So, today at #maemo a lot was talked about these “kinetic” or inertial scroll, but agreeing with someone’s point I said the following:

We should not just simple try to copy Iphone or other device interaction. It’s all about doing it, testing it for our devices, improving where it needs to be improved and the most important: trying to add more and more usability and meaning to that.

Agreeing also with Nikoo (from the comments) that we need more than just the scroll. The iphone actually did the second step for the alphabetical lists (has a letter indicator on the right) from where you can browse faster on your list. But what about the other steps? Or when the list is not alphabetically ordered? Or when you reach the end and you want to come back to the top?

Anyone who bought an Ipod and loaded it with some 10.000 songs must have been felling a little bit anxious about having to slide the finger across the virtual wheel for a lot of time. And to come back… slide again in the opposite direction.

For Canola, the good thing is : the inertial, or kinetic scroll frees a little bit the area where it used to be the scrollbar so a smart “scrolling” indicator can be placed there, that could also provide “jumps” in the whole list. I think that a combination of being able to jump across the list, use the finger scrolling and also to have the ability to hold down while scrolling (as a regular scrollbar) will be the best solution. With that we will not need to use dirt hacks (the key + arrow) used in the first versions of canola.

So I think this should be even more our way into making maemo a better “place” to learn, to improve, adapt, test and discard when not neeed Instead of just copying for the eye candy fans.