If you are using a mouse or a trackpad that has multi-touch enabled then you likely know that doing a two-fingered swipe will scroll the window into the direction that the swipe occurred. But did you know that there is also a four-fingered swipe? If you swipe four fingers to the right or left then you will invoke an application selection screen, similar to the selection screen you see with Command-Tab. You can then use the arrow keys to switch between foreground applications. If you use the four fingered swipe in a downward direction you will bring up the all windows Expose screen. If you use the four fingered swipe in an upwards direction then you will invoke the Expose Show Desktop action, moving all of the applications off to the side. The three fingered swipe can also be used, to scroll backwards and forwards on web pages, within Preview and even in iPhoto.
You can also customize various swiping events. Simply click on the Trackpad System Preference pane and you’ll see a number of options that aren’t yet enabled. For example, you can set a single touch on the trackpad to act as a click, you can set a click event on a lower corner of the trackpad to invoke a contextual menu and you can enable one-click dragging.
Overall, swiping and multi-touch events in general is an innovative approach to the mouse. And best of all, swiping brought to you in an easy and gentle way to ease your transition to what could be a big change in how you use your computer, complete with videos and the option to disable it!
