Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPhone 101
iPhone 101: Two-fingered Scrolling
Everyone knows that you can use a single finger to scroll web pages in Mobile Safari but it's less well known that you can use two fingers to scroll frames and other subpage elements. Normally, on personal computers, you use a separate scroll bar for webpage frames. On the iPhone and iPod touch, these scroll bars do not appear and the content expands to fill the frame set area. By using two fingers at once, you tell Mobile Safari to scroll the element rather than then entire page. I find this especially useful when filling out forms with scrolling selections such as when I do blog posts and need to add categories.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MacBook Pro User said 5:14PM on 12-13-2007
You can scroll with two fingers in any area of the interface already; however, Mobile Safari switches when you reach a subpage element.
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Cecil said 4:43PM on 12-14-2007
Hey! I don't get it! I have an iphone, tried the two finger tip, but it's the same as scrolling with one.. what am I missing? I actually work at apple, doing tech support for the iphone, so if y'all would kindly expand on your tip, it'll get to all my friends and contacts also, and wind up in users-hands.. THANKS! and thanks to apple for the iphone!
Pete Zich said 5:38PM on 12-13-2007
Um, I thought there was something about his a while ago, I know I've known about it for a while.
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hourog said 5:54PM on 12-13-2007
*Thanks* Erica - now I can find out whats playing on channels higher than channel 11 on TV Guide.com
Love it.
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Rob said 5:52PM on 12-13-2007
thanks for the tip, i thought i was just doomed to not be able to surf pages with scrolling elements.
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Macroy said 5:54PM on 12-13-2007
Apparently there are a lot of features of the iPhone that I've completely missed out on. It took me months to realize that I could control the iPod with the iPhone earbuds, and now you tell me I can do...the thing that this post says I can do?
What other features are you hiding, Apple :(
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Viper007Bond said 5:57PM on 12-13-2007
Ah ha, so that's how you scroll textareas! Thanks!
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JEff said 6:11PM on 12-13-2007
Geez. Now I feel stupid for being frustrated by that for so long.
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Tom said 7:26PM on 12-13-2007
nice. too bad it doesnt help with the google maps page (and yes i know about the built in app, but it's not the same!)
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adayl8t said 8:52PM on 12-13-2007
Genius!
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cvdubb said 9:44PM on 12-13-2007
So...completely wrong place to post this, but not sure where else to do it. I've been hearing about a lot of junk that gets left behind when you uninstall apps using installer and haven't really found a clear answer about how to get this junk off the phone. Anybody here know how it's done, or can point me in the right direction? Erica, if you do, think you could post a tutorial for those less gifted among us (ME)?
Thanks heaps.
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WiFone said 9:39AM on 12-15-2007
Here's what I do:
I use WinSCP on my wintel pc (alternatives exist for both mac and win), and OpenSSH on the iPhone to connect over WiFi.
Using this, I browse around the iPhone 'disk', and get a little familiar with the files / folder steuctures.
Then I periodically make backup and/or reference copies to a folder on my pc.
Whenever I know for (almost) sure that something is junk, I delete it (keeping a backup copy, at least for a couple of clean SpringBoard restarts, power-off/ons, and reboots).
As a wintel user interacting with maccies I have for a long time been used to having to clean up after Apple's mess. All those .svn folders and .DS-Store files for which I really don't have any use at all, sloppily left around everywhere like an infectious disease... Steve Ballmer would probably say something like "It's even worse than Linux!"
Ski said 2:15AM on 12-14-2007
Thanks for the tip, or should I say tips! Yes, I know its a bad pun. This is extremely important to me. I just got my iPhone on Monday, and was having trouble with accessing the forums for my online class since it was in a scrolling frame on the page. Now, I have no excuse in not doing my homework while driving.
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