To: support@Atlassian.com
written from my HTC evo Android smart phone
Have any of you tried documentation theme on Android? Cool, but also disappointing.... drop downs for tools and add page don't work... I was able to create this page by first adding a link to another page, something that mightn't be obvious to a wiki newbie.
Here are some more limitations of using confluence with default browser on Android:
- no page tree...
- browse drop down doesn't work, can't easily get to space admin.
- Drop down for for my name not working, so can't easily tweet my status.
- because drop down for my name does not work, I can't get back to my drafts to edit something I didn't get to save.
- the vertical pipe character on android keyboard does not work for confluence wikitext links.
Some android bugs that are getting in the way of using wiki:
- frequently getting a black box, a black solid box, in the text area while editing. I saw this several times while editing this page. the cure was to close the keyboard and then open it again
some cool things about using confluence with android:
- the text to speech for, sorry I meant to say the speech to text, usually works really well, although it thinks "confluence" is the word conflicts! the android speech to text is processed in the clouds so I wonder if there were they don't limits if this could really run your data up high. One drawback is that after you have spoken and it recognizes the text, the text is entered in a green selected box. hitting any key other than an arrow key erases the text you just spoke. and there is no undo if you accidentally erased the text see you get to start over saying what you had said. while it is generally really good at recognizing the speech I am not sure if the drawback of going back and editing mistakes makes it end up taking more time than just typing. I will have to test this.
- I am trying to do all of this section using just the speech to text. writing is a private process, and speaking everything feel so much less private than typing it. and 1 time a long sentence I spoke did not get recognized because it gave me an error could not reach server. so android lost my thought in a way that typing usually does not. having to always press the correct cursor key to get rid of that green box after each thing I speak is a very distracting.... it just happened! I was trying to time a sentence and after the recognition I hit the wrong key and I just lost the previous thing I typed, or rather that I spoke.... the sentence took about 8 seconds to say and then it took about 6 seconds to recognize and then I don't know how long it would take to go back and add the punctuation.... and don't forget the security implications of everything you type it going into the cloud as (funny speech to text typo on last two words:clown fish) you speak it so that maybe it complete log somewhere as it's the text is sent back to you.
- my 10 year old just came in the tell me what you doing usually I always see you typing this seems really weird what you're doing now. it really botched the next sentence:"he's all the the what it just recognized me thru the devil wears the." he salt what it just recognized when I spoke and he said hey dad where is the period. It took me at least 15 seconds to correct . To period.
- here are his questions about this: (15 seconds to correct this, a minute to type this in about the timing.
- I rather do typing I do this this is a call maine associate.... he saw that and said that is not good.
- note: the cloud lost the first thing he spoke, the touch app crashed on the next thing, then horribly mangled the above. he was very unimpressed.
- now just using the keyboard:
- More (typed): switching between typing and speaking is very time consuming. But even using the on screen keyboard can be time consuming, especially when going back to make corrections, it is impossible to type fast and make sure the auto correction isn't introducing mistakes, so don't expect to get a lot of blogging done using this phone. Wonder if this problem is a lot better on an android phone with a keyboard.
Anyhow back to using confluence on an android phone:
I love confluence, but you are getting farther and farther from original wiki idea of a site that could be edited in any browser with no extra software. It would be nice if confluence would play well in mobile world. I am very worried about confluence 4 plans to eliminate wiki markup. Again, it would be nice to have a way to effectively interact with confluence from simpler browsers, and wikimarkup is good for that.