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breadcrumbs: User Experience > page_name: multitouch title: Multitouch

UI under development. Designs are subject to change.

Trackpad Multitouch (Indirect manipulation)

Gesture Types

• 1 finger: traditional pointing
• 2 finger: traditional scrolling
• 3 finger horiz.: three fingers in a row (usually ring/middle/index)
• 4 finger horiz.: four fingers in a row (usually pinky/ring/middle/index) - may be hard to disambiguate horizontal swipes on small trackpads, so we will overlap many gestures with the three finger variants
• 1 finger edge: one finger moving in and out of the trackpad bounds
  • May require hardware support.
  • Vertical gestures may be problematic because of limited space.
• 3 finger group: three fingers in a circle (usually thumb/middle/index [or ring])
  • Due to people resting their thumb on the trackpad, many of these gestures are problematic, particularly pinch and rotate gestures. Swipe gestures are generally pretty usable.
• 4 finger group: four fingers in a circle (usually thumb + ring/middle/index)
  • Problematic as above. Swipe gestures are acceptable.

Proposed behaviors

Main view

*   **one finger** — cursor
*   **two** fingers — content manipulation
    *   Sites can override all two finger gestures passed to the
                content area
    *   Pinch - defaults to page zoom
    *   Rotate - defaults to nothing
    *   Translate - defaults to scroll
*   **three** fingers horizontal
    *   tab switch
*   **three** fingers up — into overview
*   **three** fingers down — focus panels
*   **four** fingers up — into overview
*   **four** fingers down — focus panels
*   **four** fingers horizontal — window switching
*   **three** finger group translate — back/forward or tab switch
            (reverse of horizontal's behavior)
*   **three** finger group rotate — problematic because of two
            finger with anchored thumb
*   **one** finger left/right edge in — back/forward
*   **one** finger left/right edge out — forward/back, or sidebar
            reveal
*   **one** finger top edge in — overview
*   **one** finger bottom edge in — panels

Overview

*   **two** fingers horizontal — switch tabs
*   **two** fingers up/down? — close tab
*   **three** fingers — switch windows
*   **four** fingers — window switching
*   **three** fingers down — out of overview
*   **four** fingers down — out of overview
*   **three** or **four** fingers up — logout

Panels

*   **two** fingers = scroll current panel
*   **three** fingers horizontal = switch panels
*   **three** fingers up = back to main view

Full Multitouch (Direct manipulation)

• All content area gestures (two and one finger) passed directly to web pages
• Default behaviors for one and two finger gestures as above
• We may reserve the above 3/4 finger gestures for os needs:
  • three fingers — window movement/resizing
  • four fingers — overview