Softkey +OK placement

[Me2]

One thing that has always bugged me with my C8 (next to the soft key washouts) is the awkward placement of the L and R menu and OK keys. Seeing as when using the Redfly keyboard, most of the time your fingers are hovering around the touchpad area to navigate around, reaching up to the top row to select the soft menus or press OK is not at all intuitive - not only because it involves stretching, but that the R/L software keys are nowhere near the screen position anyway.

Comparing the few times I use the Alt and Redfly keys in WM, to the constant use of Soft keys and OK, I think it would be much more natural to use the left and right ALT keys for the soft keys and the Redfly key for OK, given that they are sat next to the cursor control, just like they are on a phone?

This could easily be done by remapping the keyboard so that the primary function of L ALT and R ALT is L MENU and R MENU, and 'R' is OK. And shifting the lesser used original functions to "grey" FN shift, i.e. FN+ALT for ALT, and FN+(R)edfly for Redfly Setup.

This layout feels that natural I don't even think key re-labelling would be required for those that convert on existing models. The original functions on F5-F8 keys could be left as is (i.e. duplicated) so that people could use the original keys if preferred.

I don't know what at what level the Redfly does its keyboard mapping. Depending on the layer, maybe this could be offered by an "alternative" driver or firmware?

Any thoughts?

 

[laurieny]

The position of the keys and their mappings is a frequent topic of discussion around the water cooler at Celio (hence one of the sticky polls here), and something we continue to tweak to get it just right. I will certainly pass this feedback on to the rest of the engineering and marketing teams, and let you know what changes we decide to make for in the next product cycle when that project gets closer to release.

Thanks,
Laurie

Director of Engineering
Celio Corp | REDFLY