Most Windows Phone users are familiar with the fact that the “tap and hold” gesture is akin to the right mouse click in desktop versions of Windows, often resulting in a pop-up menu of commands related to the selected object. This gesture is used throughout Windows Phone, including, oddly enough, on the virtual, software-based keyboard.
For example, many instances of the virtual keyboard include a handy .com key so that you can quickly fill-in a URL or email address. But what if you want .org or another domain extension? Just tap and hold on the .com to find out: A pop-up list of extensions appears, allowing you to quickly pick the one you need.
And that’s not the only key that works like this. You can also tap and hold on the following keys:
Shift. Utilize Caps Lock mode.
Period (.). A pop-up menu appears with the choices /, :, “, &, +, ., and -.
Dollar sign ($). A pop-up menu appears with the choices for other currency types.
Percent (%). A pop-up menu appears with an alternate percent format.
Left parenthesis (“(“). A pop-up menu appears with the choices <, {, [, and (.
Right parenthesis (")"). A pop-up menu appears with the choices >, }, ], and ).
And so on. Many of the special characters, in particular, have tap and hold options.
Thanks to Brad Bamford for the tip!
Excellent tip. Love finding the little things that enhance the WP7 experience. Thanks!
wow nice tip. I’ve been getting tired of having to pull up the symbols to get to some of these and this feature is going to save me a lot of time.
Nice!
The ones you mentioned may be true for the emulator, but you forgot a few (or had them wrong), the dot reveals punctuation and dash “- ! : ? .” (without the quotes), exclamation mark reveals the inverted exclamation mark, percent reveals promilles, question mark reveals the inverted question mark, quote reveals other kinds of quotation, single quote reveals grave accents, the equals sign reveals the unequal sign, plus reveals plus/minus, dash/minus reveals other spacing characters, the vertical line character reveals a split vertical line, the caret reveals root, the greater/smaller characters reveal each equals or greater/smaller characters, the zero reveals the degree sign, the three reveals three quarters and cubic (to the power of three), the two reveals two thirds and square (to the power of two), and the one reveals one half, one third and one quarter.
Thanks… I used the emulator for screenshot purposes, of course. The main point being here that you can tap and hold on certain keys on the keyboard.
A couple more keyboard tricks (unrelated to tapping and holding though):
Another (faster) way to activate Caps Lock is to just double tap it. Also double tapping the space bar adds a period to the end of the sentence and adds a space. Alternatively, you can tap the space bar with both thumbs simulatenously for the same effect. A faster way to add a symbol is to tap and hold the “&123″ button, slide your finger to the desired symbol/number, and let go ontop of it. This only requires one tap rather than three.
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