Microsoft’s Windows 8 delivers a touch-first experience, along with full support for mouse and keyboard. Windows 8 user interface is optimized for touch but all those keyboard shortcuts that we are familiar with still work, enabling the best of both worlds.
We have previously talked about touch screen gestures present in Windows 8. Microsoft has introduced quite a few touch gestures to quickly perform various actions. For instance, you can swipe-in from the right edge of the screen to see the Charms bar and swipe-in from the top edge to see the app commands. You can see all gestures present in Windows 8 here.
As with the case of touch screen, Windows 8 also includes touchpad gestures. Yes, Microsoft has introduced touchpad gestures so that users can quickly perform various actions without the help of keyboard. These gestures are helpful for notebook or netbook users who would like to perform actions without the help of keyboard.
If your notebook or netbook includes Synaptics (most notebooks out there use Synaptics) or any other compatible touchpad, you can enable touchpad gestures by installing Windows 8 compatible drivers. On a compatible touchpad, you can use the following gestures:
# Swipe from the right to see the Charms bar
# Swipe from the left to switch between apps
# Swipe from the top to see app commands
# Do a two finger click to open right-click menu (context menu)
# Scroll from left to right or vice versa with two fingers
# Pinch to zoom
Touchpad users can configure the default settings by opening Mouse Properties and then Device Settings.
Running Windows 8 on a touch screen device? How to disable touch keyboard sound, change touch keyboard behavior, and optimize Firefox for touch screen guides may also interest you.
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