Keyboard limitations. Why

[David L Allen]

Hi folks
The iPad is an excellent device - I love it but…
One thing that’s always frustrated me is the lack of cursor keys on the onscreen keyboard & I know I’m not alone regarding this limitation.
OK, I realise that there’s ways round it by holding done something or other for a while or some such procedure that I can never remember but it still frustrates me (a lot).
Now the iPad’s been around for a while and surely by now the engineers could have found a way to include such a tiny feature.
Why oh why haven’t they done? Is there some technical issue that prevents it or are they just being bloody-minded?
Do tell.

 

[LannyC]

It's one of the compromises Apple made to keep the keys large enough for easy typing. Take a look at some alternative keyboards in the App Store, which once installed can be toggled with the globe key at the lower left. I sometimes switch to the PadKeys keyboard for its left and right arrows, plus forward delete. But its keys are too small for daily use, IMHO.

 

[David L Allen]

Padkeys? That's not available in the App Store. The only alternative I can find is MS SwiftKey which insists on recording everything you write - not good.
As far as size goes I happen to have 'sausage fingers' & I'm fairly sure it wouldn't pose a problem. Choice would be nice,

 

[LannyC]

It seems that PadKeys is now called Typefinity. Take a look, it may be worth $5 to you.

 

[David L Allen]

Thanks

 

[twerppoet]

This is probably what you didn't remember. Place two fingers on the touch keyboard and use it like a track pad to move the cursor. Careful. If you hold them still for too long it changes into a selection mode instead of just moving the cursor.

There are a couple other ways, but this is easiest for the iPad.

On the iPhone it's one finger, but you have to hold it a bit until the keyboard grays out the letters.

 

[David L Allen]

Yeah, when you're typing, hitting a cursor key is far quicker & more intuitive than pressing & holding whatever that sometimes works.
Anyhow, thanks to LannyC I'm now happily using Typefinity.