4 ms·
> The usability on a laptop goes out the window as you realize you can't accelerate past the edge of your touchpad. Getting to the top item in the menu -- maybe
by Izkata 3y ago
> The usability on a laptop goes out the window as you realize you can't accelerate past the edge of your touchpad. Getting to the top item in the menu -- maybe even the most important item -- is extremely hard. You rapidly become limited to the number of items you can have in this menu.
Not really. Put a second finger at the bottom of the touchpad, then release the first finger (without dragging while both fingers are down). Poof, you just got yourself a whole touchpad's worth of additional height.
They've worked like this forever, and since I pretty much only use a touchpad, movement like this is pretty second-nature for me.
- Aeolun 3y agoJust because it’s second nature to you does not mean it’s user friendly. Especially when you can fix it by just keeping the menu open.
- elliottkember 3y agoIf you have to explain how to use it…
- Izkata 3y agoThe simple version would be "finger crawling", like you're dragging a piece of paper. I think it is intuitive, it just seems to need more explicit instruction for people nowadays who never really did arts and crafts as kids, and built their understanding on new non-physical conventions instead (like three-finger gestures as in the other reply - I find those weird, not at all intuitive, and sometimes difficult to do because my fingers are different lengths - drag is mostly fine since I can just move my whole hand, but other gestures not so much).
- TeMPOraL 3y agoNot sure what "finger crawling" is, but surely the point still applies that touchpad is not a table, and you quickly run out of space to drag stuff with your finger.
- andrepd 3y agoI do that, and it's always a fiddly manoeuvre. Far from usable.
- alexdbird 3y ago> Put a second finger at the bottom of the touchpad Why would you use a second finger when your thumb is already hanging out there at the bottom of the trackpad? :) How I drag things on a trackpad (or a trackpoint for that matter) hasn't changed since the 90s. There isn't literally a button there under my thumb any more, but it makes no difference. I don't really follow the comments that this is unintuitive; most computer interaction is learned rather than intuited, and this interaction has simply not changed. Perhaps other ways of dragging were added, but they were always inferior.