Text navigation w/o pad

[madonnell]

One real annoyance I continue to have with the Pro is the lack of navigation keys when I am editing text, including cursor movement (up/down/left/right) and text selection (for copy/paste/etc). The little magnifier thing when you hold your finger on the text does sort of work, but I find it rather imprecise and annoying when I simply want to move a few characters over. What I really want is to map a few alt-keys to give me navigation controls (obviously, would then need a way to reach the symbols I mapped over), but I don't see a tool to do this. Best I came up with was an app called SoftKeys, which, when correctly configured, gives me a small screen icon, which, when long pressed, brings up a nav pad on the screen. So-so. Anyone else come up with anything better? Along the same lines, anyone know of a really flexible key mapper that support side keys, keyboard keys, soft keys, etc?

 

[jwgraves]

Agreed. Drives me crazy when I've typed up a whole bunch of text in the browser and all I want to do is enter one word between two others. For the life of me, I keep touching between these two words and I'm always off by a character or two. I click and click and click and just can't get the cursor to get right between the words. And I have pretty skinny fingers. It's about the only time I ever miss my old BB trackball.

 

[travisn000]

On my droid x I use an onscreen keyboard called "ultra keyboard"; it can be configured to have arrow keys... probably not the best solution for the droid pro though :-/



Perphaps these help:
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/motorola-droid-pro/113820-mapping-dpad-cursor-key.html

Bluetooth Keyboard and custom key and character mapping - xda-developers

...some variation of these should be able to accomplish what you are after (maybe alt-volume could be set up to move cursor left-right ?).

 

[Freak4Dell]

I'd love to see a future generation of the Pro come with hardware keys for the Menu, Home, Back, and Search keys, and incorporate a directional pad between them.

 

[conswo]

I'd love to see a future generation of the Pro come with hardware keys for the Menu, Home, Back, and Search keys, and incorporate a directional pad between them.

Originally there is a touchpad at the back, like the one shown in the verizon accessories. However I don't know why they take that out in the retail version :icon_eek:

 

[mbd4524]

One real annoyance I continue to have with the Pro is the lack of navigation keys when I am editing text, including cursor movement (up/down/left/right) and text selection (for copy/paste/etc). The little magnifier thing when you hold your finger on the text does sort of work, but I find it rather imprecise and annoying when I simply want to move a few characters over. What I really want is to map a few alt-keys to give me navigation controls (obviously, would then need a way to reach the symbols I mapped over), but I don't see a tool to do this. Best I came up with was an app called SoftKeys, which, when correctly configured, gives me a small screen icon, which, when long pressed, brings up a nav pad on the screen. So-so. Anyone else come up with anything better? Along the same lines, anyone know of a really flexible key mapper that support side keys, keyboard keys, soft keys, etc?

Seems that "softkeys" requires rooting. Any apps that do the same thing that don't require that?

 

[conswo]

There is an app called virtual trackball in the market, which obviously requires root. Although the app is far from perfect, it can do the job of a basic track ball ;-)



Sent from my DROID PRO using DroidForums App

 

[Kaos2flo]

There is an app called virtual trackball in the market, which obviously requires root. Although the app is far from perfect, it can do the job of a basic track ball ;-)



Sent from my DROID PRO using DroidForums App

Useful information, thanks.

 

[redf239]

maybe try....

z arrow? if thats the kind of app ur looking for? check it out, it helped me with what i needed to do, which is similar to what i think ur saying.

 

[madonnell]

goos feedback

All,

Good info.

I'm trying z arrows right now. Better than my soft kbd solution.

Going to look much closer at the keyboard remapping travisn000 referred to (got to start thinking like a linux/unix user vs a cellphone user). That seems 'ideal'.

 

[fingershop]

Where can I find the z arrow app? I googled but don't find it anywhere.

Btw, I used an app called ButtonRemapper to change my Voice key to a Down Arrow key, so now I can finally edit previous searches or form field entries.

 

[lalala11]

Z arrow

Hi, everyone.

I tied Z arrow. It worked, but my problem was that when I had Z arrow set as my input method (which you need to do to make the "arrows" work), I wasn't getting spell check or autocorrect. I uninstalled because of that. If that doesn't bother you, then it is a pretty good app, except for the fact that it said it could track anything you ever type, which was creepy. Functioned well, though.