As Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC arrives, native support for landscape mode is prominently absent. Anthony Newman tells Microsoft why it should be in there.
It’s possible, in one sense, to view the grand history of PDAs as a battle between landscape and portrait. I’m talking about screen orientation, of course - a fundamental design decision which governs the usage of the particular handheld. Bear with me as I make a sweeping historical generalisation, please. In the dim mists of time, when the Psion ruled and the Microsoft Handheld PCs were still very much alive, landscape seemed an acceptable choice for everyday, serious PDA use. In these times, keyboard entry was the norm and PDAs were largely in the realm of business, so PDAs followed the shape of mini-laptops.
This trend seems to have reversed in recent years, as both the Psion handhelds and the HPC are now sadly defunct, and PDAs, moving into the more general public consciousness, have undergone a shift to predominantly portrait devices, which follow the natural shape of the hand and the page of a book. A number of devices buck the trend, such as the Danger HipTop and the concept B-Square Maui, but (as they say) the exception proves the rule. Even keyboard-equipped devices are now in a portrait orientation: recent CLIEs from Sony, Sharp's Zaurus line and Handspring's Treo line being the most prominent examples.
The portrait orientation has its advantages in ergonomics and certain applications, of course, but one may well ask how anyone can get any serious writing work (or any at all) done in that layout: width is much more important than height when composing lines or reading pre-formatted documents. Furthermore, in an increasingly connected world it is important to remember that most web sites are designed with a landscape view in mind. However predominant portrait has become, landscape still clearly has its place. The obvious solution would be for the OS to manage a rotation of the screen to landscape when it becomes appropriate, on the fly.
Microsoft clearly feel otherwise, as in their newly-announced 2003 incarnation of the Pocket PCs there still seems to be no built-in screen rotation. Writing from the position of long-suffering Pocket PC Editor, I’d say that this is one of the most basic flaws in the Pocket PC platform, and has been all along. It demonstrates a wilful ignorance of the possibilities that flexibility introduces, and a clear bias towards boring old portrait.
The deficiency has spawned two competent utilities - from Nyditot and Jimmy Software - to allow screen rotation and virtual resolution management, but thanks to the limitations of the platform, each frustratingly requires a soft-reset with each rotation. Furthermore, certain parts and applications of the Pocket PC fail to properly redraw screen widgets in landscape mode, often rendering it infuriatingly unusable.
This pro-portrait bias is reflected in the add-on keyboards that have flourished since the demise of the mighty clamshell: they each attach to the bottom of the unit, forcing the portrait mode. With the infrared keyboards on offer from Pocketop and now Targus, physical rotation becomes possible. As a result, screen rotation for text entry (and everything else) should become an increasingly important issue for consumers, and therefore for Microsoft too. Let’s hope they realise that landscape isn’t dead yet.
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