The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touchpads and touch-screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interfaces on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include adjusting the position and/or size of one or more user interface objects or activating buttons or opening files/applications represented by user interface objects, as well as associating metadata with one or more user interface objects or otherwise manipulating user interfaces. Exemplary user interface objects include digital images, video, text, icons, and control elements such as buttons and other graphics.
A user will, in some circumstances, need to perform such manipulations on user interface objects in a file management program (e.g., Finder from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a messaging application (e.g., Messages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), an image management application (e.g., Photos from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a camera application (e.g., Camera from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a map application (e.g., Maps from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a note taking application (e.g., Notes from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), digital content (e.g., videos and music) management applications (e.g., Music and iTunes from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a news application (e.g., News from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a phone application (e.g., Phone from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), an email application (e.g., Mail from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a browser application (e.g., Safari from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a drawing application, a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a reader application (e.g., iBooks from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a video making application (e.g., iMovie from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), and/or geo location applications (e.g., Find Friends and Find iPhone from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.).
But existing methods for performing these manipulations are cumbersome and inefficient. In addition, existing methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.