[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] quicksite:
Systems for displaying which page you are on in a sequence of pages

Hi teach... I'm not sure what you mean re burnlea's system. I read what he/she said about using adjacent space and keeping it transparent so as to provide a wider physical target for fingers... And I also understand that burnlea has been very diligently working with transparency, and that concept of using an icon as a Page Label...

But I do not see how that addresses the issue of an alternate visual display system to let you know where, contextually, you are along the spectrum of pages you have, i.e. page 2 of 3, or page 4 of 7, etc ... some other scheme than white balls... ??

I understood the earlier poster's request for a slicker-looking page indicator method, so there is no visual juxtaposition of the "page balls" and the bottom-center icons. My comment to him was focused on the clarity issue of using the actual HERO "SenseUI"'s scheme, which is more elegant than the page balls, but which would render quite poorly on QVGA screens.

Personally, as a usability designer, I have always been happy with the page-ball concept, even when first used by Simo on ifonz v 1... because they unmistakably provide not just a page number, but a visual context for how many pages there are. The improvement NOW with Androkkid is that Simo has made them appear upon beginning a slide action, vs having them a constant display... which removes all visual interruption.

To me, there are certain interface display schemes that have become "default", and for good reason -- because they communicate effectively. An exmaple would be with Forum Pages within a thread. Let me just hammer this point home with an extreme example:

Here's a thread that has grown to a page length of 141 pages:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=354111&page=3

Suppose I happen to be on page 3. Well the default methodology, pretty much now universally accepted as standard navigation system with context cues, looks like this:

< 1 2 3 4 5 13 53 103 > Last »

For an advertising or graphic presentation site, we most often see a similar interface, but presented also with a center slide or video frame, and left and right arrow buttons, or graphics that say

< Previous Page |............. image .............| Next Page >

My "argument" is that it is a highly efficient, universally understood interface scheme that is very hard for someone to misinterpret "WHERE AM I?" within the context of ALL AVAILABLE PAGES.

Maybe you were talking apples to oranges? (I think so; just alternate ways of LABELING the page contents)

The most efficient & most compact shapes for displaying a context scheme would be squares, and then circles. Squares render better with lower resolution screens, obviously.

It's pretty hard to mess up understanding where you are:

■■■■■■■

even smaller:

■■■■■■■

But Circles have a little more "white space" around each place-point, making them, arguably, just a little bit easier to read at small sizes.

●●●●●●●

●●●●●●●

/off my soapbox ... poor Simo, he already can't stand my long posts since he has to translate in head to Italian. Now he's got symbols too. But that's the point... He doesn't have to read one word to understand what this is all about, just from the numerical and shape displays. :rolleyes: