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Question

First Win10 laptop: Why did they nerf touchpad functionality

Aug 5, 2017 8:33PM PDT

I just got my first Win10 laptop, an Asus Zenbook 3 UX330UA.

As far as I can tell, I cannot set my touchpad to have the sidebars which allow you to swipe scroll with one finger. The closest option is the two-finger scrolling, which I might be able to live with, except it seems that "chiral" scrolling is not available. This was the highly useful feature that allowed you to scroll in a window, such as a long text document or webpage, infinitely by moving your finger in a spiral motion once you started scrolling.

Why would they reduce the functionality of this? Or am I mistaken in that it is not available? Why isn't this a big deal? For me, it almost makes the touchpad useless.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Touchpads are all over the map.
Aug 6, 2017 6:44AM PDT

To call it nerfed when a newer idea (decade ago?) isn't implemented isn't nerfed. It's just not implemented.

Moving on. There was a change in direction from the right edge single finger scroll to a two finger scroll.

I'm not privy to why this change but I do use a lot of PC.

Here, the laptop I'm on uses the two finger scroll method. Works fine.

Post was last edited on August 6, 2017 9:33 PM PDT

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Two finger is a poor substitute for chiral scrolling
Aug 6, 2017 9:19PM PDT

Ok, it's not nerfed functionality, its reduced functionality or not implemented functionality, or even discontinued functionality. Moving on.

Two finger scrolling works fine for you but I'm guessing you never used one finger scrolling with chiral scrolling enabled. Every person I ever showed chiral scrolling to was amazed so I think a large percentage of people didn't even know it existed. Which is crazy because it made the touchpad function on par with a mouse with a scrollwheel for browsing webpages and navigating documents.

To put things in perspective, if you are viewing a long web page or document, at my preferred touchpad sensitivity and resolution, a full two finger vertical sweep of the entire touchpad scrolls down half of a page. So scrolling through a 40 page .pdf would take 80 movements, kind of like when grandma and grandpa had their mouse sensitivity turned way down and had do the "mouse jerk" to move the cursor across the desktop.

Inversely, one finger chiral scrolling lets you quickly navigate down through infinite pages by moving your finger in a clockwise circle the size of a pea, and back up again by simply reversing directions.

So to reiterate my questions from my initial post, which seems to have been unclear:

Is chiral scrolling not available in Win10?
If not, why would they "not-implement" it? I am fascinated by why these decisions get made and I cannot think of a reason.

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I thought it was up to the driver.
Aug 6, 2017 9:37PM PDT
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PS. Sorry if that was too short.
Aug 6, 2017 10:16PM PDT

I've been around since before the PC and change is a constant. I'm not able to find if your make, model has a driver that does this but since it seems to work on my old Dell (will test again tomorrow) I thought over the years and things change. That's all I can do for now.

I worry that we won't find a fix today (as I looked around my 2016 W10 Asus and came up short.