What is Slydr ?
Slydr is a Windows Phone application that implements a custom keyboard matching the layout similar to the default Windows Phone keyboard(s). It cannot replace standard keyboard becuase microsoft does not allow that. Slydr allows you to input text by Sliding Over the letters of keyboard. It also supports predictive typing like the default keyboard.
Microsoft does not allow 3rd party keyboard at this point. The app for that reason uses accessible APIs to expose functionality. I appreciate your desire for greater integration. I will keep updating the app as APIs change.
- Next word prediction – based on last word, show users a list of possible words based on spoken language patterns
- Make it systemwide rather than in app only. This is not going to happen any time soon. Microsoft controls this and there is no public api for that.
- Favourite Contacts – shows most used contacts for sms and email options (user can choose ones not listed from main contacts list) – I have request an API change for sending SMS, once that is done, this will make sense.
- Predictive typing option as an alternative to sliding keyboard – will be useful for non supported languages.
- Automatic addition of user added non dictionary words (if the word you type in does not exist in dictionary, it will be added so it will be available next time).
- Automatic support for Swype like capitalization (if you swipe outside – top of the keyboard, it will automatically capitalise that word)
- Support for both Portrait and Landscape mode (full sized landscape keyboards – Version 3.0)
- Based on your swipe or based on individual key entry, the algorithm will automatically match words with accents
- Quick toggle between languages – Version 3.0
- Supported Languages (v3.x):
- Arabic (العربية) – Mango Version 3.x
- Bulgarian (Български)
- Catalan (Català)
- Chinese Simplified
- Chinese Traditional
- Croatian (Hrvatski)
- Czech (Český)
- Czech (Český) Alt
- Danish
- Dutch (Nederlands)
- Dutch (Belgium)
- English
- Estonian (Eesti)
- Spanish (Español)
- Farsi / Perian (فارسی) – Mango Version 3.x
- Finnish (Soumi)
- Français (France)
- Français (Canada)
- Français (Switzerland)
- German (Deutsch)
- Greek (Ελληνικά)
- Hebrew (עִבְרִית) – Mango Version 3.x
- Hungarian (Magyar)
- Icelandic (íslenska)
- Italian (Italiano)
- Norwegian (Norsk)
- Latvian (Latviešu)
- Lithuanian
- Polish (Polski)
- Português (Portugal)
- Português (Brasil)
- Romanian (Română)
- Russian (русский)
- Slovak (Slovenský)
- Slovak (slovenský) Alt
- Slovenian (Slovenski)
- Swedish (Svenska)
- Turkish (Türkçe)
- Ukrainian (українська)
- Trial Mode: Fully featured app for 10 uses. After that only email is usable.
Invoke IT Limited 
I tried to use the Spanish keyboards to no avail. Where are the accent marks ?
Enrique,
To get accent matches, you need to swipe as usual and it will show you nearest matches with or without accents.
If you have particular words in mind, let me know. I can check dictionary manually to see if they are there in first place (only 50k words)
Gracias,
Hermit
Argh! Frustrating! There is a comment thread asking for keyboard apis to allow swype on wp7 suggestion box. It has 120 votes. Suggest you publicise and vote up
well i have voted on some keyboard related feature requests. I couldn’t find the one you mentioned with 120 votes. Please drop me a link. Its got more to do with allowing 3rd parties to publish native code as at the very bottom is a COM interface.
Hello there,
Any plans on adding Lithuanian language support too? We feel kinda left out now 🙂
Hey Peter, Apologies, I will have a look. Give me a few days and i will sort it out.
no worries, looking forward to the possible update then 😉
peter.. i’m concerting word master into a full game.. need 2 days or so.. once that is done.. i’ll add support for lt.
awesome, much appreciated!
i have added support for lithuanian. wasn’t very difficult. i am trying to make some changes and will try to submit later on today
thanks 🙂 looking forward to the release!
it should have been out already (but i had incomplete greek translation) and was blocked. hard to submit it again on monday. hopefully it should be out soon.
thanks, I did try it out already, however the keyboard does not seem to include Lithuanian characters… 🙂 Latvian keyboard seems to have more keys, with their original characters, but not ours..
Hi Peter,
The only additional chars i found where (accents)
‘ą’, ‘č’, ‘ę’, ‘ė’, ‘į’, ‘š’, ‘ų’, ‘ū’, ‘ž’
These chars are represented by original chars
‘a’, ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘s’, ‘u’, ‘u’, ‘z’
Say you wanted to write jūsų
with Slydr, you trace over j u s u and it should show you jūsų with accents correctly and add it.
Similarly
ačiū – a c i u
štai – s t a i
and so on so forth. let me know whether this works or not
Not bad but wished it could totally replace the keyboard
so would i.. microsoft contact told me that they dont take code from non microsoft devs.. lets hope they open api one day
Using the trial version. Love the translate feature, but get many error msgs when scrolling through the list of options. Good thing I wasn’t looking for Urdu!
Paste option needs to be more visible in portrait mode. Shame MS doesn’t allow full access to the keyboard – a MIME input method would be awesome for correcting Japanese translation.
I had this on my old android phone
You could download it from app store
it had voice dictation swipe smileys insert pics and other things. I am so disappointed win 8 phone doesn’t have that function or a navigation system. I thing I m going to take back this phone while. I can. It’s. A shame because it does have beautiful design. And graphics. Thank you. For trying.
Sorry i am a simple developer who did this as a proof of concept. Since replacement of system keyboard is not possible, it can never do more.
“Automatic addition of user added non dictionary words (if the word you type in does not exist in dictionary, it will be added so it will be available next time).”
It doesn’t work. Adding words to the Romanian dictionary has no effect.
Hi, i just tested it by adding grand. I think the word addition kicks off when you hit space, full stop or comma. Let me know if you still have a problem
I tried to add the Romanian word “contactând” to the dictionary. It is Romanian for contacting. Since there is no way to type the diacritic â, I typed “contact până”, then I deleted the space, the “p” and the “ă” and added a “d”. Using space, comma or full stop did not add the new word to the dictionary.
I have purchased your app because it’s the only available solution. on Windows Phone 7.5 for entering text in Romanian.
It works pretty good for short text. However, for longer text your app disappears all of a sudden and the phone returns to the Start screen. There is no way to go back to the already typed text, which is exasperating and infuriating! Also, touching once the shift key locks the caps. It should be the other way around, like on all other keyboards, touch shift once to capitalize one letter, touch twice to lock caps on.
The third problem is also with caps. If I manually capitalize the first letter in a word, that letter is ignored and the suggestions are words starting with the second letter in lower case.
The worst problem though is with the longer text being lost every time I type more than a phrase. Can you please fix this very annoying problem?
This is the second time I try to leave this comment. First time I’ve done it on the phone, but after touching Submit, it was not posted.
I’ve purchased this app because it’s the only available solution on Windows Phone 7.5 to enter text in Romanian. It works pretty good for short text. However, when typing anything longer than one phrase or two, Slydr screen disappears and the phone returns to the Start screen. There is no way to go back to the already typed text which is permanently lost. This is very exasperating and infuriating!
A second problem is with the Shift key. When touched once it locks the caps on! On any other keyboard, touching shift once capitalizes one letter, touching shift twice locks the caps on. Why is Slydr different than any other phone keyboard I’ve ever used?
The third problem is with manual capitalization. If I manually capitalize the first letter, the dictionary suggestions ignore that letter and all suggestions offered for that word start with the second lower case letter typed.
The really bad problem is with the long texts being lost. Can this problem be fixed, PLEASE?!
Let me have a look at the problem tonight
I was thinking; since Microsoft made sure there is no way to add new keys to the Windows Phone keyboard, is it possible that the diacritics not existing in the English language to appear as the first suggestion when their replacement is type. For example, in Romanian, when a is typed, the first suggestions at the left could be ă and â, when i is typed first suggestion î, when s is typed first suggestion ș and when t is typed first suggestion could be ț. If that one character suggestion is chosen a space for new word shouldn’t be added. I don’t know if this is possible from a programming point of view, or how complicated to implement, but it could be a way around the Microsoft limitation….
So I have to switch between Microsoft and this app to use Slydr?No way to set as main board?
sadly you can’t change default keyboard – nothing has changed on that front in the last 2 years
I like it and I wish it could replace the original keyboard
I really love this keyboard, it reminds me of how much I loved Swype on Android. Question: the share option to Facebook is cool, but is there any way to add an option to share to Twitter? Or is that already a feature in the full paid version? (I’m using the trial currently)
Hi,
The option to post on facebook / twitter etc is a generic one. if you added twitter to people hub accounts, you will get that as an additional option.
Hermit
I purchased slydr and. I did not know that. Windows. Does not. Accept 3rd party. Keyboards can I please get a refund of the money
Nicole,
its stated in first line of app description. anyways store purchases are handled by Microsoft. Apologies
Just trying out slydr and as a mute person I think it would be amazing if you could incorporate text to speech so what you type can be spoken by your phone and so giving a voice to people like myself, this would also be a great asset to use with the translator for anyone unfamiliar with the correct pronunciation of the translation.
This is a great idea while slydr’s days are numbered with support coming in wp8.1, I could create text entry, translation and text to speech app.
What do you think? Good idea?
I really like the App and hopefully, ONE day MS will let its system keyboard be replaced by this.
I also LOVE how it links to FB.
Question: is there a way to link it to other social media sites? Please keep in mind that I am definitely technologically challenged. 😉
With windows phone 8.1.. Microsoft is releasing WordFlow addition to its keyboard that allows similar word entry. this can be then used across all applications
Hi,
This is my first (and last) windows phone.
I am an older phone user and have always been an android system lover. I have found no reason at all to change my mind
Google are bad enough in wanting to rule the world but at least their operating system allows for enhancements and one enhancement I needed was the touch pal keyboard similar to Slyder. But not to be able to continue a conversation using this app really sucks, very disappointed though the app itself is brilliant! Guess it’s back to android asap for me.
Gary,
Windows Phone 8.1 has started shipping to devices. This includes WordFlow keyboard which is more refined than my 3 year old app 🙂
Hello,
I have installed your keyboard. I have tried to write in Bulgarian but the language is not supported. I mean that it is written BG but it is another one, it seems like Russian. Could you tell me if it would be possible to use bg sliding keyboard ?
Best regards,
Daniela
Daniela,
Apologies. I created public wordlists since I didn’t have any good source. Do these words look Bulgarian ?
да 1907953
е 1218609
не 1207905
се 989678
и 800132
на 773567
си 686754
ще 633474
за 602094
ли 569468
това 534748
в 508222
ти 489922
че 486847
от 414638
ми 407469
какво 376779
с 365148
го 349602
съм 266992
аз 248750
те 241135
но 231246
добре 225982
ме 209653
трябва 199505
са 184851
няма 180361
тук 171943
а 163228
ако 161962
ви 158915
така 155200
може 153528
много 151938
по 147709
той 142335
като 141673
има 128690
му 127287
If not I probably used a bad source. Sorry I do not speak Bulgarian.
Regards,
Hermit
They all are Bulgarian:) I was not clear enough – I meant that the letters on the keyboard are not Bulgarian even the key for space – “разредка” . There is a keyboard “Bulgarian Phonetic” that most people in Bg use. You Can see it in swype or touch pal 🙂
oh that’s my bad… I was creating custom layouts based on windows full sized keyboards. While I could update it, Windows Phone 8.1 now has native support for swype functionality. let me know your thoughts.. I could update the layout as such
Hermit
http://www.google.at/url?q=http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keyboard_Layout_Bulgarian_Phonetic.png&sa=U&ei=DyuOVPWjCoTgyQOVooGwAQ&ved=0CCAQFjAI&usg=AFQjCNEdZFsGMv7uzSS4lM3WZahL3mPlOw
You can see what it is here. Bulgarians prefer it because most letters are located in the same places where the corresponding English sound is 😊
Hi, what happened with Bulgarian keyboard 😊