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 "dismiss" (delete, archive, close) the item. Depending on context, the item might be removed from the list, moved to the bottom of the list, or greyed-out. Right swipes would "adopt" (create a bookmark or favorite, reply to a message, create a message from, create a Task from, or otherwise "do more with") the item. Favorites might be marked with a star, replied-to messages might have an icon, and items that tasks or messages have been created from might have a different icon. ("opening" an item for full display or editing would still use a single tap.) This allows the user to rapidly process items, and see what has been done with 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.

Scenario: User reviews his/her email inbox list, taps on an email in the list to read it in full, then in the full message display taps "Reply" to respond with "Yes, let's do this". Back in the inbox, he/she swipes right and taps "Create to-do" to add an item in the Tasks app. Back in the inbox, he/she swipes left to archive the message, as it has now been dealt with.

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.