Possible to get all Windows 8 trackpad gestures & pinch to zoom to work properly ?

After letting Parallels desktop 8 trial automatically install and configure Windows 8 Pro retail x64 and parallels tools for me a lot of the gestures seem to be absent, namely swipe between apps, swipe down/close app and also pinch to zoom does not appear to work properly and seems to zoom in at a crawling pace unlike zooming with "ctrl +"

 

with one-finger swipe gestures you need to start them at the very edge of your trackpad - the mouse pointer position is not important

 

Right and that's exactly what I am doing and only getting the charms bar and the currently running apps preview side bar on the left as well as any application relevant navigation etc. controls when available but can't swipe between applications or swipe them down.

 

I have a question about the Windows 8 left-swipe:

Let's say I have the Windows 8 Start Screen up with all the tiles. I then open up the Mail app, then exit back to the Start Screen. If I move my mouse pointer to the upper-left corner of the Start Screen, I get the tiny preview icon showing Mail. However, if I attempt to left-swipe while on the Windows 8 Start Screen, nothing happens.

If I open up a second Windows 8 app (such as Internet Explorer) and then return to the Start Screen, the left-swipe then works and shows me both Mail and Internet Explorer as options to switch to.

So from what I can tell, if you have only ONE app running, left-swipe doesn't do anything.

- If you're on the Start Screen, you can switch back to your background app using the left-corner preview icon.
- If you're within the single running app, you can only return to the Start Screen via Charms or the keyboard.

It seems you MUST have at least two apps running before left-swipe becomes functional.

Can anyone else confirm this behavior? And is it specific to Windows 8 itself, or a Parallels issue? (I'm guessing W8.)

 

Does swipe down using trackpad work for you ? I can't get that to work at all and must tap/click and drag to do this.

 

Like you, I must click-drag down. Can't simply swipe from the top of my Magic Trackpad.

What about my left-swipe issue? Does it work for you if less than two apps are open?

 

I can't swipe through apps at all.

But if you are referring to the left side app preview menu then yes I need at least two metro applications or a metro app and the desktop open in order for it to show when doing the one finger swipe in from the left of the trackpad. If I only have one metro app or just the desktop open it does not show. I believe this makes things counter intuitive irrespective if there can be no multiple instances of metro apps and the one open preserves its state, you still then have to find and click on the tile again from the start screen as if launching the app for the first time.

 

Yep...that is exactly the same behavior I saw.

And no...I cannot swipe through apps either. I didn't know that was supposed to be possible.

 

Nah, Windows 8 has very rich gesture support it's just largely absent on Parallels and makes Windows feel seriously cumbersome to use as you have to point the arrow and drag things and take more steps to get things done. OSX feels like a breath of fresh air when compared against Windows 8 running in a VM on a mac. However on a touch enabled PC/laptop and the Surface I would say that that navigating Windows 8 is even more intuitive and easier than OSX when you take into account the app swipe in and swipe down gestures.