Control the iPad with these finger combinations

Finger moves for the iPad

The "brain" of the iPad - its operating system - is sensible enough to respond to a series of very different touches. The ones you make depend on what you want to do. These are the moves:

Tap. Go ahead and take tip of your finger and directly touch the icon, thumbnail, song title, or control the thing is on-screen. The iPad is not a crusty old calculator, so you do not have to push down hard; a light press does the secret.

Drag. Keep your fingertip pressed down on the glass and slide it around to scroll to various parts of the screen. By doing this, you can set volume sliders or pan around a photo. A two-finger drag scrolls a window inside a window.

Slide. A slide is like a drag, except that you utilize it almost exclusively with one special control - the iPad's Unlock/Confirm button, which sits in a "track" that guides your slide while you wake your iPad from sleep or confirm a total shut-down.

Flick. Lightly and quickly whip your finger up or down your screen and watch a web page or song list whiz by in the direction of your flick. The faster you flick, the faster the screen scrolls by. In a photo album, flick side-to-side to determine your images parade triumphantly across your screen.

Finger Spread and Pinch. To zoom in on a part of a photo, document, or web page, put your thumb and index finger together, place them on-screen where you want to zoom in, and make a spreading motion across the glass. To zoom out, put your spread fingers onscreen and pinch them together.

Double-Tap. This two-steppin' tap is necessary in a couple of situations. First, it serves as a quick way to zoom in on a photo or web page. Second, if you are watching a video, tap the screen twice to toggle between aspect ratios - the fullscreen view, in which the edges of the frame get cropped off, or even the widescreen, letterboxed view, which movie lovers favor because it's what the director intended a scene to appear like.

iPad keyboard

The iPad has no physical keys - unless you buy the optional keyboard. A virtual keyboard, therefore, is the default system for entering text. The iPad's keyboard pops up whenever you tap with an area that accepts input, such as the address bar of a web browser, a blank Note page, or the text area of a brand new email message. To make use of it, just tap the key you want. As your finger hits the glass, the light-gray target key confirms your choice by flickering to some darker gray.

The keyboard works in portrait mode, but it's roomier when you go for the landscape view. The button with the keyboard icon in the bottom-right makes the keyboard disappear. The keyboard has a hardly any other special keys. They're:

Shift. When you tap this key, the normally clear arrow turns blue to inform you it's in effect. The following letter you type appears capitalized. Once you type instructions, the L key returns to normal, signalling that the following letter will show up in lowercase.

Backspace. This key actually has three speeds: Tap it once to delete the letter just to the left of the blinking cursor. Hold it right down to "walk" backward, deleting each letter as you go. Finally, hold it down long enough, and it deletes words rather than letters, one chunk at any given time.

Tap this button to insert numbers or punctuation. The laptop keyboard changes to offer a palette of digits and symbols. Tap exactly the same key - which now says ABC - revisit the letters keyboard. When you're on the numbers/symbols pad, a new button appears, labeled =. Tapping it summons another keyboard layout, containing less often used characters, like brackets, the # and % symbols, bullets, and math symbols.

When you type letters into a web form, the iPad adds coming back key to the keyboard so you can move from one line to another. This key morphs to say Join when you type in a WiFi password, Go when you enter a URL, and Search whenever you query the search box.

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