Advanced personal electronic devices can have small form factors. These personal electronic devices include, but are not limited to, tablets and smart phones. Use of such personal electronic devices involves manipulation of user interface objects on display screens which also have small form factors that complement the design of the personal electronic devices.
Exemplary manipulations that users can perform on personal electronic devices include navigating a hierarchy, selecting a user interface object, adjusting the position, size, and zoom of user interface objects, or otherwise manipulating user interfaces. Exemplary user interface objects include digital images, video, text, icons, maps, control elements such as buttons, and other graphics. A user can perform such manipulations in image management software, video editing software, word pressing software, software execution platforms such as an operating system's desktop, website browsing software, and other environments.
Existing methods for manipulating user interface objects on reduced-size touch-sensitive displays can be inefficient. Further, existing methods generally provide less precision than is preferable.