No, it just highlights the one word you double-click on, and provides no handles to drag.
double tap and drag
Ok, just tried that on this post. It did work, on the 5th try.
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Another vote for physical buttons. I really need them on linux. I don’t want to waste an USB port on a trackball…
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I like physical buttons as well, recently got out my old Acer Aspire ONE Netbook. It has a tiny touch pad, and left / right buttons.
Without measuring, the touch pad is about 2 in square, still useful, though.
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I created an account just to participate in this discussion. No touchpad buttons is a deal breaker. I can’t imagine myself buying a computer without touchpad buttons and I can’t imagine myself not buying a framework with touchpad buttons.
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Buttons aren’t a must in my opinion, as long as the actual touchpad is good.
Apples touchpads for example are great and clickable across the entire surface. As a result they don’t need buttons at all.
Thinkpad touchpads on the other hand are only clickable from halfway down and as a result definitively require buttons to be usable.
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There is more to a touchpad than just clickable areas, false positives, strain on wrist, responsiveness and etc. Being “able to use one” and it being a “good touchpad” are 2 different things. There is also more than just left click but right click too
Apple’s touchpads need buttons too, they just don’t have them because to them looks of a touchpad is more important than it being actually functional. Thus they sacrifice productivity for looks
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I agree with you on the first part, I definitively oversimplified things in my post and you are correct, all those things are very important as well. Especially responsiveness and accuracy in my opinion.
On the second part however I have to disagree. I’ve used a ThinkPad for the most time of my life and got used to the buttons at the top pretty quickly, because they are so good in productivity workflows and allow me to navigate and click with much greater speed and efficiency than a comparable touchpad without the buttons.
That being said, the apple touchpad that I came to use for only roughly a month is simply so good in every other regard that it blows every trackpad with buttons out of the water in my opinion. Because of the large area and the light force required to click it and the evenness in response across the touchpad, all thinkable klick and drag combinations became so easy, that I never once missed the physical buttons on that touchpad. I’ll go as far as saying that even the right-click area at the bottom right that is usually there is not required if everything is implemented correctly, because clicking/ tapping with two fingers simultaneously is way more intuitive and can be done across the whole surface of the touchpad.
I for my part came to realize that I only relied on the buttons on my ThinkPad so much, because the rest of the touchpad was extremely lacking, but of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But just out of interest, those of you that say they definitely need buttons, have you ever used the Macbook touchpad for a longer period? Because most people I talked to about this agreed after they tried the Macbook touchpad.
I really hope they provide different touchpads as an option (Sensel touchpad pls), because clearly there is also a lot of personal preference at play here.
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Well buttons on top works only if you have a trackpoint, otherwise buttons are better on the bottom since someone has to actually make a keyboard with said trackpoint. But maybe a flippable touchpad would be great so in the future if a keyboard with a trackpoint is made on can just flip it
As for the Macbook touchpads, I’ve been using them for years since I need MacOs for some stuff at work. And unfortunately my experience was that they were much worse than any button touchpads I used. 2 finger click for right click sounds great, but it fails too much which ends up in left click(it also puts strain on your hand when used too much), I pretty much gave up on it and use ctrl+click cause that causes a lot of problems when I end up clicking things I shouldn’t. Dragging is a pain, and even the single tap is often gets false positives and move clicking fails at accuracy. It is outright frustrating to use
Maybe my issue is at the speed I use the touchpad is faster than most people or simply I use the computer longer than most people, but it simply doesn’t work for me no matter how much I try. And it gets annoying that options for buttons just keep disappearing off the market
But I do agree that we need options for touchpads, not saying there should be a button one only. Just saying that a touchpad like a macbook isn’t good enough for everyone and a lot of people still prefer buttons
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I CAD and sometimes even game on the touchpad of my current laptop, which has 3 big, nice feeling physical buttons. The reasonable size of the touchpad allows me to enable pressing keys on the keyboard while simultaneously moving the mouse, as I don’t accidentally rest my palms on it, allowing all the complex actions needed.
I can do anything on the laptop anywhere, efficiently, without any extra devices or any extra desk space, or a desk at all - it is very liberating.
This is essential to me, and I’m waiting for someone to do a touchpad module with buttons before ordering the Framework Laptop 16, which otherwise could replace my current 17.3" workstation laptop.
(I tried to find a good place to post this - I hope this is good enough)
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The trackpad on the FWL16 is visually identical to the one on the FWL13, so I expect it to feel similar.
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(I really dislike the trackpoint. I find that if I have buttons on the top I generally use the touchpad with the top buttons, mostly left handed, even with “right hand” button configuration.)
Even with mac-style touchpad experience, which I can appreciate for the people who like that, I still prefer to have 3 distinct buttons with a smaller touchpad than have to perform finger gestures on a large pad. If serious mouse work is to be done, I’d rather plug in an actual mouse.
Corsair just bought Drop. Seems like there’s some useful expertise there.
The input system seems pretty sophisticated in terms of hardware, connectors, and firmware/software capabilities.
Full RGB keyboard with trackpoint, above a nice wide Sensel touchpad with buttons at the bottom and top, anyone? Might cost as much as the laptop itself, but I bet it could be done.
I feel a little like a hot-rodder from the 1950s…
A sensel or similar trackpad that has a haptic feedback would be ideal for my use case. It would be interesting to see someone implement a mouse nub on the lenovo laptops as an input module for the side panels beside the keyboard
Can confirm, the touchpad is bad. It was fine the first two weeks and then it started acting twitchy / draggy. I read some users saying that “only a Macbook touchpad is that good” and that “all laptop touchpads are poor” but that’s not true at all. All the computers I’ve used over the years had decent touchpads and they weren’t expensive at all. Pick up any HP or Thinkpad laptop, they all work perfectly fine. Framework needs to develop a better touchpad
@fundingmissions - if it went from fine to twitchy/draggy then presumably something changed, either with the hardware or with the software. Have you tried re-seating the connectors as well as booting from a live USB to see if either of those makes a difference? If you are still having issues after that I would reach out to Support. No, the trackpad isn’t a haptic Apple trackpad, but in my opinion it is not terrible, either.
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@lbkNhubert If you want to know my opinion, I think that the surface holds onto the oils in your skin. I wash my hands regularly and don’t have any skin issues, but over time the surface gets cloudy and you can see the oils in the reflection. Coincidentally this is when the issues started. It seems that the oils build up and then start to mess with the sensitivity.
I’m not an engineer though, just what I’ve noticed.
one important point about touch pad , there should be lock key to disable touch pad and system should even remember it. because its very annoying when touch pad is on and u type on system keyboard as u accidently touch the touch pad during type and it mess up things. so touch pad lock short cut key is much needed
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@fundingmissions - interesting. On my primary machine I have a dbrand skin on the touchpad, not sure if it makes any difference. On one of my older (non-framework) laptops the touchpad was getting smooth and my finger was sticking, so I put a layer of painter’s masking tape (the blue stuff, seemingly less sticky) on it and the bumpiness of the tape has helped. The responsiveness of the touchpad didn’t seem to suffer. It’s hacky, but it worked for me on that machine. I’m not suggesting that you need to take such steps, but if you are feeling adventurous, you might try it out to see if it helps.
Best of luck, and have a great day.
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