I almost think I would rather spend a month in hell than have to use Safari on the iPad. These two make a horrible pair.
This morning, a friend sent me an anguished, beautifully argued plea to vote against a bill in congress, HR 1249, the so-called “America Invents Act”. I sat down at my iPad to forward his argument, with a preface, to my congressman.
Emailing a congressman requires me to fill out a webpage form with many semi-personal details. I did that. Then I selected the appropriate edit window (on the same web page), to write my message. I wrote my intro, and then I went back to the different Safari window with my friend’s argument that I wished to quote. I copied it and returned to the congressional web form, where I discovered that Safari had helpfully forgotten everything I had typed into it.
After I finished pounding my fist on the table, I decided that I had been doing my work in the wrong order. I should FIRST paste what my friend wrote, then fill in the other fields. So I did the paste, and it worked just fine.
Now here’s where Safari and iPad work together to persuade a person to beat his fist into a pulp. There are no cursor keys on the iPad, so how do I “scroll up” to the top of this edit window? Safari responds to finger motions to scroll the entire web page up and down, but not to scroll inside a window.
Damn you, Safari. And Damn your little friend iPad, too.
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2 comments:
In an example of another criticism of the iPad (possibly on this blog?), there is an undocumented method of scrolling within a field... it works for floating window elements within a window at least.
Swipe up/down with two fingers within the area of interest.
Yes! JS, thank you. It's even documented, in small print on page 48 of the user guide, so I'm sorry I missed it. I feel a lot better now. I apologize to the iPad, but I'm still annoyed by Safari.
I did not expect the 2-finger scroll to work, because the frame I wanted to scroll in was less than two fingertips high. I had to realize that my fingers need to be separated, and that slow finger-swiping is okay, and then it worked.
JS: What about the fact that if you press a screen button down on the iPad for a relatively long time, it visually depresses but does not register with the current app. Any idea what's going on?
- PB
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