Thursday, July 29, 2010

Arrow keys on the pad

Just a little pet peeve I have to get off my chest (and in the faint hope that somebody up there listens):

Why does the screen keyboard on the iPad not have any arrow keys?

It's a nightmare to go back in text to make corrections, because you can't position the cursor precisely with the touch screen, and it tends to highlight words rather than put the cursor in the middle of them. So you have to delete a whole word to put in a missing letter in it, after you have fumbled enough to get the cursor positioned correctly.

If you haven't tried it, it may sound overstated, but it really is surprisingly difficult to position the cursor precisely in existing text. And the omission of arrow keys seems to me to be a grave error.

I would normally use an external keyboard, but one should not have to pull it out just to fire off a two-line email.
And indeed some people say that they are doing splendidly with the screen keyboard. Good on them, as the British say it, I wish it were me.

Update: Paul said:

Found this on a forum somewhere:
" If you hold your finger down a magnifying glass appears. Then by dragging your finger left and right you can adjust the insertion point much more precisely."

Dang, that's right! Thanks. It takes some time to get used to the idea that this really is a whole new operating system with a whole new interface with many things to learn about it. My gut feeling going in probably was that it was sort of a modified OS X, but it really isn't.

9 comments:

Paul Bradforth said...

Found this on a forum somewhere:

" If you hold your finger down a magnifying glass appears. Then by dragging your finger left and right you can adjust the insertion point much more precisely."

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, my man.

Heck, I even knew this one time.

TC [Girl] said...

Paul: Really enjoyed your landscapes on your site. BEAUTIFUL sunset shot!

ttl said...

My gut feeling going in probably was that it was sort of a modified OS X, but it really isn't.

Sigh. Didn't I just correct you on this in April?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

One thing is listen, another is to learn.

ttl said...

Wikipedia has a brief and mostly correct description on how iOS relates to OS X.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

You know, you one of very few persons I know who have a longer memory than myself.

Paul Bradforth said...

@TC[Girl]—thanks :-)

TC [Girl] said...

@Paul: you're welcome! :-)

Eolake said...
"You know, you one of very few persons I know who have a longer memory than myself."

...in most cases! ;-)