Touchpad improvements for EZBOOK 3 PRO

Touchpad improvements for EZBOOK 3 PRO

TechTablets Forums Jumper Discussion EZBook series Touchpad improvements for EZBOOK 3 PRO

Viewing 15 posts - 91 through 105 (of 114 total)
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  • #145737
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    Chupa, the touchpad scroll issue it is a well known issue in Windows that exists since the advent of touchpads. And was the reason I switched from Windows to Macbook years ago. They simply emulate cursor click to scroll, as does the mousewheel. With “precision touchpads” Microsoft tried to fix that, but it still lacks in the details.  Most programs just do not support it. Regarding Chrome, the scrolling has gotten huge improvements recently, see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/8793q5/precision_touchpad_support_on_latest_chrome_canary/

    Scrolling now in Chrome works pixel smooth if you scroll slow, but gets jittery if you scroll faster. It jumps multiple pixels but also isn’t completely in sync, but more stop and go like. It works a tad better in Edge Browser. Theres some slight lag from swipe to resulting scrolling, also speed is not exactly concordant.

    Probably you only realize that if you’re coming from Tablets/Chromebook/MacBook. For me it is one of the most important feature as I am used to read while scrolling.

    The scrolling is performance related, as the load ramps high. When fast scrolling on techtablets.com, for example, I get 90% load in Chrome (stable), 99% in Chrome Canary (a tad bit smoother), 70% in Opera (less smooth) and 70% in Microsoft Edge (smoothest) on the Ezbook 3 pro.

    Since I could tame all the background load, the scrolling now is fine and usable (decided to go with Canary), even with its exhaustive CPU utilization.

    Every program seems to have its own scrolling implementation. Other Windows programs are far worse, they either can’t do pixel smooth scrolling, react sluggish or feel like walking over quicksand. It works nicely now in the newer Windows interface, Microsoft store, or settings, for example. But that’s it so far. Even the Windows standard programs like Device Manager, File Explorer , etc. don’t get the scrolling right. And common apps like Facebook, WhatsApp pretend to do smooth scrolling, but react extremely sluggish by modern standards.

    #145779
    Chupa
    Participant
    • Posts: 882

    hmmmmmm
    why would you need pixel exact scrolling?
    when I scroll I often use the cursor keys and the scroll around one text line
    sometimes I use the 2 finger scrolling on the pad or the piggy up and piggy down 😉 keys to move a whole page
    I tried the smooth scrolling option in Opera or Vivaldi ? what does it by the pixel but went back to the line scrolling.

    That what always fascinated me, people do the same thing but totally different.

    happy scrolling

    Need Help?
    1981 soldered my first Sinclair computer 1K, tapedeck * 1984 build and sold IBM clones 8Mhz, 512K, 20MB HDD * 2018 messing with ultrabooks

    #145794
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    I think generally eyes can track content better when scrolling is smooth. This makes reading web pages, etc. much more convenient and efficient.

    Here you can find some more technical background: https://pavelfatin.com/scrolling-with-pleasure/

    #145795
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    Regarding Canary, it covers the taskbar trigger area when maximized. So autohiding the taskbar doesn’t work since you cannot unhide it. That bug rules out Canary, unfortunately. I gave Edge Browser another try but that does sporadically reload tabs, which is totally no go (it is not only slow but you might loose all text in textboxes etc). So back to Chrome (stable). But the jittery scrolling is annoying.

    #145796
    Chupa
    Participant
    • Posts: 882

    enabled smooth scrolling in firefox  cpu load goes from 16 to 35-49%

    some browsers prevent the auto hide tb to show up sometimes (version depending)
    just a tip on the win key solves that problem

    did you do this?

    Enable Windows Smooth Scroll for All Programs

    Need Help?
    1981 soldered my first Sinclair computer 1K, tapedeck * 1984 build and sold IBM clones 8Mhz, 512K, 20MB HDD * 2018 messing with ultrabooks

    #145805
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    did you do this?

    Enable Windows Smooth Scroll for All Programs

    That’s only mouse scrolling, i.e., different interface. The mouse interface is line based while the touchpad interface is pixel based for scrolling. That is why the touch scrolling is much better than mouse scrolling.

    #145809
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    smooth scrolling in firefox

    For the mouse interface? I think that will conflict with the touchpad interface and might result in “double smoothing” when using the touchpad.

    #145813
    Chupa
    Participant
    • Posts: 882

    did you try it?
    if you look through old posts this was often the solution for precision and normal pads, you will also find some interesting registry settings

    Need Help?
    1981 soldered my first Sinclair computer 1K, tapedeck * 1984 build and sold IBM clones 8Mhz, 512K, 20MB HDD * 2018 messing with ultrabooks

    #145835
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    did you try it? if you look through old posts this was often the solution for precision and normal pads, you will also find some interesting registry settings

    Yes. Tried it. Has zero effect for the precision touchpad. That is also mentioned by Microsoft here: “The Vertical Scrolling Speed setting in the classic Control Panel will not impact the PTP two-finger scrolling.
    People reporting that it helped obviously don’t have a precision touchpad but one that is controlled by the mouse interface.

    I also tried smooth scrolling flag in chrome. It also has no smoothing effect on touchpad scrolling. But only on mouse/cursor key scrolling.  I am not quite sure on the performance though, as the smooth scrolling switched on seems to slow down the touchpad scrolling slightly. But hard to compare without exact measurements.

    #145836
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    As the CPU load spikes even at the simplest touchpad usage I suspect that maybe the drivers are not correct. Touchpad driver says “Microsoft, 2006”, see screenshot. And installing Synaptics drivers only led to a conflict of “Synaptics SMBus Driver” (error code 12) which seems to conflict with Intel I2C driver already installed.

    Could anybody with precision touchpad report back if that makes any sense? And does just moving the mouse cursor over empty webpage space produces over 20% CPU load (task manager google chrome process)? Moving the cursor over empty desktop produces approx 12% CPU load.

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    #145979
    Chupa
    Participant
    • Posts: 882

    peter, try some drivers here from the driver dump (downloads next to forums) maybe you get lucky there

    Need Help?
    1981 soldered my first Sinclair computer 1K, tapedeck * 1984 build and sold IBM clones 8Mhz, 512K, 20MB HDD * 2018 messing with ultrabooks

    #146403
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    I downloaded folder “EZbook 3 Pro v4 drivers doubledriver dump.rar” but couln’d find any touchpad driver in there (see attached pic.

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    #146405
    Chupa
    Participant
    • Posts: 882

    Peter, can you upload a youtube clip so I can get an Idea how exactly your problem looks like?
    maybe the is a different solution

    Need Help?
    1981 soldered my first Sinclair computer 1K, tapedeck * 1984 build and sold IBM clones 8Mhz, 512K, 20MB HDD * 2018 messing with ultrabooks

    #146411
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    My Ezbook is running just fine, very responsive and also scrolling is fine. So you cannot see any problem in a video. Only thing is that high CPU load that the touchpad is producing. Ok, I’ll  try to catch that in a video.  I don’t know weather that is just normal or not.

     

    #147100
    Chupa
    Participant
    • Posts: 882

    i don’t know either, haven’t seen your video yet

    Need Help?
    1981 soldered my first Sinclair computer 1K, tapedeck * 1984 build and sold IBM clones 8Mhz, 512K, 20MB HDD * 2018 messing with ultrabooks

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