I’ve been into computers since a very early age.
When I was a kid I had a metal construction set were you can build some mechanical tool with it, which I dreamt to be able to use — along with some old plastic Lego set, one as old so that the building blocks were popping out because of sufficient enough inaccuracy at the time at the toys factories that made the building block a little incompatible. I were constantly asking my parents how to build things using these. I was a very young child at that time and couldn’t yet imagine things how they should’ve looked like in the real world. My parents were telling me I need to learn, when I asked how to learn they told me it’s a hard work and when I asked why should I learn then, they’ve explained me that there are different kinds of professions where such things are huge and professionals use them to build bridges and houses and that is how people who have a profession earn the money.
My grandparents whom we’ve lived close to, had a small TV in the kitchen. There was different kinds of stuff in those couple of channels, but once I saw something so magical I couldn’t even imagine. Things were flying, a man in a mask was going through fire. There was an explosion. He stayed alive and I were astonished. When I asked how do they do that, I were amazed. My grandparents and my parents had to explain me that there are things that do not exist and are lie (so do they do that even today) and they said that those are Effects. I didn’t know what do those effects look like 😢 I asked is the man in mask also Effect? They said no he is real. They explained me that there are computer games that are connected to such a TV as in the kitchen where I can control such Effects.
Time has passed by. I’ve been dreaming about having such a computer game. Then, many years later (in Child’s years) with the first computer, I started dreaming every place I went about pressing those buttons. It looked attractive to me and were imagining doing magical things that are new and impressing kids at school. At the 5th grade I begged my parents to buy me a book about HTML on building the first website, and so they did.
I had the best holiday ever, and if you’ve seen something on a beautiful cover – that was the way I perceived that book’s pages. Letters, printed on thick pages, explaining step by step everything a kid like me at this age could have ever asked for.
Everywhere I went I was imagining a keyboard. Pressing the keys, changing something that appears on the screen. I fell in love. With computers.
To run time fast forward, later on I went to university 4 years prior graduating from school. Yes I had to convince my parents, I wanted it badly. Later on I served in the Army for three years (with merits) while working at a part time job at Intel, both each other week (a week there, a week there, a week nowhere, a week everywhere).
And if you haven’t yet followed me, please do so now.
That’s how I got into developing Effected Keyboard.
I wanted to impress people, so I thought why won’t I add flying letters to a keyboard that fly out of the keyboard into the screen. Isn’t it magical? Then I thought of making something nice, keyboard that works and will be used by all. I took Menny’s AnySoftKeyboard (which is open sourced Apache 2 License) and reprogrammed it into a new product.
Effected Keyboard 2 has some features I very like. I don’t know how you’ll perceive them, but I honestly feel they’re nice.
You’ve got Menny’s features such as: swipe left and right from the spacebar to change the languages and move into the symbols layout. Swipe up, from the space bar which bring up a utility keyboard, with redo/undo buttons and emojis and a Clipboard History options.
But you’ve got mine things. Which I’m proud of and I’ll try to make you happy with them. First, long press on the spacebar makes it change color, this is a new mode in which you can slide over the letters which have effects and the typing caret will move, so you can edit the text. This mode persists across all of the apps, and it’s super intuitive.
In addition I changed so much in the keyboard layouts: across the themes it’s in the right size, comfortable to use for typing. It has full punctuation marks at the bottom bar. It has voice to type on long press on the emojis icons. The long press is intuitive. No hustles with too long press, missed long presses or accidental long presses.
But the cherry pick 🍒 is the effects. You’ll enjoy end to end effects that empower you to type, to create and to make a new content. You’ll look at your keyboard differently — as a thing that you like. You’ll enjoy your phone, as if it is something new that you have just bought after months of waiting.
You’ll fall in love with it.
The effects on Effected Keyboard 2 include flying letters as you type (those as in AnySoftKeyboard) and paid ones that pop out outside the keyboard into the screen. There are effects on button press that will affect the button with nice animation as you type on it.
There is also a rewritten Main Configuration UI. The “swipe typing” is yet to come. But simply over all and after all it’s a keyboard that you’ll really enjoy. And even if it won’t change your life as in my case, it indeed transforms the typing experience and makes your editing tasks and talks with friends, colleagues and family much nicer.
Did you like? Share your own experience in the comments below.
I am Vitali Pomanitski, and I’m here to make your typing easier.
Many thanks,
Vitali Pomanitski
(vitalipom)
