Actually, my plan was to have the recognition area expand beyond the visual size of the input box as soon as your pen touched the input box, so as not to penalize the user for wandering out of the box a bit, while not having any visually jarring effect, but it's worth experimenting.
And of course, there is still the option of scaling the page overall. It's possible the audiences that would want bigger input boxes would also want the text and images to be bigger as well, but it needs research to confirm.
Re:Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface
by LukasMathis on Sunday March 02, 2014 @02:07PM
(#7330291)
Another option would be to set the text caret inside the text box, but allow people to write anywhere, while the focus is on a text field. This is probably something where you'd have to do a ton of different prototypes, and see which one feels best.
Agreed that there are plenty of ideas that warrant prototyping, but I think there is special value in not having a text cursor to manage at all, similar to how touchscreens obviated mouse cursors for certain tasks.
Re:Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface
by LukasMathis on Monday March 03, 2014 @02:48AM
(#7332540)
Yes, if you can pull that off, it's a huge win.
I have one small suggestion, if you don't mind: How about making the input box increase in size (maybe double in size) so you don't have to write so small? The resizing wouldn't need to reflow the rest of the page; it could turn into a modal textbox in the same location as the original textbox. It would make it easier for children, the elderly and people who aren't native speakers of the language, etc.