SwiftKey Flow beta gets updated with a lot of bug fixes
Gesture typing seems to finally be coming into its own these days. After a long time of being relegated to a small part of the market, more and more apps are adding the functionality, and Google even built it into the newest version of Android itself. SwiftKey is one of the best alternative keyboards available for Android, and its beta version has gesture typing by the name of Flow, and the beta just got updated with a lot of bug fixes and features.
Some of the changes aren't really all that useful, like the new option to use Flow in lanscape mode on tablets. We're not a big fan of that because the larger the keyboard, the more distance your finger has to travel on a swipe, and the less efficient gesture typing becomes. Some of the other updates are pretty sweet though, like a fix to the "Flow-through-space" feature, which allows you to swipe through the spacebar and simply keep going to the next word, rather than stopping after each word. Before, if you messed up the last word, everything in the string would be lost, but now you will only lose the last word and everything else will be input.
Flow-through-space autocommit: if you flow-through space but mess up your last word, all the prior words will be inserted (instead of losing all the words)
Flow in landscape on tablets (only in full layout, not in split layout)
Battery usage improved (when flowing and when not in use)
Performance of flowing and tapping improved
Longpress of bottom-right (smiley/enter) button now works
Fixed some force close issues
Fixed some memory leaks
Predictions not lost when changing keyboard layout (e.g to symbols)
Fixed DOuble CApitalization issue
Things to be aware of:
Flowing currently only works in fields where you see the prediction bar: in fields that have their own prediction or completion there is no prediction bar and therefore no Flow (e.g. URL bars, search bars, the “to” field of an email)
Flow-through-space only works in languages where smart space works – in some languages this is turned off because words are often made by combining other words together,and so smart space would divide up words that you want to keep as one. Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Persian (Farsi), Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukranian, Urdu may not work with Flow-through-space
SwiftKey Flow Beta does not currently contain any features that were new in SwiftKey 3.1 (Berry theme, new languages, split layout in landscape for normal-sized devices)
Slide-left-to-delete a whole word does not work when Flowing is enabled – instead try holding down the backspace key to delete word-by-word
Known issues:
Flow trail is sometimes left on the screen at the end of a word
Personalization service continues running when it has finished
Memory usage is still higher than we would like
Flow trail is very faint on some CyanogenMod ROMs
Force closes on Motorola Atrix and LG G2X with custom ROMs >= 4.0
If a language pack is downloaded while typing the keyboard is not refreshed
Predictions are too large on LDPI devices
Predictions occasionally lost when alternately backspacing/spacing at the end of a word
Ukrainian spit layout is broken
Estonian words containing ö are not predicted
Arrow keys do not repeat on longpress[/pressrelease]
Lots and lots of other things, so we'll put it all - the changelog, things to be aware of, and the known issues under a press release break for anyone interested. However, if you just want to get the new version of the beta just use these download links for the tablet version or the smartphone version of SwiftKey Flow beta.
[pressrelease]Changelog:
Flow-through-space autocommit: if you flow-through space but mess up your last word, all the prior words will be inserted (instead of losing all the words)
Flow in landscape on tablets (only in full layout, not in split layout)
Battery usage improved (when flowing and when not in use)
Performance of flowing and tapping improved
Longpress of bottom-right (smiley/enter) button now works
Fixed some force close issues
Fixed some memory leaks
Predictions not lost when changing keyboard layout (e.g to symbols)
Fixed DOuble CApitalization issue
Things to be aware of:
Flowing currently only works in fields where you see the prediction bar: in fields that have their own prediction or completion there is no prediction bar and therefore no Flow (e.g. URL bars, search bars, the “to” field of an email)
Flow-through-space only works in languages where smart space works – in some languages this is turned off because words are often made by combining other words together,and so smart space would divide up words that you want to keep as one. Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Persian (Farsi), Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukranian, Urdu may not work with Flow-through-space
SwiftKey Flow Beta does not currently contain any features that were new in SwiftKey 3.1 (Berry theme, new languages, split layout in landscape for normal-sized devices)
Slide-left-to-delete a whole word does not work when Flowing is enabled – instead try holding down the backspace key to delete word-by-word
Known issues:
Personalization service continues running when it has finished
Memory usage is still higher than we would like
Flow trail is very faint on some CyanogenMod ROMs
Force closes on Motorola Atrix and LG G2X with custom ROMs >= 4.0
If a language pack is downloaded while typing the keyboard is not refreshed
Predictions are too large on LDPI devices
Predictions occasionally lost when alternately backspacing/spacing at the end of a word
Ukrainian spit layout is broken
Estonian words containing ö are not predicted
Arrow keys do not repeat on longpress[/pressrelease]
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