Not quite an orientation lock question - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Some apps only support one orientation and they open in their orientation which is sometimes sideways. When you're multi-tasking and two apps chose different orientations it's a pain.
Is there some way to force an app to open "the right way up" so that there are black bars at the sides, or top and bottom if necessary? Seems like there should be. Particularly since you can get Android laptops.
Cheers

Try this app.

Nope. Apart from having the letters "orient" in the app name, that doesn't seem related to my question.

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[Q] Switching between home screens

Sorry this is such a noobish question to start off with but I'm having trouble finding a feature I stumbled across a few days ago. Obviously to move between home screens you swipe left and right and pressing the home key from the main screen displays all 5 (swiping up from the bottom of the screen also does this).
The display I saw was a minimized view of each page, each a bit larger than when you're viewing all 5 at once, but only one was viewable on screen at a time and you could swipe left or right to see the others. I've no idea how I got in to that and I can't find any combination of controls to get back to it. I also can't see any purpose to it but it was definitely a deliberate feature and not a bug or glitch.
Can anyone shed any light on that please?
I believe that would be a bug.. there are several homescreen bugs I encounterd with my razr but all tolerable for me..
Case 1:
Slightly tilted diagonally homescreen when swiping left and right..
Case 2:
Minimize view (5 displays) also all screen tilted diagonally...
Maybe we can consider your scenario as a 3rd case..
The screen you see when you tap the home button twice (when already at the middle /primary home screen)?
Sent from my DROID RAZR using XDA App
This sounds interesting, but i'm not sure what you want this for?
Is it like when you see all the home screens, but more zoomed in?
For what its worth, i've been hitting the keys, trying to get to something like this, but no luck..
Yeah I can't fathom any purpose for it... The best I can describe it is like viewing a zoomed out version of each page on your home screen. The same widgets and icons are there, you can flick left and right, 1 page displays at a time but it didn't seem like you could do anything useful from that view.
I thought it may have been a deliberate feature but any combination of buttons or gestures won't reproduce it on my RAZR so I guess it was a bug. It seemed completely deliberate though, it wasn't distorted or glitchy... It was somewhat like on samsungs touchwiz (galaxy s II for example) when you can add in widgets and shortcuts from a zoomed out view of each page except all you had was the zoomed out view and no discernible function.
Thanks for the advice though.
I figured it out.
Sometimes, when you are dragging between the homescreens, and press home at the same time, you will get strange zoomed versions of the home screens, and sometimes it was zoomed out, exactly as you describe.
However, i mostly got a heavily zoomed in version or crooked one.
Just try again and again, and you will see a lot of strange things, and eventually the one you describe

[Q] Anyone have a fix for this?

The reason I DON'T have an Android phone yet is because of a failing in Android navigation on a website that is important to me. Let me describe the situation.
A website that I frequent returns a display with a scrollbar on the far right side. Within the same display is a smaller "box" that also has a scrollbar. For those of you who are "show me" types, go to tvguide.com, click on "What's on TV", put in a zipcode, cable, pick a cable provider, select "all premium channels" (or whatever) then Go. The resulting "small box" is the one with the individual channel listings on it. Tell me what's on channel 45.
How do I navigate within the smaller box? If you touch the screen and move your finger "down" the big display moves down. I want the small display to move down.
The iPad, on the same website, has the same problem. But I accidentally discovered that if I touch the screen inside the small box with TWO FINGERS, spread a little apart, (like I am going to zoom in or zoom out), but keep the fingers exactly the same distance apart, and move BOTH of them down or up at one time, the small display moves up and down, while the big display stays the same.
Does that make sense? I have tried the two-finger method on TMo's newest Android phone, but can't get the bottom of the small box. TMobile says "tap the small screen first" but all that does on either of the two websites is "select" that line/television show.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
TonyMo
Is the site optimized for mobile devices?
Try doing a double tap in the small box. That's what I do in situations like this. It usually works.
Sent from my DINC2
I would suggest trying a different browser. I know you may not have that option (since you don't own and Android device? Guessing you're borrowing?) but I use Dolphin HD and it works flawlessly. When I open the page you mention (tvguide.com) the scroll inside and outside the smaller widow work independently. This on a device running Android 2.3
No, neither website is (apparently) mobile-friendly. Then again, I'm not a fan of mobile-direct websites. They usually lack the content that I am looking for. Not a fan of "apps" because I don't want to have to have an app for every website I visit. I want a mobile browser that does whatever an immobile browser does! I want it all. And I want it now!

[Q] Question about screen sensitivity

I am not sure if this is a common issue (I searched with no results), but my US 5.0 is far too sensitive as far as the screen goes. When I am trying to scroll it usually makes a selection instead of scrolling.
For example, if I want to scroll through My Apps in the Market or on Amazon's App Store instead of scrolling it selects whichever app my finger is on whenever I begin the scrolling motion. It forces me to constantly have to use the 'back' key.
Thumb Keyboard doesn't work very well either. I don't know if it is a compatibility issue or if it is related to my screen issue.
I know that screen sensitivity is a big factor in product design, but mine is ridiculously over the top.
CreekDirt said:
I am not sure if this is a common issue (I searched with no results), but my US 5.0 is far too sensitive as far as the screen goes. When I am trying to scroll it usually makes a selection instead of scrolling.
For example, if I want to scroll through My Apps in the Market or on Amazon's App Store instead of scrolling it selects whichever app my finger is on whenever I begin the scrolling motion. It forces me to constantly have to use the 'back' key.
Thumb Keyboard doesn't work very well either. I don't know if it is a compatibility issue or if it is related to my screen issue.
I know that screen sensitivity is a big factor in product design, but mine is ridiculously over the top.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine will select stuff on it's own from time to time. Especially when I'm holding my finger over the home button or something it'll detect a press right on the screen right above the button. I've learned to live with it.
You might wanna look into an alternate keyboard too, I use swiftkey and it allows you to calibrate the keyboard and customize it greatly.
I solved my screen sensitivity issue by rebooting the player.. I got to thinking about it and realized that I had never rebooted since originally getting the player.
I am trying swiftkey x right now and it is definitely a lot better. I downloaded it a long time ago on my Xoom.

Left handed... watch on right

Since I'm left handed, I usually wear my watch on my right wrist.
I'd like the camera pointing out towards my hand so I need to flip the display.
I can't find any setting to do this. The "auto-rotate display" doesn't really work.
Any suggestions?
mspohr said:
Since I'm left handed, I usually wear my watch on my right wrist.
I'd like the camera pointing out towards my hand so I need to flip the display.
I can't find any setting to do this. The "auto-rotate display" doesn't really work.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(note: I'm running a heavily modified stock rom)
There's an xposed framework module called gravitybox with an overide to allow all auto rotation orientations. I use this with the auto-rotation enabled in the accessibility settings to swap the watch between my right and left throughout the day. if you want to force it to a specific orientation, I'm sure this can be done with xposed framework somehow.
I've not tried it on the truesmart, but I've used gmd smart rotate (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmd.smartrotate / http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2045240) to override orientation on touchwiz for years, and there are other similar applications available. these may prove to be simpler to use if you're not familiar with xposed framework
GMD mostly works
fg said:
I've not tried it on the truesmart, but I've used gmd smart rotate (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmd.smartrotate / http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2045240) to override orientation on touchwiz for years, and there are other similar applications available. these may prove to be simpler to use if you're not familiar with xposed framework
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this information. Nice app. The GMD Smartrotate does allow me to flip the screen to wear my watch on the right wrist. The only problem is that the camera image is upside down. It does flip the controls and menus for the camera app but the camera image is not flipped and is upside down. All the other apps seem to be flipped just fine. (Oh well, at least when I show pictures to other people, it will be right side up for them.)
It's hard to take right side up pictures anyways, it always seems to rotate them sideways. I just rotate them after I've taken the pictures. It's not like I'm using this thing as a primary camera
Edit: I didn't think about videos though..

Onscreen navigation bar feels somewhat broken.

I actually like the stock launcher/UI, it is amazingly clean and while I miss several key Nova Launcher capabilities I am trying to stick with it for natural theme options, etc. Clearly the launcher was designed for gesture navigation, something I have always found quite repulsive even with nicely done variations we have seen over the years. The typical Samsung style three icon onscreen navigation icons work 'fairly well', but they are buggy. (I wish I could swap the outside buttons around, but...)
In games, they do what they are supposed to do - slip away entirely unless you brush them back up with a minor swipe. The problem is that they don't go away in most apps otherwise - which they kinda should. Even if they simply barged their way onto the screen transparently, it wouldn't be so bad (although they are an ignorant shove to any other existing lower control mechanism). In some apps they may even be necessary, although I thought it was sorted out a long time ago that if they weren't onscreen, there would be a generalized triple dot alternative in the upper right of whatever you were doing.
The biggest problem of them all is that regardless of theme, battery dark settings, or any options to do with navigation or the home screen, this navigation bar is sometimes not only glaringly white against an otherwise well sorted out 'dark theme', there are many apps I load up where they aren't just white - the icons themselves turn perfectly white as well.
On any other device I have owned in recent times (and let's assume they were all on custom roms), even if you had actual hardware touch buttons (like my last daily, a 1st gen OPO) you could always enable onscreen navigation buttons. They would slip away by themselves in nearly any app or game you could possibly run.
Opera is a perfect example of every problem I have listed at its worst - they barge in, they are blindingly white, and the icons are white as well. Opera already has a rather beefy UI bar on the bottom, so this ends up quite broken. Will Nova Launcher solve these issues for me? Are we at a point where we can even use Nova Launcher without several nasty traps snapping shut when it comes to recent apps, orientation, etc?
As I said, with the app drawer enabled I like the stock launcher. I just want navigation buttons that behave. Am I missing anything or is the implementation of this kinda broken even though the protocols for this have been sorted out several generations of Android ago?

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