I’ve been doing a lot more work on the iPad recently, and one of the things that really struck me is how awkward the multitasking bar can feel when you’re in landscape mode. It makes sense to put the multitasking bar at the bottom of the screen when in portrait mode because the home button is right below it (well, unless you hold the iPad upside down), but I don’t think the same logic has been properly applied to landscape mode.
The simplicity and convenience of the multitasking bar is lessened in landscape mode. The home button is on the right side when I use the smart cover as an upright viewing stand, and the home button is on the left when I use the smart cover in typing mode. However, in both of these cases, the multitasking bar always pops up along the bottom of the screen.
You could argue that this is done for the sake of staying consistent, but in this case I’d say convenience should win out over consistency. Whenever I bring the multitasking bar up in landscape mode, I have to move my hand from the middle of the iPad screen (where the Home button is) all the way over to the bottom-left (where most recently used apps end up). It’s a little more irritating when the home button is on the right side, since I then have to move my hand from the right side all the way to the left, just to tap on one icon.
I would argue that it would have been much simpler for the multitasking bar to always pop up right beside the home button: If you’re in portrait mode, It would be appear along the bottom; if you’re in landscape mode with the Home button on the right, then the multitasking bar would shift the contents of the screen to the left and appear on the right side.
It’s not as though multitasking is a chore as it is now, but this slight change to the multitasking bar layout would make it much easier to operate the iPad with just one hand. At any given time, in any given orientation, the multitasking bar would only be an inch or two away from the home button (which is where your hand would be right at that moment, anyway).
I’m relatively sure there are jailbreak tweaks for this out there, but I’d love to see this hit official firmware in 5.x, especially since it doesn’t seem to be one of those changes you’d have to move heaven and earth for. After all, all that the multitasking bar currently does is push all the content vertically — would it really be that tough to push apps off-screen horizontally and align recently-used apps vertically?
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