Dynamic Directional Swipes are the future of touch-screen navigation

I’ve not had my iPad for too long now, but it is most evident that the best applications to use are the ones that have the most dynamic navigation - the same is true in reverse, in that a poor navigation can greatly impair one’s enjoyment of that application. Whilst trying out a friend’s Samsung Galaxy SII, I really liked the ability to swipe/pull down a menu from the top of the screen. The new Nokia N9 also has a great feature where by swiping the whole screen from edge to edge, you park whatever application you were using in background; said application can then later be quickly retrieved from the multi-tasking panel.

On the home screens of the iPad, one is really limited simply to a left or right swipe motion. It would be so much better if you could swipe up and down also for extended navigation, and carrying my idea forwards, use diagonal swipes in addition for specific functions - send to email, retrieve from the cloud / Drop Box, send to bin etc.

Not only do you have 2 directions on every point of the compass (forward and reverse) - i.e. 2 x 8, but moreover - in taking a leaf from Nokia, you could apply a duration / length dynamic to this also, so that a short swipe in a particular direction means one thing, whilst a longer swipe in the same direction means something else - for instance short diagonal swipe to top right corner means send to background, long swipe means shut down application. For longer swipe functions you might also need a little pop-up ’do you really want to do this?’ prompt. Another short swipe to bottom left corner could mean send to Home Page / Desktop; while a longer swipe in the same direction would send to bin etc.

Of course you can still have the 2 and 3 fingered gestures too, but my navigation would provide amazing versatility with no less than 32 different functional parameters, in the simplest way possible. You could even add more parameters by combining simultaneous 2 fingered swipes - in the same or opposite directions. Huge scope for simple and easy to learn navigation. Of course programming it may be another thing entirely, but I believe this is eminently plausible and achievable within the next couple of years.

Now we just need to wait for Google and Apple to catch up with my way of thinking!