Hey, everyone.
I'm Sharon Vaknin for CNET.com and today I'm showing off 4 useful iPad features that came along with the release of iOS 5. Feel free to follow along as I guide you through them.
Let's start with one of my favorites, gestures.
It'll let you navigate through your iPad using your fingertips and pretty much make the Home button obsolete.
Check it out.
Go to Settings,
General and turn on Multitasking Gestures.
Now you can gesture in 3 ways.
To show the multitasking bar, swipe up with 4 fingers at any time to manage or open apps.
Or claw right or left with 4 fingers to navigate open apps instead.
When you're done, pinch with 4 or 5 fingers to get back to the home screen.
Now here's a very convenient feature and one that might make you a little smarter too.
If you ever come across a word you don't understand in an e-mail or Safari,
tap and hold to highlight it and select Define to get a complete definition of that word.
Another trick that will help you work faster is text shortcuts.
You can set up shortcuts that allow you to enter frequently used words or phrases by typing only a few letters.
Go to Settings, Keyboard and check out Shortcuts at the bottom.
You'll see that "on my way" has already been created for you but tap Add New Shortcut to create your own.
For instance, I'll create one for "be right there" and use the shortcut "BRT."
So if I'm in a rush and someone's wondering where I am, I can just type "BRT" and they'll get this answer.
And finally, anyone who does a lot of typing on their iPad will love this feature that arrived in iOS 5, a split keyboard.
Whenever the keyboard is prompted, literally split it in 2 with your thumbs and the keyboard will come apart.
Or, long press this button and select Split.
You also have the new option to undock the keyboard if it's ever in the way of something on the page.
First, undock it by long pressing here
and then split it with your thumbs.
The split keyboard takes some getting used to but you'll type much faster when you have to hold your iPad with 2 hands.
Now, put these 4 tricks to use and start navigating faster on your iPad.
For more tips, visit howto.cnet.com and feel free to send me any questions on Twitter or my Facebook page.
For CNET, I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs.
