E14 : Trackpad Discussion Only

So I have the same problem. Every time my computer starts, it asks me to to click "run" for the two finger scroll. I have it checked to always start on windows, but it still asks me to click run. Any idea?

 

OMG. Few things that would make this a killer

1. Inertial scrolling. iPad and smartphonelike flick scrolling.

2. Possibility of allowing tap to click and three finger tap for middle button to work.

 

*shrugs* you can get three finger tap to do things if you want with that twofingertouch application

 

The problem with 3-finger middle button is it also activates left-click.

 

that's a human problem not the program's fault.

you aren't supposed to tap three all at once.


it's taptaptap really quick with your three fingers.


edit: ok yeah. it really is the program's fault but..eh.

 

It's a similar obstacle Macbooks face when the user has tap-to-click enabled and tries to execute a two-finger tap to right-click. It often fails and/or just executes left-click. In my one month of usage, I could only get it to work at a 3/5 success rate. I don't blame the maker of TwoFingerScroll for not being able to get past this. In fact, if he can further tweak and refine this software and introduce more gestures like inertial scrolling, I'd be willing to pay good money. He should introduce a free version (what we have now) and a paid version (more refinements, more gestures, etc).


As long as he isn't ripping off of any Apple patents, I'm sure he'll be fine. But if he wakes up one morning to find a team of lawyers at his door, we can worry about the consequences then.

 

I just installed your program. When I put my thumb on the left mouse button, when I move my index finger, the cursor does not move. Instead, it scrolls the page. Basically, if I have two fingers anywhere on the touchpad, it switches to scroll mode. help?

 

ok i just recived my envy... WOW this thing is beautiful, but about the tackpad. mines is a little raised. around the entire pad its a bit raised. is that normal? like when people say there pads are flush can you go from one side of the palm rest to the other with out never knowing that youve gone onto the touchpad?

 

Flush means everything is level with each other. This means if I were to run my finger along the touchpad and palm rest, I shouldn't notice any elevation or depression. The only sign of separation should be a teeny tiny seam in between the touchpad and the palmrest.


If you're still not clear, take a photo and show us.

 

I think all the trackpads are raised a little bit in the rear and on the sides since it's a button (it gets mostly flush if you push it down. sinks a bit too much on the button sides)

 

it definitely isnt completely flush but does become flush when i push down the slightest bit

 

Weird. My touchpad's flush. When I get around to it, I'll post a pic here.

 

Has anyone found anyway to use the trackpad using finger + thumb? So far no matter what i try the touchpad is absolutely useless.

 

my touchpad is working perfectly....not sure what you mean by finger thumb.

do you mean the zoom in/out function? because that works on mine.

 

he might mean resting a finger on the buttons.


'cause that deadzone is really iffy and uh...half/less than half of the button.

 

yes I mean using resting my thumb on the buttons to click while using my index finger to move the cursor. I really dont feel like completely changing the way i use touchpads. The twofingerscroll software doesnt even seem to work at all with the index finger + thumb method since whenever there are two fingers on the touchpad its locked into scroll mode.

 

I use a combo of synaptic scrybe and googles two finger scroll and followed JJbs touchpad tut.

So far.. If you can tweak it a little you'll get a very nice touchpad.

And yes I can rest my thumb on the right or left click and still navigate without problems (well tiny flickers here and there but much better than stock)

Jus my 2 cents

 

That's how it works currently (I hold my finger over the left mouse button but not on it). I'm still playing with the synaptics SDK to see if I can just make the whole bottom area a deadzone except for clicks ... right now I can detect just about everything (number of fingers, x/y coords, pressure, gestures) _except_ when there are two fingers on the trackpad I can only seem to retrieve the x/y coords of one of the fingers. If I can somehow work that out, then I should be able to easily fix this. Will play with it more when I get a chance.

 

Wait. You can specifically configure a deadzone size/shape aside from the ones Synaptics designed?

 

Well the synaptics SDK allows full access to the touchpad, so you can easily write code that says "if y less than value do not move mouse pointer". I actually tried this and it worked perfectly, however, as I mentioned, there doesn't seem to be a way to retrieve coordinates for each finger when more than one finger is on the trackpad (it just seems to give you the cooridnates for the one that is higher on the trackpad). If I can work out how to do this then it would be fairly trivial to create a permanent deadzone where the buttons are.

If someone with more knowledge than me wants to take a look at this, the SDK docs can be found here:
Synaptics

 

WOW. Dude this thing is just frikin' amazing. The scroll is so much more fluid and responsive. It's like what it should've been. Well done man. I encourage everyone to try this.

 

I know, right? Makes me wonder why a multimillion dollar company wasn't able to accomplish what one person was able to do free of charge.

 

This program definitely improves the fluidity of scrolling
I know I might be being a bit nitpicky about this, but is there a way to disable to taskbar icon when I leave this on? It would be nice to clean up some clutter in my taskbar

Also, I cannot get any of the tap options to work correctly. Each time I do one of those taps listed under the tap tab, it also left clicks.... anyone know if this is a software bug or am I doing something wrong?

 

Kamarge is a hero for volunteering his time and making our touchpads more usable than ever! Yay to him and boo to Synaptics!


I'll be following this thread for future updates.

 

.......nvm..............

 

This tool turns a somewhat annoying touchpad into an excellent one. It angers me that Synaptic chose to not go the extra mile themselves, but I am thankful for this tool. Kudos! This is software I would pay for (even if its functionality should have been included with the touchpad in the first place).

 

This tool sounds great, I'll definitely be trying it out when I get my Envy 14.

If it really is this amazing, can we get 2.0 to add it to the Owner's Lounge thread?

Honestly it would be great if the community could write up a guide to clean installing on the Envy 14 and getting things like the trackpad set up properly. I know myself and others are fully capable of doing it ourselves, but some aren't as tech savvy, and I bet they would really appreciate it. Plus it would just be a great compilation of information in general.

 

The issue with the google code is that if you ever rest your finger on the trackpad you will scroll. The synaptics allow for some tolerances which is also probably why it doesnt work as well.

if you can tap to click it may work well as using it to 2 finger scroll, 1 finger tap to left click, 2 to right click, 3 to middle click

 

Few things I would LOVE to see in an update to version 0.1:

1. Inertial scrolling
2. 3-finger swipes to go back/forward. Sorry, but the current Synaptics driver isn't working in this regard
3. 4-finger vertical swipes to activate aero peek or cancel it. An up-swipe while Aero Peek isn't activate would hide all Windows to the sides just like in Window
4. Improved pinch to zoom functionality. I've had to disable pinch to zoom as it interferes with two-finger scroll.

 

yes please

 

thats like macbook status. this laptop would be the best one out there if it could do what apple trackpads can..

 

another thing i dont understand is that physical clicking does not do anything unless your finger is actually on the "buttons" on the bottom. So if your finger is in the middle of the touchpad, you have to lift it and click the bottom part for the click to actually register. This means that using the physical click is very cumbersome unless you rest your thumb on the bottom to click. But of course, this method fails miserably. So currently the clicking functionality is kind of useless...

 

Hey Adam. . .thanks for posting this for all of us to enjoy. I use my laptop several hours per day on a long 3 hour daily commute (on the train) and with limited space use the trackpad religiously. So it's great to have the trackpad working smoothly thanks to your tweak and I've set the two finger to "right click" as the trackpad can be a bit hard to actually press the buttons so I just use the soft tap to left and right click now and it's amazing.

Kudos brother!

Sean

 

Thank you!!!! Disabling the synaptic 2 finger scroll settings made a world of difference. Officially best PC trackpad. Not too far a step back from the MacBooks I'm used too.

 

What do you do about the clicking? Or do you just use tapping for everything?

 

I use tapping for everything except for right clicking. I tried using the 2 finger tap for right click from the Google app, but it was quite finicky.

 

Glad some people are finding the updated TwoFingerScroll useful. Just to be clear, full credit should go toward the original author of the app, I really just made some (very) minor modifications to better support the envy 14

As for future plans, when I get a chance I'm going to see if I can get things working even better and hopefully even add some features not present in the standard driver.

Some things that should be possible using the synaptics sdk:
-configure tapping zones to trigger events (eg. top right corner = page up, bottom right = page down)
-horizontal two finger scrolling
-kinetic scrolling (flinging a scroll and let it keep moving)
-3 finger gestures (swipe left/right or up/down)

Some things that don't seem to be possible:
-the trackpad does not seem to support 4 finger gestures (at least the sdk does not report more than 3 fingers)
-creating a permanent dead zone where the buttons are at the bottom. unfortunately it doesn't look like there is a way to detect the coordinates of each finger on the trackpad, i think this is a core reason the trackpad has some issues for those of us that like to keep a finger on the mouse buttons. using the sdk, the x/y coords returned always seem to be for whichever finger is higher on the trackpad. for those that want to keep a finger resting on the button and still use your main finger to move the cursor, i can enable this in the app if i disable two-finger-scroll (an alternative might be to use three-finger-scroll which i haven't yet tried but i think should work).

Unfortunately I'm a little short on time right now, but when I get a sec I'll play with the sdk a bit more to see what other modifications can be made.

Adam

 

Anyone know how to get 3 finger flick working? Anyone think the trackpad doesnt support 3 fingers very well at all because even the google code program doesnt let 3 fingers register very easily.

 

you gotta do it not how you expect.

it's tap tap (two fingers really quick not at the same time) otherwise left click registers.

 

The Envy 14 has the worst trackpad I've ever used, rma mine today. gonna buy another Sony Z.

 

just downloaded the app and it works wonders! thanks

any way how to make the deadzone work u guys?

 

Well after playing with the trackpad and changing different things, it works really well minus some odd quirks. Which makes me wonder, why can't Synapetic be as good as two finger scroll?

Such a large company can't even compete with a free project. Disgraceful

 

well to make synaptics two finger scroll look smooth you have to set the mouse wheel skip to 1 line at a time not 3.


..but then well if you use a mouse it's gonna be slow scrollin with the wheel so screw that

 

I changed it to 1 for 2 finger scroll anyways. Its smooth and fast enough for me. The 2 finger scroll on synaptics is very picky especially on the distance the 2 fingers are apart. That is the main very annoying thing.

 

I did the same thing. 15% BCB on tigerdirect. I've been spoiled by my 5 year old Macbook trackpad.

 

You nailed it - the distance between the fingers is key. I got used to it now but in the beginning it was annoying.

 

I dunno. I'm unlike everyone else here. I scroll down with my middle finger and ring-finger as my index finger always feels unnaturally strained when it's doing some of the scrolling. The one benefit of this approach is my scrolling fingers are never too close to each other.

 

I'm doing the two-finger-scrolling exactly like you - likewise on the Macbook and the Envy 14

 

I guess I'm unlike everyone else too since I do that too; didn't realize that.

 

A version of your app that disables two finger scrolling but creates a dead zone for people who rest their finger on the button would be amazing. Stupendous. I bought this laptop for my fiance and its amazing... except for this. I don't need two finger scrolling; I can't use it without the stupid cursor flying all over the place.