Friday, August 12, 2011

How to Use Gestures on the BlackBerry PlayBook

With each new Operating System there are new ways developed to interact with the software. With a new OS on tablets developers can make it even more intuitive because you can use multi-finger functions and other intuitive ways like gestures. When you first use the BlackBerry PlayBook you will understand what I mean. In order to help you get started I made this video about how to use the gestures on the PlayBook so you will not be lost.

 

Visuals after the break.

Navigating BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet
Gestures are very intuitive and it helps you reduce the buttons space which will in turn increase your display for your app. Gestures make the usage more fun and fast.
All navigation swipes and gestures are covered here in this tutorial.

PlayBook Navigation

1. Gestures

All Swipes
Swiping forms the main navigation method all through the playbook  as its easy and cool to do so.
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Swipe up,down, right and left to navigate through different panes,  list or pages.

Pinching
Pinching is the way to zoom in or out on your photos, documents, webpages .. etc.
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Pinching is to touch the portion of screen with your finger and thumb. You will have to get two fingers to zoom out and get them apart to zoom in.

Dragging
Just drag the items that you want to move from one place to another and you don’t have to do a copy past.
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation

2. Navigation

The off screen frames help you to bring up menus, switch between apps and more features.
Showing the home screen
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Swipe up from bottom frame  onto the screen to navigate to home screen.

Show the menu
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Additional features, options and help menus can be found by dragging down from top frame onto screen. To minimize this menu you have to the opposite, dragging from screen to top frame.

Switch between apps
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Swiping left or right from the side frames, you can switch over to different apps running at same time.

Show the status bar
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Swiping from top left corner of the frame onto the screen will show you status bar. On status bar you can find notifications, battery info, options and more.

Close an app
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
By touching the app and swiping upwards, you can close the app.

Switch between homescreen views
BlackBerry PlayBook Gestures and Navigation
Swiping left or right on lower portion you can switch between home-screens.
So with all this navigations covered you can be sure to use PlayBook with full ease and authority.