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  #1  
Old 03-24-2010, 02:00 PM
Jason Dunn
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Default A Quick Copy/Paste Q&A with Ex-Windows phone Team Member Mel Sampat

There's been a lot said in the past week about the fact that Windows phone 7 won't have copy and paste functionality at launch - and even more was said (in a rather loud tone of voice) once Microsoft statements came out that this was by design because most people don't "need" copy/paste. While it's not a feature that every user would use regularly, it's one of those features that is important to have in certain scenarios - and even if you might only be in one of those scenarios once a month, without copy and paste, odds are you can't accomplish what you want. We've had some high-spirited discussions about copy/paste in our forums, with some members saying that they think implementing copy/paste should be "relatively easy". Having watched Microsoft closely over the years, and watched as seemingly simple features took years to come to fruition, I disagreed with the idea that implementing copy and paste would be as simple as some people think it is. I'm not a developer, however, and can't properly explain the challenges.

Image Credit: Julian Cole - Adspace Pioneers.

In light of this, I figured there was one person I could turn to: Mel Sampat, formerly a member of the Windows phone team, and now on his own at Mist Labs. He wasn't a member of the shell team - the team that would handle copy/paste - so he's neither representing Microsoft here nor is it trying to explain or justify the decisions of the shell team. He was, however, on the Windows phone team until a few weeks ago, so he has insight into what it takes to implement features on Windows phone 7. Check out the interview after the break.

WPT: It's been pointed out that Windows CE 6, which is what Windows phone 7 is built on, has clipboard support - and using the Windows phone 7 emulator, using a desktop keyboard it looks like the keyboard shotcuts for copy and paste still work. At a high level, why isn't is "easy" to make this work in the OS?

Mel: On an API level, clipboard support has always been part of Windows (including Win32 and WinCE). However, implementing an API and creating new UI around it are completely different beasts (usually handled by different teams). As an analogy, the OS includes APIs for changing the date and time. However, a whole new app needs to be written from scratch to allow end-users to change the date and time. Similarly, a whole UI paradigm needs to be created around the Copy/Paste APIs, which takes lots of time and research to get right. This includes a lot of spec reviews, design iterations, dogfooding, usability studies etc. It also has to work automatically throughout the system without each app having to do something special to support copy/paste on its own. All of this end-user + developer friendliness takes time to bake, and it can't simply be hacked together on top of the APIs.

WPT: The move from resistive screens with a stylus-based input to capacitive screens with finger-based input would have some repercussions related to text selection, input, etc. What kind of impact would this have on the development of a copy and paste feature in Windows phone 7? What sorts of things would have to change?

Mel: A resistive screen (like those on Pocket PC devices) requires use of a stylus tip, which ensures touch precision to a few millimeters. A capacity screen (like those on iPhones) uses a finger instead of a stylus, which reduces precision but greatly improves gestures like pan, flick and pinch. Text selection requires high precision. For example, imagine you have an email message with this text: "Meet me at 148th Ave NE, Redmond, WA!". To map this address, you have to select just the address, and not the leading space or trailing punctuation. Old touch versions of Windows Mobile relied on the stylus to select text, which worked well because the tiny tip lets you easily pinpoint exactly where you want the selection to begin and end. However, Windows Phone 7 uses a capacitive screen, which would make selection extremely difficult, uncomfortable and error prone using just a finger. It's clear that using a finger directly like a stylus just won't work. So Microsoft needs to come up with a way to make text selection easier with a finger. iPhone does this by magnifying text when you press and hold a finger on it.

WPT: Apple was hammered on for not having copy and paste when they launched the first-generation iPhone, but their implementation of copy/paste today, and text selection, is pretty solid. What kind of issues could Microsoft run into with developing their own approach - if they couldn't think of a unique approach, would they have to license Apple's solution?

Mel: Apple's text magnification works great, but I'm not sure if there are any patent issues related to it. Given Apple's recent patent litigation for experiences such as pinch and stretch, swipe to unlock, "rubber band bounce" etc., Microsoft needs to be careful about properly developing or licensing its copy/paste implementation.

WPT: Let's talk about controls - how would it be different enabling copy and paste between editable fields (such as contact fields) and a Web page. What sorts of things would the Windows phone 7 team have to implement to have copy and paste work across the entire OS?

Mel: Whatever Microsoft builds for copy/paste should work not only for edit fields, but also "read-only" content such as web pages and email messages. Ideally the same experience should be used everywhere so that the user doesn't need to discover new menus or gestures to copy/paste in different apps. In other words, copying an address from an email message, a URL from the browser's address bar or a paragraph of text from a web page should be initiated the same way. Even though Microsoft implemented Copy/Paste in the Smartphone (non-touch) version of Windows Mobile 6.x, this was broken because it didn't work consistently. For example, you could Copy text from the web browser, but couldn't paste it into the home address field of a Contact. Hopefully Microsoft will not repeat such mistakes in 7.

WPT: Based on everything you've said above, is copy and paste a "doable" feature in Windows phone 7, or are there things about the way the new OS is fundamentally designed that would make it impossible to implement?

Mel: As I said in my first answer, it's technically easy to slap something together quickly. However, designing it so that it's discoverable, intuitive and convenient takes more effort. It shouldn't require someone to do a Google or YouTube search to find out how to use features like Copy/Paste or multi-select. Let's wait for Microsoft to finish their due diligence and come out with something that is fully baked.

WPT: Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Mel!

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his son Logan, and his sometimes obedient dog. He likes where Microsoft is going with Windows phone 7, even though it's going to be a rocky couple of years.

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  #2  
Old 03-24-2010, 02:55 PM
macattack
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Keep in mind, I'm a long-time Windows machine user from the Palm-sized PDA days to my current Fuze, but I find the duplicity in nearly every forum of every Window Mobile-dedicated site humorous. When the "arch enemy" (Apple iPhone) came out, the cat-calls about it lacking copy/paste were blistering. Now that Microsoft is releasing an all-new mobile OS without a lot of the features we know and love from Windows Mobile, every WM site out there is finding someone to explain why it makes sense to wait for "Microsoft to finish their due diligence." We all know from past experience how long it takes Microsoft to exercise "due diligence" in any area; their releases are feature-sparse and far apart.

I am personally going to hold onto my Fuze until I can find another platform that will do all I want it to do (copy/paste is only a small part of what I view as an unacceptable feature set loss). So far I have strayed to other platforms now and then through the years, but I have always come back, mostly because of the superior features and my large software investment. Since I'm losing both with WP7S, I'm going to find the platform with the best feature set and equivalent software offerings and reinvest in software. So many developers have announced plans to hold-off on any new development on the platform, that I'm not even sure if I will be able to find replacements for my current software titles on WP7S.

After all these years, Windows in the mobile space is dead to me, and once I jump to Android or iPhone (or whatever it will be) I won't be coming back.
 
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  #3  
Old 03-24-2010, 04:54 PM
Fritzly
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Bottom line one thousand developers cannot find a way to implement cut/paste without risking to get in something patented by Apple?
Congratulations.........
 
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  #4  
Old 03-24-2010, 05:20 PM
The Yaz
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While I can understand the logic of the article, I guess what bothers me is that with all of the time MS has invested in creating a whole new OS they didn't have enough programmers available to design what should be a staple feature.

So the real question is, why did MS invest so much time and energy into 6.1 and 6.5 ? In my opinion the experience has not significantly changed and they've pushed back the release of 7 to a point that they are playing catchup to Apple and Google.

I'm willing to wait for the new phones to come out before judgement though. No one company has the perfect OS (no matter how much their advertising tells you so), and I would like to see if a MS OS still fits my needs.

Steve
 
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Old 03-24-2010, 09:02 PM
Russ Smith
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When I was writing databases full-time, our decision on whether or not to implement a feature wasn't based on whether or not it was easy. It was based on whether or not it would offer significant value to the user. Yes, C&P is not "easy" in the sense that you can slap it together in a few minutes. It is, however, less hard than implementing it on a system that never had it in the first place (iPhone, for instance).

What bugs me is that the spin always comes off sounding like you could only do this badly or you could not do it at all. Why not take the time and do it right? MS completely re-wrote the user interface with a whole new metaphor for interactions. How difficult is it to figure out how to do something with a staple operation like cut-and-paste that will move it into the next generation?

Sampat's comments detail some of the important considerations, especially the inherent difficulties in selecting an exact location with your finger. Those considerations need creative solutions. I'd much rather hear that MS is working on a good solution and hasn't come up with a usable option yet than some double-talk about people not needing the functionality.
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Old 03-24-2010, 09:03 PM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by macattack View Post
...but I find the duplicity in nearly every forum of every Window Mobile-dedicated site humorous. When the "arch enemy" (Apple iPhone) came out, the cat-calls about it lacking copy/paste were blistering.
You're presuming we live in a static world where opinions never change - we don't live in a world like that (well, I don't). In 2007 when the iPhone came out, all of us Windows Mobile users were still using a stylus. We were happily tapping and holding with the stylus and getting all kinds of rich functionality from that interface method that evolved over seven years. There were hardly any programs out there you'd call "finger friendly". Capacitive touch screens were extremely rare outside the Apple product line, and non-existent in the Windows Mobile world. So, yes, at the time compared to what we had it was pretty laughable that a phone didn't have copy and paste - it was something we were used to, and not having it seemed like it wasn't a real smartphone.

Fast forward three years, and a finger-friendly OS is what most people want - I know I really dislike having to use a stylus. When I got the HD2 and it didn't even come with one, I was initially dubious, but loved the device. Yet time and time again, there are things about Windows Mobile 6.x that just aren't finger friendly, and no amount of effort is going to fix that. There's only so much perfume you can spray on the corpse of Windows Mobile 6.x - it's frankly kind of amazing and impressive they got a full decade out of it.

So Microsoft needed to start over with an OS built from the ground up to be finger-friendly. There's obviously some stuff that they didn't have time to put into it (let's remember v7 was being designed by another team simultaneously with the development of v6.5), and despite what a Microsoft spokesperson says, they want copy/paste to be a part of the Windows phone experience.

The point of this Q&A wasn't to try to justify anything, or to make excuses - it was to simply offer up some background around what needs to go into developing such a feature - it's not just a few lines of code as some ignorant people like to spout off about.
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Old 03-24-2010, 09:11 PM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yaz View Post
So the real question is, why did MS invest so much time and energy into 6.1 and 6.5 ?
Pretty simple - OEM partners. Let's say you're HTC, and every year you want to ship two dozen new phone models (including variants) to markets around the world because that's how you make your money. Then let's say Microsoft were to come to them and say "OK, we're stopping all development on Windows Mobile 6.x for two years so we can re-create a whole new OS. You can keep selling Windows Mobile 6 for two years, OK?". That just wouldn't fly - so Microsoft had no choice but to develop both 6.5/6.5.3/etc. while simultaneously developing Windows phone 7. They had to keep their OEM partners happy and selling phones, while still creating something all-new behind the scenes...with two different teams up and running, essentially cutting their resources in half.

And let's not forget that having all the money in the world doesn't guarantee that you'll get the people you need in the right places - Microsoft has had a serious brain drain courtesy of Google over the past few years. Let's say you're a hotshot mobile developer - which is more appealing: working on a decade-old mobile OS, or a hot new OS (Android)? Great people make great products, so you need great people. Microsoft pulled their best people from across the entire company into the mobile effort about a year and a half ago - that's when they got really serious about re-inventing their mobile OS. You can do a lot in a year and a half, but you can't do everything you want to do.

This stuff is never as simple as people like to pretend it is.
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Old 03-24-2010, 09:16 PM
Jason Dunn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Russ Smith View Post
Yes, C&P is not "easy" in the sense that you can slap it together in a few minutes. It is, however, less hard than implementing it on a system that never had it in the first place (iPhone, for instance).
I'm curious as to why you'd say that - do you know for a fact that the iPhone OS had no clipboard-like functionality and their implementation of copy/paste was both the creation of the core functionality and the UI that went along with it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Russ Smith View Post
I'd much rather hear that MS is working on a good solution and hasn't come up with a usable option yet than some double-talk about people not needing the functionality.
I agree 100%. I'd much rather have seen Microsoft come out and say "Hey, we know you want copy/paste, and we want it to, but we just didn't have the resources to get it done and still ship the product by holidays of 2010. We're working on it." I don't like the way they handled this.
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Old 03-24-2010, 11:45 PM
kerrins
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Bottom line is that without copy and paste I won't buy Windows 7. I'll switch to an iPhone next April. I've been using MS exclusively since I got my first Compaq (HP) Ipaq about 10 years ago. I'm no Apple fanboy by any means, but MS is going the wrong direction for me.
 
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Old 03-24-2010, 11:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kerrins View Post
I'll switch to an iPhone next April.
Well, you never know what will happen by April 2011.
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