Swipe UI

webOS has a rich repertoire of gestures. One that has entered the mainstream is swiping left or right on a list item. In webOS, swiping either way deletes an item, by convention.

It is proposed that we refine this to distinguish between left and right swipes. Left swipes would "close" (delete, archive, dismiss) the item. Right swipes would "open" (create a bookmark or favorite, create a Task from, or otherwise "do more with") the item. (Displaying an item in full would still use a single tap.) This allows the user to rapidly process items.

If there is more than one "close" action, swiping left would overlay the item with a set of buttons. Likewise for "open" actions and swiping right. Users should always be able to recover from a mis-entered gesture, so some cases will have a single "confirm" button. Actions such as "archive" that can be recovered from by some other mechanism wouldn't need this confirmation button.

Enyo 2 supports separate left & right swipes natively; see http://enyojs.com/sampler/latest/lib/layout/list/samples/ListLanguagesSample.html (although that sample is confusing) Swipe-in buttons can be seen at http://searchablenotes.hominidsoftware.com/ Note that Enyo 2 Lists swipe in "on top" of the item, allowing the item to be seen through a scrim, rather than swiping the item out of the viewport and "revealing" controls beneath, as in Enyo 1 and Mojo.