When in landscape when one needs to write something in a text entry or file or terminal the keyboard (squeekboard) takes up a lot of the screen’s height. When you need to write something in a field in browser it gets even worse. The browser takes one row for the address field, another row for the back and forward keys and it remains only one row to write in the field. This could improve considerably if we change the keyboard to take up not 4 but 2 lines (only in landscape). I wonder if this interests the users of L5 or not. A 2 row arrangement could be for example this:
The usual keyboard does take up too much vertical space in landscape mode, but I’m not sure I would like that 2-row layout of the keys. I’m used to finding the letters in their standard 3-row placement, so that would probably be confusing. I would be in favor of stretching and flattening the current keyboard a bit more, though.
Edit: And of course, multiple options are always good; non-standard arrangement might be OK for some people.
or HIDE/SHRINK GUI elements after a certain period in seconds has passed so that more screen-real estate is available for the important things … the BlackBerry OS browser somehow made sense on a 720x720 square (3.1 inch screen) ofc the keyboard was a non issue since it was PHYSICAL.
I generally like the idea very much, but I’d go with another layout - I do not like how the keyboard rows are broken up in half and intertwined. I’d go for two top rows on the left, and two bottom rows on the right. (except for ctrl, shift and such - they belong to the far left and far right positions)
Just to notice though that the height of the box that contains the keyboard looks fixed or I have something wrong in my yaml. Even if the keyboard is two rows it appears in the center of the same height zone, still covering most of the landscape screen. This zone does not adjust to the height of the keyboard.
