anymore.

By: Chad

Chad — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 06:38:48 +0000

@Buckwad, You might enjoy trying out the ShapeWriter keyboard. There is a 30 day trial for it on the app market. I’ve been trying it out on my Sprint Hero… pretty neat to use. I had to do some research to learn that after you enable it in Locale & text, that you have to long press on a text box to actually select it for use.

By: Buckwad

Buckwad — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:45:26 +0000

Swyping will make this obsolete:

http://www.swypeinc.com/

By: mikey

mikey — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:25:08 +0000

#2 “Why isn’t there a software keyboard where you can customize the layout yet? That seems like it would be killer.”

huh? for what reason? but you’re probably someone who’s into dvorak as well..

By: Tom Streeter

Tom Streeter — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:40:31 +0000

I have a vague memory of some “electronic toy” in the 80′s having a triangle-based keyboard layout. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea and I wish them the best of luck, but I doubt they’ll be able to survive a patent challenge if it ever comes to that. Some long-memoried manufacturer will pull out a diagram of any number of products that came and went in the 70′s and 80′s and that will be that.

I’ll be trying it out if it does hit on the 7th, though.

By: ccongdon

ccongdon — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:38:29 +0000

I agree that the black & grey is a bad color scheme, as the contrast is hard on the eyes. Thats an easy fix though.

Having custom keys somewhere would be awesome. (the mention .com key, and maybe a key or two for commonly used names, such as the city you’re in etc)

By: J5Chicago

J5Chicago — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:27:28 +0000

I like this idea… but on the color tip, yikes! maybe they need an alternating gradient background behind the keys? so it’s one color but the saturation of that color is different underneath the keyboard when you move left to right or left to center or right to center. I think they could hit it out of the park just be experimenting with different colors and color gradient.