Figure 2-6: Pinch to zoom in or out on a page.
✔ Drag to scroll (known as swiping). When you press your finger to the screen and drag to the right or left, you move from one Home screen to another. (See Figure 2-7.) Swiping to the left on the Home screen, for example, moves you to the next Home screen. Swiping up while reading an online newspaper moves you down the page, while swiping down moves you back up the page.
Figure 2-7: Swiping gets you around a screen quickly.
✔ Flick. To scroll more quickly on a page, quickly flick your finger on the screen in the direction you want to move.
✔ Tap the status bar. To move quickly to the top of a list, web page, or email message, tap the Status bar at the top of the iPad screen.
✔ Tap and hold. If you’re in any application where selecting text is an option, such as Notes or Mail, or if you’re on a web page, tapping and holding on text will select a word and bring up a contextual menu with editing tools that allow you to select, cut, copy, or paste text, and more. You can also use this tap-and-hold method to reposition the insertion point under the magnifying glass icon that appears.
To display the Notification Center, swipe down from the top of the screen with one finger. It lists all messages, mail, calendar events, and more in one handy spot.
If you feel like having a practice session, try the following steps from the Home screen:
1. Tap the Safari button to display the web browser.
You may be asked to enter your Wi-Fi network password to access the network to go online.
2. Tap a link to move to another page.
3. Double-tap the page to enlarge it; then pinch two fingers together on the screen to reduce its size.
4. Drag one finger around the page to scroll up or down or side to side.
5. Flick your finger quickly on the page to scroll more quickly.
6. Tap and hold your finger on text that isn’t a link.
The word is selected, and a contextual menu appears, as shown in Figure 2-8. Its options include Define and Copy.)
7. Release your finger.
8. Tap and hold your finger on a link or an image.
A contextual menu appears with commands that allow you to open the link or picture, open it in a new page, add it to your Reading List (see Chapter 6 in this minibook), or copy it. The menu also offers the Save Image command.
9. Put two fingers slightly apart on the screen and then pinch them together to reduce the page.
10. Press the Home button to go back to the Home screen.
Figure 2-8: Copy text and paste it into an email or document using the Copy tool.
Displaying and using the onscreen keyboard
Part of the beauty of iPad is that it’s highly portable, but that portability comes at a price: the absence of a physical keyboard. You can use a wireless or Bluetooth keyboard, but for short text entry, you don’t really need either. That’s where the onscreen keyboard comes into play, allowing you to enter text as you may have done on a touchscreen mobile phone.
Follow these steps to practice using the onscreen keyboard:
1. Tap Notes on the Home screen to open this easy-to-use notepad.
2. Tap the blank note or, if you’ve already entered notes, tap one to open it.
The note appears.
3. Tap in the text of the note.
The onscreen keyboard appears.
4. Type a few words using the keyboard.
You can tap the Dictation key on the keyboard (see Figure 2-9) to activate the Dictation feature, and then speak your input. This requires that the Siri feature be turned on and an active Internet connection because the translation is done on Apple’s servers.
To get the widest keyboard display possible, rotate your iPad to be in landscape (horizontal) orientation, as shown in Figure 2-9.
Figure 2-9: The onscreen keyboard is handiest to use in landscape orientation.
5. If you make a mistake (and you may when you first use it), use the Delete key (the key in the top-right corner of the keyboard with a little x on it) to delete text to the left of the insertion point.
6. To create a new paragraph, press the Return key, just as you would on a computer keyboard.
7. To type numbers and some symbols, press one of the number keys (labeled .?123) located on either side of the spacebar (refer to Figure 2-9).
Characters on the keyboard change. To return to the letter keyboard at any time, simply tap one of the letter keys (labeled ABC) on either side of the spacebar.
8. Use the Shift keys just as you would on a regular keyboard to type uppercase letters.
Tapping the Shift key once causes just the next letter you type to be capitalized.
9. Double-tap the Shift key to turn on the Caps Lock feature so that all letters you type are capitalized until you turn the feature off.
Tap the Shift key once to turn it off.
You can control whether this feature is available in Settings, in the General pane’s Keyboard section.
1. To type a variation on a symbol (for example, to get alternative currency symbols when you hold down the dollar