A. Great guide, and thanks to Instagram for doing a writeup of the new API.<p>B. I don't have a new iOS device, but hearing about 3D touch makes me immediately think of right-click, and how Apple traditionally eschewed such an interaction. Or at least made it difficult with one-button mice.<p>This comment from the OP was particularly interesting:<p>> <i>For Instagram, 3D Touch is much more than a 2015 version of the “right click”. The interaction adds another level of depth and carries a different intent. You aren’t yet committed to navigating to the content, but it's clear that you are interested. With this in mind, Peek and Pop gives you a glimpse of what lies ahead and lets you quickly back out to continue browsing.</i><p>Isn't a "3D Touch" a physically more demanding action than just a traditional tap? Why should the former be associated with a "quick peek" and the latter with a committed selection, rather than vice versa? (Besides the fact that 3D touch isn't yet available to the majority of iOS users?). Not a criticism of Instagram's decision here, just funny how things can seem counter-intuitive in the written description of them. Though in practice, it makes sense...a deep-click to preview, then a release to back out of the modal, is easier than a single-click to preview, than another single click to close the modal.<p>In a traditional OS interface, a single-click was used to signify a non-committal selection, and a double-click signified action. And that makes more sense as a double-click, like a "3D touch", takes more time and physical pressure. Of course the problem with a double-click is that double-click speeds among users can vary quite drastically, resulting in false positives and negatives. Will 3D touch mitigate these issues or fall into the same trap? Again, haven't experienced it but everytime I hear of the description of 3D touch, it doesn't sound much different than "click-and-hold"...which more or less worked OK in such apps as Kindle on IOS (for highlighting).<p>Is there a distinction between a traditional click-and-hold, versus a singular 3D deep click, and <i>then</i> a 3D-deep-click-and-hold? Seems like there could be more ambiguity there than there was in the slow-single-clicks vs double-click problem.
Someone wrote up an example in Javascript. It is fairly simple, the event object has a force member which seems to range from 0-1.<p>This should be a standard, it really does change the way touch devices are used. I'm starting to dislike apps that don't have the "peek/pop" functionality (Instagram is the third party app that I use that has implemented it)<p><a href="https://github.com/freinbichler/3d-touch" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/freinbichler/3d-touch</a>
Here are some blogs on using 3D Touch in Swift: <a href="http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?q=3d+touch&age=90" rel="nofollow">http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?q=3d+touch&age=90</a>
Nice writeup. I'm glad we have moved beyond skeumorphism, because a skeumorphic peek and pop would have been disastrous (like the 'curl up' transition of yesteryear, seen in apps like maps). The current interaction, motion and visual models are clean and fast.
Android started out with a long-press gesture being prominent throughout the platform but it was eventually deprecated because designers felt that it wasn't very discoverable by users. It's interesting to see Apple going in the other direction, but I'm not sure discoverability will be much better. One of the problems is that even if the majority of apps implement the gesture action consistently it's still very annoying when you come across the random app that doesn't implement it and your 3d-touches are ignored. That forces the user to memorize which apps in which situations obey the gesture which increases the cognitive load.
Am I correct in thinking that "3D Touch" is the first thing that Apple has ever brought out that wasn't a part of Xerox PARC's "Office of the Future" back in the 70's?