I've decided to be a broken record player here-

I'm just going to say again, "Here's what I want to see". ('see what good that'll do me eh? hahaha...)

I want to be able to push one (1) button and be on the "US Terminal Procedures" selection page. (Preferably one of the four buttons at the bottom that's not really used like "Books", or "News")
Currently, 4 key-strokes it the best I can do to get there.

When I see the "Search by Airport Ident" page, I want to have the option to choose "Scroll w/ Buttons" (or something like that) along with the options of "Keyboard" or "Writepad" for inputing characters.
Then, I'd like to use the up/down arrows to move from 0-9 and A-Z, the slect button to select the character, and the page-flipper to move back-and-forth between the characters. Perhaps a long-push on the select button to input the search term.

Voila! Up comes my airport, and then the arrows and select button work all the way to the procedure I want. (My arrow/select nav capability disappears when I get to the "Instrument Approach Procedures" page.

* Also, I'd like to see the ability to create a shortcut, or "sticky" to a specific "IAP" page, as in the one for the airport I'm headed to. A way to possibly use some of the other features of the eflyBook (like the notes/clearance stuff) and come back quickly to my IAPs for that airport.

These are just ideas that I have and I welcome constructive (or destructive!) criticism for sure.

** I noticed that the GPL/SDK as been released from iRex for developing stuff for the Iliad. I'm not a programmer/developer, but if anyone happens to be, then I'd sure like to hear whether this is significant or not...

'Best,
Chris R
N7425P@KAXS

Chris,
You requests are not falling on deaf ears, I have made a list of all the features requested on this forum and we will be adding some of the features but these changes will need to take a back seat to some of the other features promised earlier. I am just about to release the AFD, one of the features not in there right now is an icon at the bottom left of the screen that will allow the user to toggle between AFD and TPP for a specific IDENT this will follow soon.

We are currently busy with the re-write of the ENROUTE section its cumbersome to say the least and has been a serious thorn in my side personally. This is taking a little longer than I had hoped initially and I apologize for it.

As for these specific features, I will need to see if we could hookup the keyboard to intercept the required events unfortunately the iRex API is still very restrictive and I am sure the same will go for the GPL'ed version.

Thank you for your feedback it is appreciated,
Johan Van Zijl

Johann, I know it may be too late to change directions but the AIM and Enroute charts are not even close in importance to being able to navigate within approach pages. I personally can't imagine not carrying paper enroute charts, and I can access the AIM online whenever I want to. We really need much better stylus free navigation in approach plates.

Roy,
This sounds good but lets discuss the navigation a little, what do you as a eflybook user want for navigation on the TPP documents. What will make life easier for you and please anyone jump in and give me feedback here.

That said I have one limitations though the screen size as in the chart will always be a little bigger than the screen hence the scrolling that is not something we cannot change easily.

Johan

Johan,
Thanks-a-million for jumping in here and egaging like this. It really means a lot.

I'll elaborate on my earlier post here-
I want to be able to navigate to a specific IAP, essentially with one hand, and without the use of the stylus.
Currently:
-I am able to get the "Search by Airport" IAP selection page in 4 key-strokes and about 20 seconds.
-When I get to that screen, I MUST use the stylus to input the search string and currently have an option for either tapping the keyboard-key, or using "Writepad"
-When I get to the "US Terminal Procedure Publications" for the airport ID that I've successfully entered, I can use the arrow/select buttons effectively.
-After selecting "Instrument Approach Procedures" the next screen is "Instrument Approach Procedures", at which point I can no longer use arrow/select keys(?)
-Upon selecting an approach the arrow keys work fine for scrolling up/down the plate. (This I can live with for sure...)

Future: (If it's the way I'm wanting it!)
-Is it possible to allow for a "scroll" function as an option (preferably the default-option) to be available that will translate up/down arrow click into keyboard characters? "Select" (Dot) button stroke to keyboard "Return" and page bar toggles to move back-and-forth between the letters? (This wouldn't be critical I suppose, depending on method for submitting/clearing the search string..)
The select and reset? -Could it be a selection along with "Back" as on the current Search Form? ("Search" and "Clear Search")
--Again, I think it would be neat to be able to program a "hot button" to go to the IAP-search page, and I don't recall using the "News" or "Books" button for anything right now!...

Two more things:
1. I certainly don't want to rub Johan, or his development team, the wrong way. Like I said, I'm not a developer or programmer. Not by a long-shot! So please don't be too critical of my assumptions, and/or lack of insight as to how this thing can be tweaked!

2. I don't know whether or not Johan is a pilot or not, or how many of the folks on the development team are- I assume that a few are. Anyway, I want to re-iterate a point that was made in an earlier post that the concept of "scrolling" through characters to get airport ID's is second-nature to most modern pilots. The Garmin method of "spinning" knobs is just great for most of us. (Although some of you might have FMS in your "work ride"!) I propose that this method is worthy of emulation in the eFLYBook, and would present a near-nothing learning curve for the majority of users.

OK, one more thing...
I for one, am willing to be patient under development conditions such as we seem to have now. I understand that prior projects, such as the AIM function, must be completed, etc., regardless of what value I myself might put on them. (The enroutes, I think, should be back-burnered in the meantime...but that's just me.) Bottom line is that the developers are listening to the users and that expectations are set reasonably based on current capabilities of the hardware and sofware, as well as the resources/limitations of the developers.

Thanks so much again for engaging us users on this level!

-Chris

Chris,
Some comments

>Future: (If it's the way I'm wanting it!)
>-Is it possible to allow for a "scroll" function as an option (pif referably the default-option) to be available that >will translate up/down arrow click into keyboard characters? "Select" (Dot) button stroke to keyboard >"Return" and page bar toggles to move back-and-forth between the letters? (This wouldn't be critical I >suppose, depending on method for submitting/clearing the search string..)
This is definately possible but we will need to discuss the feature with iRex as I currently have limited access to what the keyboard really does, (I can display and hide it basically). That said I dont believe its impossilbe and will send some emails to start a discussion on this with iRex.

>The select and reset? -Could it be a selection along with "Back" as on the current Search Form? ("Search" >and "Clear Search")
Just to make sure I understand, you want to add another button on the search screen for clearing the text am I correct?

>--Again, I think it would be neat to be able to program a "hot button" to go to the IAP-search page, and I >don't recall using the "News" or "Books" button for anything right now!...
This is quite possible, I would really like some more input from others if possible would this be handy I personally think so and agree with Chris but will need a few more nods before adding this into the list of features.

Johan

The page flipper or trip kits has to come soon, as stated above SIDS and STARS are totally useless without it and approach plates are pretty close.

Instead of a trip kit, why not just enter the airport identifier(no stylus) and then make the page flipper start at STAR 1 and flip all the way to the last NDB approach. This is what we do with real Jepp and NACO charts and it works great, then you don't have to back up and reload during arrival or approach.

This are the big things I think it needs. This is so close to being a fabulously good tool.

I agree with RoyZ's point; it is one I made earlier and still believe in. One thing I would add is a "one button" airport diagram. That way after you are rolling down the runway after landing and the tower/ground give you taxi instructions, then you can get from the active instrument approach page to the airport diagram with no fussing around. That would be very, very useful.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. There may be a better way to do this, but the functionality that I'm thinking of, is the ability to clear errant input for the search, and to submit the search criteria after "scrolling" the airport ID letters in. - I just couldn't think of any other way to do this. An issue would be how the device/user interface knows when to shift the function of the arrow keys back to "navigation" from "character-select" modes, I suppose.

**I think I'm gettng RoyZ's gist now, and that's that he wants to be able to simply "flip" through the pages of the IAP's, DP's, STARs and Airport diagrams with the page flipper. This makes sense to me.
My only aprehension there is due to the fact that "full page re-paints" (or whatever it's called when you open a new document page) seem to vary in time, and the "5 page flip" can sometimes take up to 10 seconds in my experience (using PDFs anyway). In the case of a big airport (i.e., DFW w/ ~100 pages in the NACO book), it may take quite a long time to scroll through page-by-page.

I guess it becomes a matter of allocating whatever the development resources are. I would think that the ability to flip back-and-forth through procedure pages for a particular airport would not be as technically challenging as developing the "totally stylus free" interface. (Just my guess) Thus, it would be "lower hanging fruit" and may be worth focusing on in the shorter-run. As Johan has requested, I think that more of us need to chime in on what's most important to us.
Maybe it would be beneficial to conduct some small surveys on this forum to see what folks are wanting for the most. ???

My ignorance of just how much time/resources need to be allocated to these different development aspects makes me somewhat of a "loose cannon" I suppose. But I think that we can boil things down to a few major concepts:
1. "Stylus Free" navigation -in all situations (except for taking notes or similar)
2. Fast, effective, and simple navigation between procedures for a specific airport
3. Enhanced "Overall Navigation"- for example being able to "hot-key" back to the airport, or procedure you were just using, etc. (This feature would definitely be last on this short list of priorities -unless developing it turns out to be more trivial...)

***Sorry for all the long-winded stuff here. I've had some free time and it's too cold outside for my "honey-do" list...

-Chris

I agree with most of what is being said. Once getting to the airport ID page, the arrow keys could be used to scroll the numbers and alphabet. Let's just say it starts out on capital A, up scroll gets numbers, down scroll gets the capital alphabet. The enter key, the one with the dot, would select the displayed character and move to the next space. After the third character the dot would enter the entire ID and bring up the airport menu. All airports, to the best of my knowledge, have a 3 letter ID.

I think the page flip function would work well in most instances. In the case of a large airport, how about a page numbering on the bottom of the page like in a PDF file? Is that possible? Then you could jump to an approximate page quickly. However, this move would require use of the stylus. You could, of course, just back up one level and choose the procedure from the airport menu just as it is now. Use the page flipper for small airports or within the approaches for the big airport. The page flipper would be very useful even if it has some limitations.

A trip folder would be nice if you could load the approaches you anticipate into it and access it easily. Again, the page flipper would be very useful.

I personally would like to see the low altitude charts fucntioning. Pan and zoom on these would make me very happy. Right now all I can get is the lower left portion without any pan or zoom functions. The other things such as FAR/AIM and AFD would be nice, but I can do without them.

First priority--make the approach plates easier to get to and easier to change. Scroll and enter for the ID. Everything else follows this. Johann, thanks for showing some interest in our suggestions. Hope we aren't overwhelming you with our brainstorming.