Microsoft has released a new preview version of Windows 10, with the headline move being the addition of a virtual touchpad.
Essentially, this is designed so that you can control a second display that’s hooked up to a Windows tablet with no need to connect a mouse; rather you can bring up the virtual touchpad on the slate and use that instead.
As Microsoft explains in its blog post, when you connect a tablet to another monitor or TV screen, you can head to the Action Center and use the ‘Project’ option to extend the display – and then bring up the virtual touchpad from the taskbar to navigate around the second screen.
As with a normal touchpad, you get a large area for moving the pointer, and a pair of buttons down below for left and right-clicking. So you can do stuff on your tablet, while controlling whatever’s happening on the secondary display with the touchpad.
Oh, and this virtual touchpad benefits from all the recent customization options Microsoft has introduced for the precision touchpad.
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Notes and Ink
Other goodies introduced in build 14965, which has just hit the Fast Ring for Windows testers, include a new version of the Sticky Notes app with support for more languages, a polished up interface, and some fixes for issues including flaky Undo/Redo performance.
The Windows Ink Workspace has also seen some tweaking, and the protractor can now be expanded or shrunk down using the mouse scroll wheel, plus the number of recently used apps shown in the workspace has been increased to six.
Sketchpad has also been optimized so it will load faster when a lot of ink has been used in a sketch, and various other fixes have been implemented.
Needless to say, a load more general fixes have been pushed out with this preview build, with Microsoft resolving some crashes affecting File Explorer and Internet Explorer, and also Cortana.
Although this being a Fast Ring build, there’s always a good chance that some fresh bugs have been introduced.
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