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8 Navigation Tricks Every iPad User Needs to Know

Like any piece of technology, iPads aren’t completely obvious when you first pick them up. They have their own language of gestures, swipes, and button presses you should learn to become more comfortable using them.

None of these gestures are complicated, but they’re also not immediately obvious. The four and five-finger multitasking gestures are particularly useful, but may take you some time to discover when you first sit down with an iPad.

Four-Finger Swipe Left or Right – Switch Apps

You can quickly switch between recently used apps with a quick gesture — think of this almost like the iPad version of Alt+Tab on Windows.
To do this, simply place four fingers anywhere on your screen and swipe to the left or right. Your current app will appear to slide to the left or right, and another recently used app will appear. Perform this gesture several times in a row to quickly move between apps.
This gesture is very helpful if you’re regularly switching between a few apps, as it allows you to skip the app switcher screen.

Five-Finger Pinch – Go Home

To quickly leave an app and go back to your home screen from anywhere in iOS, place five fingers on your iPad’s screen and pinch them together. This is essentially the same thing as pressing your iPad’s Home button, but this quick gesture can be faster than reaching for a button.
If none of these gestures are working, open the Settings app, tap the General category, and enable the Multitasking Gestures option.
ipad-multitasking-gestures

Double-Tap Home – App Switcher

Quickly pressing the Home button twice will also open the app switcher. (The Home button is the one button on the front of the iPad.)
The app switcher shows thumbnails of your recently used apps. Swipe to the left or right to scroll between the apps you’ve recently used and tap one to switch to it. If you want to remove an app from this list, you can touch its preview image and swipe it upwards, moving it off the screen.

Four-Finger Swipe Up – App Switcher

You can also open the app switcher by placing four fingers on your screen and swiping upwards. This provides another way of getting to the app switcher if you find the gesture more convenient.
This gesture can also be revered. Place four fingers on your screen and swipe downwards to leave the app switcher. This will make the app in the center of the app switcher active.
ipad-app-switcher

Long-Press Home – Siri

Long-press your Home button from anywhere and the Siri screen will appear, allowing you to perform voice searches and ask questions. Siri will instantly start listening after you long-press the Home button, so you can simply long press it and start speaking.
access-siri-on-ipad

Swipe Down on Home Screen – Spotlight

From your home screen, place your finger somewhere in the middle of the grid of icons and swipe down to open the Spotlight search feature. Note that you must do this somewhere in the grid of icons; you can’t swipe down from the top of the screen or the notification center will appear instead.
Spotlight allows you to quickly search many different things on your device. For example, you could start typing the name of an app to quickly launch an app rather than hunting for its icon. Spotlight also searches your email, so this is a quick way to find an email without opening your email app and using its built-in search feature. You can also search Google and Wikipedia from here, so this is an easy place to start a web search.
ipad-spotlight

Swipe Down From Top – Notification Center

Swipe down from the top of any screen — whether on the home screen or in an app — and you’ll see the Notification Center. This screen displays push notifications that have appeared on your device, as well as other relevant information such as the current weather and events from your calendar. Grab the handle at the bottom of the screen and swipe upwards — or just press the Home button — to dismiss the Notification Center.
ipad-notification-center

Swipe Up From Bottom – Control Center

Swipe up from the bottom anywhere on your iPad and you’ll see the Control Center. This pane provides easy access to commonly used settings and options. Here, you’ll find everything from music playback controls, volume and brightness sliders, toggles for options like Mute, and shortcuts to the Timer and Camera apps.
Tap anywhere outside the Control Center and it will slide back downwards, off your screen.
ipad-control-center

You can also wake up your iPad by pressing the home button. You don’t have to reach over and tap the power button every time you want to turn the screen on.

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Here’s 6 Great Tricks for Windows 8 that You Probably Don’t Know

12:16 AM | Labels: Computer

We’ve covered a lot of tips, tricks, and tweaks for Windows 8, but there are still a few more. From bypassing the lock screen to instantly taking and saving screenshots, here are a few more hidden options and keyboard shortcuts.
Whether you love Windows 8, hate it, or just wish Metro would go away, these options will help you make Windows 8 work the way you want it to.

Disable the Lock Screen
Windows 8 shows a lock screen when you restart your computer, log out, or lock it. It’s very pretty, but it just adds one more keystroke to the login process. You can actually disable the lock screen entirely, although Microsoft hides his option very well.

This option is located in the Group Policy Editor. To launch it, type “gpedit.msc” at the Start screen and press Enter.

In the Group Policy Editor, navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Personalization.

Double-click the “Do not display the lock screen” option, set it to Enabled, and click OK.

The next time you restart your system, log out, or lock the screen, you’ll see the login screen instead of the lock screen.

Combine this with skipping the Start screen and you can boot to a login screen and log straight into the desktop, just like on previous versions of Windows. The desktop will be the second screen you access instead of the fourth.
Take & Save Screenshots Instantly
Windows 8 has a new hotkey combination that lets you take and save screenshots instantly. To take a screenshot, hold the Windows key down and press the Print Screen key. Your screen will flash and Windows will save a screenshot to your Pictures folder as a PNG image file.

You might assume that WinKey+Alt+Print Screen would take and save a screenshot of the current window, but it doesn’t. Maybe this will be implemented in the final version of Windows 8.
We’ve also covered other new keyboard shortcuts in Windows 8.
Prevent Files From Opening in Metro
If you prefer to use Windows 8’s desktop and try to avoid Metro, you may be surprised the first time you double-click an image file in Windows Explorer and get kicked back into Metro. By default, Windows 8 launches images, videos, and music in Metro apps – even if you open them from the desktop.
To avoid this, launch the Default Programs control panel by pressing the Windows key to access Metro, typing “Default Programs,” and pressing Enter.

Click the “Set your default programs” link.

In the list of available programs, select the “Windows Photo Viewer” application and click the “Set this program as default” option.

Repeat this process for the “Windows Media Player” application. You can also set the desktop version of Internet Explorer as your default Web browser from within Internet Explorer.
Of course, if you have a preferred image viewer or media player, you can install it and set it as the default application instead.
Display Administrative Tools
By default, Windows hides the Event Viewer, Computer Management and other Administrative Tools from the Start screen. If you use these applications frequently, you can easily unhide them.
From the Start screen, mouse over to the bottom or top right corner of the screen and click the Settings charm. You can also press WinKey-C to view the charms.

Click the “Settings” link under Start and set the “Show administrative tools” slider to “Yes.”

The Administrative Tools will appear on the Start screen and in the All Apps list.

Control Automatic Maintenance
Windows 8 has a new scheduled maintenance feature that automatically updates software, runs security scans, and performs system diagnostics at a scheduled time. By default, the maintenance tasks run at 3am if you aren’t using your computer. If you’re using your computer at the scheduled time, Windows will wait until the computer is idle.
To customize this time, open the Action Center from the flag icon in the system tray.

You’ll find Automatic Maintenance under the Maintenance category. Click the “Change maintenance settings” link to customize its settings.

From this screen, you can set the time you want to run automatic maintenance tasks. You can also have Windows wake up your computer to run maintenance tasks, if it’s asleep.

Customize Search Applications
Metro apps can appear as options when you use the search feature.

You can control the apps that appear here and trim down the list. First, click the Settings charm from anywhere on your system and click the “More PC settings” link.

From the PC settings screen, click the Search category and use the sliders to hide apps from the search screen.

Do you have any other Windows 8 tricks to share? Leave a comment and let us know!
for more tips see>>> Technologist