[DSPKweb]

They could have just designed two gesture areas, one on the side and one on the bottom and tied them to the orientation of the tablet. Maybe there were complications and a fix will be there "in the coming months"

[sandmanfvr]

The engadget video, the guy said no gesture area.

This is the only thing I am not to happy about, but come on RIM stole the idea and thus HP went differently. Not going to kill the tablet and the Touchpad is my choice to buy now, gesture area or not.

[KallistiMan]

I dont remember them saying no gesture area,

In the engadget video the Palm-guy demoing the pad said "We did away with the gesture area on this one"

[KallistiMan]

I'm pretty glad that they removed the gesture area actually. As I said, it was made for one type of app on one type of form factor. Enyo and no gesture are could really be good for the ecosystem.

[sandmanfvr]

It was shock, but hell the button works. If gesture is want you want, go playbook. I love the Touchpad from the hands on and can't wait till more demo vids.

[ndz]

The off-screen gesture area is one of webOS's best features. It's a shame they pulled this from the tablet.

[vladi]

As you can see all apps are redesigned not to require any back gestures which is good. You have to use all screen estate.

My biggest gripe is that they didn't evolve gestures like swiping letter W on gesture area do get WiFi or M to get into Mail. That would be perfect stuff!

[emceesquared]

im not happy with this decision.... using a button to get to card view is lame and something i've NEVER done with my day one pre(-).

[JKK Photography#WP]

It would have to be on all sides of the bezel for it to be useful in all orientations, which would contribute to the bezel being larger, etc.

So, for now, I'm not upset. I wouldn't be surprised if we see it a little later on in version 2.0.

[sandmanfvr]

Well the first pre you could with the first button and I DID use the button more, so it was there now they just went old school pre and button only.

[japomani]

That is disappointing

[sandmanfvr]

Rennat, that is button. The webos/hp guy in the engadget video said NO gesture area, it is gone.

[Rennat]

Ya just watched it.....

[Superjudge]

I can confirm that it DOES have a gesture area!!!! The "button" that you are talking about is the front camera. Look at the picture here and you will see:
PS. Superjudge please can you update your first post so people don't get confused.

I'm going by what the rep said which was that there was no gesture area. If yo can "confirm" there is, then by all means please let us know.

[Audemars02]

However, look at the engadget liveblog..

10:53AM "As you can see, I get too much email. I want to delete several of these at once. We added multi-select." Ah ha -- you touch the gesture area and multiple messages. Finally!

[VCI_Cell]

I like the TouchPad thus far, but this was also a big disappointment to me. One of the nice things about webOS devices is that manipulating the OS is a far more organic experience -- pretty much everything is done via a swipe of some sort.

Swipe up from bottom for card view/launcher.

Swipe left and right to get to different open cards.

Swipe back in browser or app to go back a step/page.

Swipe up from card to "toss" an app.

That has always been much more satisfying to me than the iPad/iPhone user experience, with a back button wayyyy up in the left corner of the screen in every app, or switching from the "swiping" action on a touchscreen to the "pushing" action on the physical home key. Feels very clunky after using webOS. Rumor has it that even Apple wants to get rid of the home button all together.

Yeah, I'd say this is a step backwards.

[IcerC]

Palm pre button removed...

Touch pad button added gesture removed....

reeeal smart move guys.

[rickys239]

I'm going by what the rep said which was that there was no gesture area. If yo can "confirm" there is, then by all means please let us know.

Yea I noticed that too, maybe the models coming out Summer (uggghhhh) will have the gesture area(s) and the ones on the floor were some sort of protype models. Atleast im hoping???

[richardtank]

The gesture area was a really good, and unique, selling point. It's what makes buttons redundant and have a true touch experience where you can actually use your figures. Other operating systems' ideas of touch screen have just to move hardware buttons to software buttons. One thing that really struck me as odd with the iPhone (I’m not sure if this has been changed) is that to make an appointment in your calendar you have to touch the “+” button, you couldn’t just touch in a time period where you want the new appointment. To re-iterate, that may now have changed- it’s been a while since I’ve played with an iPhone- Just an example of an OS not being optimised for touch input.
I see that the gesture area is in the Pre 3 still- which is great. Obviously the hurdle of moving the gesture area to the TouchPad was too big to overcome, or maybe it just doesn't work.
I can see that it would be a problem to hold the Pad and swipe in the bezel area, supporting the pad in one palm being the issue (Which you can obviously do with the smaller phone).
It’s still a slight disappointment; I just hope HP have thought of a nice way to overcome that hurdle. It does appear that they’ve just gone for the easy (Ah well... Button will do it!) route.

[ndw6798]

I think you are all forgetting something important. The gesture area on the current WebOS devices is just an extension of the screen that doesn't display anything. There is plenty of opportunity for the software developers to offer "common gestures" without having to sacrifice the screen for a dedicated area. An example would be to recognize that when someone swipes three quarters of the way across a specific part of the screen that they want to go to the next or previous app. I could see that being somewhat problematic when viewing web pages where you scroll a lot, but if it's in a dedicated part of the screen it shouldn't cause too many problems.