As we are now approaching almost 100 published tips, we thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of our past tips for any new PreCentral readers or just as a good reminder for our veteran readers.  So, we will be publishing some "Tip Roundups" that will each showcase a handful of previously published but related tips. 

For this introductory edition of PreCentral’s Tip Roundup, we wanted to provide a set of tips that are crucial to navigating around webOS. Since the Gesture Area is one thing that really sets webOS apart from all other smartphone operating systems and hardware on the market, we thought it best to cover the different gestures or uses of the gesture area that are available to you. Keep reading after the break to learn all about the Gesture Area.

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As with many tasks in webOS, there is usually more than one way to accomplish a single action. This includes something as simple as hanging up the phone. The obvious way to hang up on a phone call is to tap the big red  Disconnect button () on the bottom of the Phone App while on a call. But you can also hang up a call by swiping up or pressing the center/LCD button to minimize the Phone app into card view and then just throwing the card off the top of the screen to close the app. A dashboard banner notification will appear for a few seconds letting you know that the call has ended. This is much easier if you don’t want to worry about not tapping the right spot on the screen or if you are driving and you don’t want to take your eyes off the road for too long. However, if you plan on making another call, you are better off trying to tap the disconnect button, otherwise you will need to load up the Phone App again!

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Pressing the center button/LCD or swiping up from the Gesture Area will bring you to Card View, where you are able to perform a variety of actions to access data on your phone or manage your open applications. Of course, you can open up the launcher by tapping on the  icon in the Quick Launcher Bar or by swiping up again, or you can just start typing to access universal search to find contacts, applications or more. You can also see all your open applications, swipe to the right/left to find whichever one you want, and then tap that application to maximize it. But, there is more that you can do with those cards, as well. Keep reading after the break for some other actions that you can perform while in card view.

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Two things that differentiate the hardware of webOS devices and that of all other mobile phones are the presence of both a physical keyboard and the Gesture Area. While the Gesture Area can be used to perform a Back Swipe, a Forward Swipe, or a variety of other gestures, it can also be used for keyboard shortcuts (called a Meta-tap). All you need to do is hold down one finger anywhere on the Gesture Area and then press the corresponding keyboard key for any given shortcut. And how do you know what the shortcuts are? Well, all you need to do is go into any Application Menu by performing a downward-swipe from the top left corner of the screen and look for the Bulls-eye + Letter combinations.

The most common use of the Meta Tap is for Copy/Paste. All you need to do is highlight the text that you want (or use a Gesture + A to "Select All"), perform a Gesture + C to copy (a "Selection Copied" dashboard notification will appear), put your cursor where you want to paste, and then perform a Gesture + V to paste. And this is not constrained to just the app you are working in…this even works across apps!

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Have you ever been watching a video on your device and wanted a way to easily replay the last few seconds of the video? Or have you ever wanted to quickly fast forward? You can tap the screen to display the scrubber bar and try to manually move to the position you want, but Palm added a few simple gestures for a quick rewind or advance. Simply perform a Forward swipe-type gesture across the video screen (pictured here) to advance 30 seconds in the video, or perform a Back swipe-type gesture across the video screen to rewind 10 seconds.  This will work in any app that supports video, such as YouTube, DrPodder, Facebook, etc.

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Web browsing on a webOS device is usually a great experience, but one complaint we often hear is about the lack of keyboard shortcuts for things such as paging up and down. While there are no built-in keyboard shortcuts for the browser, webOS did add the ability to use the gesture area to scroll up and down a full page, but only while in landscape mode. So, to take advantage of this feature, make sure you are browsing in landscape mode and then just perform a Forward Swipe to scroll down one page or a Back Swipe to scroll up one page. Note that if you have Advanced Gestures enabled, the Full Swipe will still perform a quick switch between your open cards without first going into card view.

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Even been looking at a notification in your dashboard and wanted to minimize it back to a small icon?  If you click within the currently active app, it will minimize the notification, but that click will also register within the app and may result in an unanticipated action.  Therefore, to minimize the notifications without affecting your current app, simply perform a Back Swipe or Forward Swipe in the gesture area, or press the center/LCD button.

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One action that any webOS user should know is how to "swipe off the screen" to delete items from a list.  While not immediately obvious, you will quickly realize how simple this action is and see how prevalent it is throughout webOS.  Anytime you are in an application that provides a list view (from stock apps like Email or Messaging to 3rd party apps like DrPodder), all you need to do is tap-and-drag an item off the screen (either left or right) to delete. 

Note that if the application provides a prompt to "Delete" or "Cancel", you must press "Delete" to confirm.  However, if you have multiple items to delete, you do not need to confirm each deletion.  Just swipe off the next item and the prior action will automatically be confirmed.

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Performing a Swipe Up from the gesture area or pressing the Center Button (for Pre) / Center LCD (for Pre Plus, Pixi or Pixi Plus) will perform different actions, depending on where you are in webOS:

• When you have an application open, performing a Swipe Up or pressing the center button/LCD will minimize the current application and bring you into Card View
• While in Card View, a Swipe Up will bring up your full launcher, while pressing the Center Button / LCD will bring your app back to full screen mode
• While on any Launcher page, either the Swipe Up or the Center Button/LCD will hide the Launcher and bring you back to Card View, with your App minimized on the screen
• If a Phone Call comes in, a Swipe Up will minimize the call to the dashboard. Then, either ignore the call and it will go to voicemail, or tap on the notification to answer the call
• If a Calendar Entry alarm appears, a Swipe Up will snooze the alarm and minimize the entry to the dashboard

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The “Switch Applications” advanced gesture allows you to quickly switch between your open cards without first going into card view. This is performed by completing a full-swipe from left-to-right or right-to-left across the entire length of the gesture area. For each swipe, it will move to the next open application in the direction of the swipe.

To activate this Advanced Gesture:

1. Open the Screen & Lock app ()
2. Scroll Down to “Advanced Gestures” and turn “Switch Applications” to "On"
3. Close the App
    

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