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Finger Touch and Stylus Pen Respond Differently

dEaF TO LiGhT

New Member
This is a weird question, and maybe people who are experts with the Surface at this point can help. I just got a Surface Pro 4 yesterday. On the Facebook app, I tried to touch a photo so I could get the Like, Tag, and Options buttons because I wanted to download the photo. No matter how many times I touched it, the buttons wouldn't show up. As soon as I used the pen to touch the photo, the buttons showed up. My fingers seem to work fine in most other situations. Is this a behavior that everyone else experiences and I just have to deal with? Or is something not working right?

Like I said, my fingers can perform most things the pen can... Like in the drag to clip option in Edge, the stylus can drag a square, but my finger rarely can. My finger usually just does nothing. I can see my finger tracing the screen, but the square doesn't appear. I may have noticed that closing a tab in the Edge browser with my finger was a little harder than closing the app itself, but perhaps that's to stop you from accidentally closing a tab.
 
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hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
I can't comment regarding Facebook, but the finger and pen do indeed get treated as different forms of input (e.g finger brings up on-screen keyboard, pen brings up handwriting panel)
 
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dEaF TO LiGhT

New Member
I can't comment regarding Facebook, but the finger and pen do indeed get treated as different forms of input (e.g finger brings up on-screen keyboard, pen brings up handwriting panel)
That's an option that can be changed in settings though (I set it to always bring up the keyboard).

What I'm seeing is that if I'm not using the stylus, I can't do certain things, and need to pull out the stylus just to perform a particular action that could be achieved with your finger on any other mobile device.
 

hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Just tried the drag to clip thing in edge, it works absolutely fine. I also tried facebook with edge, and again, no problem using my finger to bring up the option things at the bottom of the photo.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
It is because many sites still use "mouse" events and "touch" events - if you are rendering a desktop view of that site you will always get "mouse" events and since the browser recognizes the pen as a mouse device you can get to those control where you touch is hit or miss...
 
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dEaF TO LiGhT

New Member
Just tried the drag to clip thing in edge, it works absolutely fine. I also tried facebook with edge, and again, no problem using my finger to bring up the option things at the bottom of the photo.

That's strange. So maybe my finger is too big?
 
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