ForceEdge: Controlling Autoscroll on Both Desktop and Mobile Computers Using the Force

Operating systems support autoscroll to allow users to scroll a view while in dragging mode: the user moves the pointer near the window's edge to trigger an "automatic" scrolling whose rate is typically proportional to the distance between the pointer and the window's edge. This approach suffers from several problems, especially when the window is maximized, resulting in a very limited space around it. Another problem is that for some operations, such as object drag-and-drop, the source and destination might be located in different windows, making it complicated for the computer to understand user's intention. In this paper, we present ForceEdge, a novel autoscroll technique relying on touch surfaces with force-sensing capabilities to alleviate the problems related to autoscroll. We report on the results of three controlled experiments showing that it improves over macOS and iOS systems baselines for top-to-bottom select and move tasks.

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