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rittchard

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 12, 2007
351
46
Am i overlooking something obvious? If my post goes longer than the initial box how do I maneuver up and down without any arrow keys? This is using the screen keyboard of course. I noticed the problem on another forum when my post started running long, ended up needing to bring out the Bluetooth keyboard to make the edits. On the bright side i am starting to be able to type really fast using the onscreen keyboard.
 

rittchard

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 12, 2007
351
46
You have to touch and hold in the text box and drag the magnifying glass down, and the rest of the text will slowly come up.

Ahhhh OK. Thanks for the quick response. Still would be nice go have some more options on the keyboard like arrows, ctrl, command, etc
 

pondie84

macrumors 6502a
Jan 28, 2008
592
0
Arrows might be an idea, but control and command wouldn't really be useful for anything would it, given multitouch?
 

HXGuy

macrumors 68000
Mar 25, 2010
1,679
0
You have to touch and hold in the text box and drag the magnifying glass down, and the rest of the text will slowly come up.

Its very annoying and I highlighted the same problem in another post I made. While it works, it is ever so slow to scroll through the text box. Then if you want to say delete most of the stuff but not all of it (like if you are quoting somebody) its an even more tedious task to try and highlight while also using the magnifying glass to scroll in the text box.
 

shakenmartini

macrumors 6502
Apr 29, 2008
432
0
Am i overlooking something obvious? If my post goes longer than the initial box how do I maneuver up and down without any arrow keys? This is using the screen keyboard of course. I noticed the problem on another forum when my post started running long, ended up needing to bring out the Bluetooth keyboard to make the edits. On the bright side i am starting to be able to type really fast using the onscreen keyboard.

Two fingers instead of one to scroll in text boxes. You can switch between both as needed which makes it very handy.
 

Eso

macrumors 68020
Aug 14, 2008
2,033
938
2 finger scrolling

In order to do 2-finger srcolling in a text area (like posting here) you will have to dismiss the keyboard, scroll with two fingers, then touch the text area to bring the keyboard up again. Not pointing this out because it's bad, only to clarify. It's still not very easy to do when trying to highlight text.

The lack of scrollbars is an annoyance too. It should work like a trackpad - scroll bars appear and navigate the entire page when dragging along the edges of the touchscreen.
 

Surely

Guest
Oct 27, 2007
15,042
11
Los Angeles, CA
In order to do 2-finger srcolling in a text area (like posting here) you will have to dismiss the keyboard, scroll with two fingers, then touch the text area to bring the keyboard up again. Not pointing this out because it's bad, only to clarify. It's still not very easy to do when trying to highlight text.

Not on the iPad. You can 2-finger scroll within a text box while the keyboard is still up.
 

HXGuy

macrumors 68000
Mar 25, 2010
1,679
0
Thanks a lot for the tip on the two finger scrolling within text boxes, that was a huge pain in the butt for me. Highlighting still sucks but at least ghat helps a lot.
 

Eso

macrumors 68020
Aug 14, 2008
2,033
938
Not on the iPad. You can 2-finger scroll within a text box while the keyboard is still up.

That's really strange. On the iPhone, two fingers in a text box will highlight the text between them. It's terrible because the screen is too small to ever actually be able to select the text you want. It might actually work well on the iPad screen, but maybe they are just getting rid of it all together.
 

Surely

Guest
Oct 27, 2007
15,042
11
Los Angeles, CA
That's really strange. On the iPhone, two fingers in a text box will highlight the text between them. It's terrible because the screen is too small to ever actually be able to select the text you want. It might actually work well on the iPad screen, but maybe they are just getting rid of it all together.

Let me clarify:

You can use 2 fingers to scroll in a text box on an iPad while the keyboard is still up.

If you tap a paragraph with 2 fingers, that paragraph gets highlighted.
 

shakenmartini

macrumors 6502
Apr 29, 2008
432
0
And touch and hold to bring up the "select" menu that allows you to adjust what is selected.

Overal MUCH better than the iPhone.
 

Bodhi395

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2008
817
0
This post needs to be stickier and this guy given reward. I too did not know about this.

I didn't know this either and was having trouble with typing in a text box. It's nice to know Apple does alot of the time have solutions for things, just you need to find the right way to do it, which they don't always advertise very well.
 

laokai

macrumors member
Jan 15, 2008
57
0
Can someone post a link to a list of all the multi touch moves available on the iPad? Thanks....
 

blackNBUK

macrumors 6502a
Feb 19, 2010
607
35
UK
Good to hear that two-finger scrolling works better on the iPad as I've found it to be pretty slow and clunky on my iPod Touch.

I hope that this doesn't stop website designers from looking for better solutions though. Two finger scrolling seems more like a workaround than something I'd want to use regularly. In the case of a text-entry box I'd suggest that using javascript to make the box longer as you type more into it would provide a better experience.
 

phillyred79

macrumors regular
Mar 12, 2010
212
21
I don't get it? What exactly is different with 2 finger versus 1 finger scrolling?? Sorry, I'm a little slow this morning!
 

GraphicsGeek

macrumors 6502a
Sep 19, 2008
533
0
I don't get it? What exactly is different with 2 finger versus 1 finger scrolling?? Sorry, I'm a little slow this morning!

1 finger will scroll the entire page no matter where your fingers are. 2 finger will scroll a box inside of a page (ie. Google Reader, long forum posts, etc...)
 

r0k

macrumors 68040
Mar 3, 2008
3,611
75
Detroit
I stumbled across this yesterday evening when I was replying to a lengthy forum post and I couldn't figure out how to get to the bottom of the quoted text so I could type. The scrollbar was missing. Then I tried a 2 finger swipe and voila, I was at the bottom. If Safari hadn't suppressed the scrollbar, I might have wound up with unwanted smilies in my post because they are so close to the scrollbar. Once you know about 2 fingers, you never want to see a scrollbar, but when you are staring at a long page of text with no scrollbar, there are no visual cues to let you know how to move around. It would be nice if Apple popped up a semitransparent dialog to let you know to use 2 fingers just when you first enter the text region so people would find this out sooner.
 
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