'Swype' is ruining my app and reputation.

[FLAdude]

Some time ago, someone complained to me that my app was going berserk when he tried to edit text. It would just keep duplicating text each time he tried to type, making it completely maddening and unusable. I told him I had not encounterd that and the only thing I could think of that could cause that is a shoddy input method or maybe malware or a rooting gone bad. He said his phone wasn't rooted and insisted it was my app and flamed me in the ratings

So recently I got a new Android device and I went to test my app. The thing he had described was now happening to me. I then realized that the standard keyboard was not up, but this "swype" thing had been running by default and ruining my app. When I switched it to a plain input method, the text editing was fine. Apparently swype goes berserk on AIR-based apps. Quite frustrating that all the blame and rage is being directed at my app when it is this bogus, poorly designed input method messing things up. Input methods should work without interfering with or messing up functionality of apps, this is just common sense and common courtesy ediquite. It is infuriating that such things are actually pre-installed on some devices.

Apparently this guy must have had swype (or another poorly designed input method) pre-installed and pre-selected on his device and would not listen about input methods.

How do I disable non-standard input methods from running in my app or work around this scourge?

[DJSN2012]

Hi FLAdude,

My name is David and I work for Nuance Communications, the company that produces Swype. I saw this post on Adobe's Mobile Development forum and was troubled to hear that you were seeing issues inside your application when Swype was used as the keyboard. I'd be glad to address this with you if you'd like.

Please feel free to reach out to me via a PM on this forum.

Thank you!

[FLAdude]

Hi, David. It's good to hear that you care about user experience. I didn't expect to actually get any support. Usually companies just ignore the little people or make some vague longwinded stagement to dodge the issue. Would really be great if Swype would not have these issues, especially since it is the default input method on several high volume Samsung devices. I would even go so far as to implement a fix in my code if I knew something to get it to work normally and not have to tell users to change input methods, but they are just textfields, I don't know what I could possibly do to them to make it work normally, as I didn't do anything wierd to them in the first place...

I have constructed a simple app with nothing but an input textfield and some details about the strange behavior and instructions how to reproduce it. Using this APK, you can see how it goes berserk. This app has no ActionScript. This is just a plain textfield.

The APK is uploaded here, download it and see what's happening:

http://www64.zippyshare.com/v/27468675/file.html

[er453r]

I've also encountered this problem. TextArea with Swype enabled wasn't receiving text at all. When switched to the default android keyboard everything worked.

[DJSN2012]

PM sent! Cheers.

[chris.campbell]

If this is still an issue with AIR, please feel free to create a new bug at bugbase.adobe.com.  Please post back with the bug's number or URL and I'll follow up internally.

Thanks,

Chris

[FLAdude]

I have made the bug entry here:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3298119

You can also download the example APK file attatched to the bug page that demonstrates and explains the bug further.

[steveorg]

This is also a problem with the Swiftkey keyboard. I could not find bug 3298119, so I posted a new one.

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3327298

Please vote for the bug!

[__fire_cat__]

Hi guys,

Does someone have news about  FLAdude's issue? I have very similar problem, if i set restrict "0-9" for textfield, Swype going berserk, like FLAdude wrote I use air 3.4, as3 mobile project (NativeText class, http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/archives/2011/09/native-text-input-with-stagetext.html ), so can't use any Flex trick

Maybe someone has an idea to solve?

Thanks!

[be_dicorp_jgi]

Using the restrict property of a TextInput seems to be bugged with some keyboards.

I filed a bug entry here: https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3605590

Vote for it