Chapter 5. Using and Customizing the Virtual Keyboard
One of the most unique features of the iPad is its virtual keyboard, which displays a keyboard on the screen and lets you type directly on the surface of the iPad. While typing on a flat piece of glass might initially feel odd, you’ll soon find that you’ll adjust and be able to use the virtual keyboard nearly as well (or perhaps even better) than using a physical keyboard that can get clogged with crumbs, dust, and spilled liquids.
To make the virtual keyboard easier to use, you can customize its behavior. After a little practice, you’ll soon find yourself capable of typing happily away on the iPad whether you need to type a note to yourself, an email message, or a website address.
In this chapter you’ll learn how to customize and use the virtual keyboard on your iPad.
Displaying Different Virtual Keyboards
Because of the limited screen size available on the iPad, the virtual keyboard behaves differently than a physical keyboard. A physical keyboard displays every key, including letter and number keys in addition to cursor movement keys and function keys. Although this makes all the keys available, it also tends to clutter the keyboard with groups of keys you might rarely use, such as the function keys or the numeric keys.
The iPad’s virtual keyboard works differently by displaying only the groups of keys you’re most likely to use. The three main types of virtual keyboards display letters, numbers, and symbols.
To see what these three virtual keyboards look like, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Tap anywhere on the right side of the screen that looks like a yellow notepad. The virtual keyboard displaying letters appears, as shown in Figure 5-1.
Tap either of the .?123 keys. The virtual keyboard changes to display numbers and additional symbols, as shown in Figure 5-2.
Tap either of the #+= keys. The virtual keyboard changes to display symbols, as shown in Figure 5-3.
Tap either of the 123 keys. The numeric virtual keyboard reappears (shown earlier in Figure 5-2).
Tap either of the ABC keys. The main virtual keyboard with letters reappears (shown earlier in Figure 5-1).
Tap the Hide Keyboard key in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The virtual keyboard disappears completely.
Tap anywhere on the right side of the screen on the yellow notepad image. The virtual keyboard appears.
Typing on a Virtual Keyboard
Typing on the virtual keyboard is nearly identical to typing on a physical keyboard. The main difference is that the virtual keyboard does not offer any arrow keys. (You have to touch the screen to move the cursor.) In addition, if you type part of a word, the virtual keyboard may display the correct and complete spelling of that word, which you can choose by pressing the spacebar.
Typing Text
To create text, you can type it yourself or let the virtual keyboard suggest and automatically type any words that you’ve partially typed. To see how typing on the virtual keyboard works, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Tap anywhere on the right side of the screen that looks like a yellow notepad. The virtual keyboard displaying letters appears (shown earlier in Figure 5-1).
Start typing Everyo. Notice that when the virtual keyboard thinks it recognizes what you’re typing, it displays a suggested word, in this case Everyone, as shown in Figure 5-4.
Tap the spacebar to let the virtual keyboard finish typing the suggested word automatically. (If you don’t want to choose the suggested word, keep typing or tap the X in a circle that appears to the right of the suggested word.)
Type more text. Try misspelling a word by typing Testung—the iPad will automatically correct your spelling to Testing. To make your new text appear on another line, tap the Return key.
Tap the Shift key, then try pressing a letter. Notice it’s now uppercase. Tap the Shift key again, and press the button labeled !/,—you have inserted the ! character.
Note
If you’re a touch typist, make sure you do not rest your fingertips on the home row of keys, or else your iPad will think you’re trying to type something.
Moving the Cursor
With a physical keyboard, you can move the cursor by pressing the arrow keys or by pressing any of the other cursor movement keys such as Home or End. With the virtual keyboard, there are no cursor movement keys since you must directly place and move the cursor by touching the iPad’s screen.
You can move the cursor in two ways: tapping your fingertip within text or touching and holding your fingertip within text. A quick tap moves the cursor quickly, but not always accurately. Holding your finger on the screen displays a magnifying class that lets you see the exact position of the cursor so you can slide your finger to move the cursor where you want it to appear.
To see how to move the cursor, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Type a few sentences of text.
Tap anywhere in your text. Notice that the cursor appears wherever you tap. (However, the cursor will not appear in blank areas where there is no text.)
Hold your finger on any part of the text that you’ve typed. A magnifying glass appears, letting you see the current position of the cursor, as shown in Figure 5-5.
Note
If you’re having trouble getting the magnifying glass to appear, make sure you do not slide your finger up or down.
Slide your finger to move the cursor. Notice how this method lets you move the cursor accurately.
Lift your finger when you’re happy with the current location of the cursor. A Select, Select All, Paste menu appears, as shown in Figure 5-6.
Press the Home button.
Selecting, Copying, and Cutting Text
Just like with a regular computer, you can select text to copy, cut, and paste it in another location. When selecting text, you have three choices: select a single word, select all of your text, or just select part of your text.
After you select text, you can delete it by tapping the Backspace key, or you can cut or copy the selected text to paste it somewhere else.
Selecting a Single Word
You can select a single word in two ways. First, you can tap a word twice to select it. Second, you can hold your finger on a word for a moment and then release. When a menu appears, tap Select. To try selecting a single word, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Type a sentence of text.
Tap a word twice. Your chosen word appears highlighted, as shown in Figure 5-7, along with a Cut, Copy, Paste, Replace menu. At this point, you can tap Cut or Copy to cut or copy your selected text.
Press your fingertip over another word, and lift your finger off the screen. A Select, Select All, Paste menu appears.
Tap Select. (If you tap Select All, you’ll select all the text.) Your chosen word appears selected, and a Cut, Copy, Paste, Replace menu appears. At this point, you can tap Cut or Copy to cut or copy your selected text.
Selecting Part of Your Text
Normally the virtual keyboard only selects entire words. However, you may want to select just part of a word, which you can do by following these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Type a sentence of text.
Tap any word twice. Your chosen word appears highlighted along with beginning and ending markers; each marker appears as a vertical line with a circle on the top or bottom of the line.
Hold your finger on one of the vertical lines, and slide your finger to select more or less text, as shown in Figure 5-8.
Lift your finger when you’ve selected all the text you want. At this point you can tap Cut or Copy to cut or copy your selected text.
Pasting Text
After you have selected and cut or copied your selected text, you can paste it in a new location. To see how to cut, copy, and paste text, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Type a sentence of text.
Tap any word twice to select it and display the Cut, Copy, Paste, Replace menu.
Tap Cut or Copy. (If you tap Cut, your selected text disappears. If you tap Copy, your selected text remains.)
Hold your fingertip on a different part of your text to position the cursor. The magnifying glass appears to let you see where the cursor appears.
Lift your finger off the screen. A Select, Select All, Paste menu appears.
Tap Paste. Your previously cut or copied text appears at the cursor’s location. Note that you can even copy and paste to and from different applications. For example, you might copy the recipe from a web page in Safari into an email message to your aunt in Mail.
Note
You can shake your iPad to Undo a Cut, Paste, or even a bit of typing—just be careful not to drop it!
Spellchecking
The iPad’s virtual keyboard offers a limited form of spellchecking that flags possibly misspelled words with a red underline. You must first tap a possibly misspelled word, and then the virtual keyboard displays a list of possible correct spellings.
To see how to spellcheck text, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Type Helllo. (Make sure you deliberately misspell the word by typing three ls.) The misspelled word appears with a dotted line underneath to identify it as a possible misspelling, as shown in Figure 5-9.
Tap the word. A menu appears, listing possible correct spellings, as shown in Figure 5-10.
Tap the correct spelling, and your iPad replaces your word.
Customizing the Virtual Keyboard
To make the virtual keyboard easier to use, you may want to customize its behavior. Five features you can customize include auto-correction, auto-capitalization, spellchecking, caps lock, and a neat shortcut to insert periods (“.”) automatically.
Auto-correction means the virtual keyboard tries to guess which word you want to type after you’ve typed only part of that word—the iPad will also attempt to autocorrect misspellings as you type. Auto-capitalization means that the first letter of every sentence automatically gets capitalized. Spellchecking automatically highlights potentially misspelled words. Caps lock lets you tap the Shift key twice to turn on caps lock so you can type capital letters without tapping the Shift key each time. The shortcut for inserting a period automatically is to simply press the spacebar twice. All of these features are on by default—if you find them annoying, just turn them off.
To customize the virtual keyboard, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Settings. The Settings screen appears.
Tap General. The General settings screen appears.
Tap Keyboard. The Keyboard settings screen appears, as shown in Figure 5-11.
(Optional) Tap the Auto-Correction on/off switch.
(Optional) Tap the Auto-Capitalization on/off switch.
(Optional) Tap the Check Spelling on/off switch.
(Optional) Tap the Enable Caps Lock on/off switch.
(Optional) Tap the “.” Shortcut on/off switch.
Press the Home button.
Note
Additionally, your iPad can speak any corrections it makes to your typing aloud. You can enable this feature by tapping Settings, General, Accessibility, then tapping the Speak Auto-text on/off switch.
Adding Auditory Keyboard Clicks
Typing with the virtual keyboard doesn’t give you any physical feedback when you’ve pressed a key. To overcome this problem, you can turn auditory feedback on or off so your iPad makes a slight clicking sound to let you know when you’ve pressed a key. By default, this auditory clicking is turned on, but if it annoys you, you can turn it off.
To turn on (or turn off) these auditory keyboard clicks, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Settings. The Settings screen appears.
Tap General. The General settings screen appears.
Tap Sounds. The Sounds settings screen appears, as shown in Figure 5-12.
Press the Home button.
Typing Foreign Characters
If you regularly need to type characters in foreign languages that display accent characters above or below the letter, or type the symbol for euro dollars or yen instead of American dollars, the virtual keyboard offers a unique press-and-hold feature. Just press your finger over a key and hold it there. After a few seconds, a menu of different characters appears, allowing you to slide your finger over the character you want to type.
To see how to type foreign characters, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Tap on the Notes screen to make the virtual keyboard appear.
Press your finger over the E key and hold it until a menu of different characters appears.
Press and hold your finger over the A, I, O, U and C keys to see the character choices for those letters.
Tap the .?123 key to switch to the numeric keyboard.
Press and hold your finger over the $ and ? keys to see the choices for those characters.
Additional Ideas for Using the Virtual Keyboard
Getting familiar with the virtual keyboard may take time, especially if you’re used to using physical keyboards. If you’re a hunt-and-peck typist, you may find the iPad’s keyboard perfectly suited to your typing style.
The key to using the virtual keyboard is to practice in order to get over your initial unfamiliarity. To make typing more comfortable and natural, consider buying Apple’s iPad case, which props it up at an angle.
If you prefer a physical keyboard even after practicing with the virtual one, you can wirelessly connect any Bluetooth-enabled keyboard to your iPad. Or you can use Apple’s iPad Keyboard Dock. If you buy the optional camera connector kit, you can plug an adapter into your iPad that provides a USB port. Then you can plug an ordinary USB keyboard into this port and type on this keyboard.