From The Tips Box: Standing Desks, Aiming On Touchscreens

Readers offer their best tips for making a cheap standing desk, and aiming better when using a touchscreen at odd angles.

About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons — maybe they’re a bit too niche, maybe we couldn’t find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn’t fit it in — the tip didn’t make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Email it to tips at lifehacker.com.au.

Make a Quick, Adjustable Standing Desk for Cheap with IKEA Parts

Brossmac points us to an easy standing desk solution from IKEA:

IKEA has a workstation that can be configured as a standing desk. It’s not in the catalog but it is online and I found it in the Richmond, BC (Canada) store. It’s called Fredrik and its only $US170 ($149 in the US). It also has cord management built in.

Adjust Your Aim for Using Touchscreens at Odd Angles

Photo by Bfishadow.

Envador lets us know how to aim better when using a touchscreen at weird angles:

For better results, adjust your “aim” when using an iPad upside-down. For starters, when would you ever use an iPad upside down? Here’s an instance: Imagine you’re sitting across the desk from your boss, showing off how you made the company website iPad compatible with just a few CSS styles. The iPad is facing him right-side up while you’re looking over the top trying to tap on links and text boxes. Ever notice how you have trouble getting the iPad to register your taps when you’ve got it positioned this way? I believe the iPad adjusts how it registers taps based upon the thickness of the glass, the rotation of the device and also makes assumptions that you’re holding the iPad in such a way that your finger actually touches the glass further below than the image on the screen. So when you’re looking at it upside-down, you need to aim about quarter to half a centimeter further than you’re used to. That is, from your vantage point, when tapping a button, you need to be tapping on what appears to be the bottom edge of the button. Or, in other words, you need to reach further for that tap. Get what I mean?


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