Chapter 1. Getting to Know Your New Tablet

If you’re like me, when you get a new electronic gadget, you open it up and start using it right away, casting aside any instructions or tutorials until something doesn’t seem to work or is too convoluted to figure out after an hour of tinkering. I recommend you put off this urge for just a few minutes with your new tablet. The built-in tutorials provide some practice with the pen that will greatly improve your first impressions of your new machine. Once you have some fundamentals down, you can experiment to your heart’s content. There are also quite a few customizations you might try that can make your tablet easier to use.

So What About This Pen?

There are really two things to learn about the tablet pen. The first is what you can and cannot do with it and the second is how you actually use it. There are basically five things you can do with the pen and different situations in which you can do them.

  • Use your pen instead of a mouse

    The pen can be used instead of a mouse at any time in any application in which you could use a regular mouse. The pen can provide both left and right mouse button actions.

  • Use your pen in lieu of a keyboard as a text input device

    The pen can be used to input text at any time in any application in which you could use a regular keyboard. The pen accomplishes this using Tablet PC Input Panel.

  • Create ink that becomes a static image

    Some applications accept pen inputs and convert them into images. The images can be inserted into documents or attached to e-mail messages.

  • Create ink that becomes both a static image and converted text

    Some applications can contain the image of the ink you created and the text recognized from the handwriting. For example, Microsoft Word 2002 with the Microsoft Office XP Pack for Tablet PC allows you to insert your handwriting into a document and shows you the results of converting the handwriting to text.

  • Create rich ink

    Currently, only a few applications have this highest level of pen integration, but many more are in development. In this case, you can edit, format, and even search the ink you created.

    Glossary

    Ink is a term for the pen strokes you create on the tablet screen. These strokes are not recorded as images. Instead, they’re represented by equations describing the relative sizes, angles, and directions of the lines. In different situations, your ink might be converted to text, converted to an image, or saved in its original format.

Tablet Security Button

Microsoft Windows XP is built on the Microsoft Windows NT/2000 architecture, in which anyone using the computer logs in as a specific user. If your tablet doesn’t require you to log in using a name and a password, it is actually logging in automatically to a default user account. Depending on whether your tablet was configured for you by a network administrator or you just brought it home from the store, you might need to log on to the tablet using the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination. If your tablet does not have a standard keyboard, this can be a bit difficult! The solution is the tablet security button, one of your tablet’s hardware buttons, which functions as the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination. To see which button is the security button on your tablet, consult the owner’s manual that came with your tablet. The hardware button can be used any time you would normally use Ctrl+Alt+Delete, such as when ending a non-responding program, locking your computer while you are away, logging out, or shutting down. All tablets have a security button.

Glossary

Hardware buttons are user-definable buttons that are available when no keyboard is connected or the keyboard is hidden. For more information on hardware buttons see "Controlling Tablet and Pen Settings.”

Using the Tablet Tutorials

When you power up your new tablet for the first time, you’ll see the Welcome To Tablet Computing tutorial, shown in Figure 1-1, designed to give you the basics of using your tablet’s unique features. Take a few minutes to go through at least the first six screens, which give you practice using the pen in place of a mouse. Without this practice, your first hour with your tablet will be very frustrating. After the practice section, the next seven screens give you an overview of inputting text using the pen, but there are no opportunities to practice and subsequent tutorials do a much more thorough job on this anyway. Skim through them if you wish, and quit the program. We will cover using the pen to input text in depth in Chapter 2. The most important thing to practice now is using your pen in place of a mouse, particularly pointing the cursor, single-tapping, double-tapping, and right-tapping.

Use the welcome tutorial to practice using your pen in place of a mouse.
Figure 1-1. Use the welcome tutorial to practice using your pen in place of a mouse.

Glossary

To tap is the pen equivalent of a click. Where you would click with a mouse button, you tap with your pen.

The Welcome To Tablet Computing tutorial should be done with your screen in portrait orientation (longer than it is wide) and with the pen as primary input. If your tablet does not have an attached keyboard, it should start up this way. If your tablet can also function as a laptop, it will probably start in landscape screen orientation and with the keyboard and touch pad accessible for input.

The exact process to stow or remove your keyboard and otherwise reconfigure your tablet varies, so you’ll need to check your owner’s manual. Switching the screen orientation is part of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and can be done three different ways. Switching the screen is something you might do several times during the day, so you should understand all three.

Tip

Change Tablet And Pen Settings also lets you quickly toggle the speaker on and off (handy if you don’t want to bother your neighbor on the airplane) and turn the screen off to save battery power. The Properties item takes you directly to the Tablet And Pen settings control panel.

Change Tablet And Pen Settings in the notification area gives quick access to commonly used commands.
Figure 1-3. Change Tablet And Pen Settings in the notification area gives quick access to commonly used commands.

Tip

The primary landscape orientation usually puts the hardware buttons near the user’s right hand. Left-handed users can switch this by activating the secondary portrait orientation instead of the primary one.

Until using your pen instead of a mouse is second nature, you can’t really enjoy your tablet. One fundamental skill is moving the cursor. The pen should not make contact with the screen if you only want to move the cursor. In fact, as soon as the pen gets close enough to the screen, the cursor will jump to the pen’s position, so you rarely need to move the cursor around the screen as you did with a mouse. Just to get a feel for the pen, though, try moving the cursor to various items on the screen, such as the Start menu, and hovering in place until the ToolTip comment appears.

Glossary

To hover with your pen is to bring your pen close enough to the screen to move the cursor but not actually touch the screen. Hovering allows you to control the cursor without the risk of an accidental tap or drag.

When the pen does make contact with the screen, that is the equivalent of a click with the left mouse button, so you must make contact to tap (click) or drag. The key to a good tap or drag is tapping hard enough for the screen to register the contact but not pressing down excessively. This comes quickly with a little hands-on experience. As you practice, here are some tips for successful mousing with a pen and the logic behind them.

Tip

Clean your screen often. When you rest your hand on the screen it gets dirty quite quickly. Many office supply outlets and computer stores sell anti-static wipes for cleaning computer monitors that work very well.

Tip

If you’re having continued trouble getting your pen to work and you already tried tapping harder, try holding the pen more upright. This will improve the alignment between the pen tip and the cursor. Sometimes, when the pen is at a serious angle, the cursor is off to one side, almost as if it is a “shadow” cast by the pen. Also, the tip of the pen must compress slightly to send a signal. If the pen is held at too much of an angle, the tip will slide over the screen rather than compress.

Using a Pen for Right-Click and Right-Drag

Research shows only about 30% of Windows users ever use their right mouse button. This is too bad, since a right-click gives you instant access to context-sensitive shortcut menus full of useful commands. On a tablet, these menus save perhaps even more time and effort, so you should definitely know how to right-tap and right-drag. To get a good right-tap, hold the pen down longer until the right-tap icon appears and then lift the pen completely off the screen. Next highlight the desired item on the shortcut menu while hovering. Finally, tap the selected menu item.

Caution

It’s very easy to accidentally select the wrong item on a shortcut menu if you keep the pen in contact with the screen after the shortcut menu appears.

How the Pen Works

There are actually two different pen digitizing systems used on tablets. They both accomplish the same task, but they do it slightly differently and provide different advantages and disadvantages.

Tablets incorporating the Finepoint digitizer use a battery-powered pen and a passive screen. The pen emits a directional magnetic field that induces a small electrical current in a sensor behind the screen that determines the pen’s position. In addition, there’s a pressure sensor in the pen that determines whether the pen is in contact with the screen. Tablets made with Wacom digitizers use a passive pen and an active screen. In this setup, the screen emits a weak magnetic field that induces an electrical current in the pen that, in turn, interferes with the magnetic field in the screen. The Wacom digitizers interpret this interference to determine the position of the pen. The pressure sensors in Wacom pens are also variable. They can tell when you are pressing lightly and when you are pressing hard. Finepoint sensors simply know that you are pressing down. If the option to enable pressure sensitivity is greyed-out in an application such as Windows Journal, you probably have a Finepoint pen. As you might imagine, a Finepoint pen will not work with a Wacom tablet nor will a Wacom pen work on a Finepoint tablet.

Is one better than the other? It depends on your needs. They sense the pen position with about equal accuracy. The Finepoint system has the distinct advantage that the passive screen does not draw power from the tablet battery, so the battery will not run down as quickly. The downside is that your pen battery makes the pen heavier and it will eventually run out and need replacement. The Wacom system might draw more power, but the pens are lighter, and I personally like the pressure sensitivity. If you’re using your tablet for any real artistic work, pressure sensitivity is a must. Some Wacom pens have an additional cool feature called top of pen erase. These pens have a plastic “eraser” on them that’s really a button. Flip the pen over and press down as you rub the screen, and you can erase your pen strokes. This feature is so intuitive and handy that I use it all the time.

If you haven’t yet purchased your tablet, you might want to find out which pen system the tablets you are considering use. If you are planning to upgrade or replace your pen, make sure you know which system your tablet uses. The sure-fire way to know is if your pen has a battery, it’s a Finepoint.

Pens with a button for a right-tap make the process quicker and easier. To right-tap with a pen button, hold the pen button down before you make contact with the screen, tap the point where you want to right-tap, and lift the pen back off the screen before releasing the pen button. The right-tap menu will appear where you tapped. The pen button is also the only easy way to right-drag on a tablet, such as you might do when you wanted to move a file from one folder to another rather than copying it. To right-drag, hold the pen button down before you make contact with the screen, press down and drag the item you want to move. Lift the pen off the screen before you release the pen button, and the shortcut menu will appear over the icon you just dragged. The disadvantage to using the pen button is that if you move the pen laterally too much as you right tap, you can accidentally right-drag and get the wrong shortcut menu. If this happens, tap anywhere on the screen other than the menu. If it happens to you often, try changing the pen tolerances in the Tablet And Pen Settings control panel.

The Welcome To Tablet Computing tutorial only launches the first time you use your tablet. There are four more built-in tutorials that provide an overview of tablet computing and introductions to Input Panel, Windows Journal, and Speech input. The tutorial home, shown in Figure 1-4, will appear every time you start up your tablet until you tell them to go away by checking Do Not Show Me This Again. If you want to run the tutorials after you check this box, go to the Start menu, tap All Programs, tap the Tablet PC folder, and tap Tablet PC Tutorials. We will cover Input Panel and Speech input in Chapter 2 and explore Windows Journal in Chapter 3 through Chapter 5. Some basic use of Input Panel is necessary to simply get going on the tablet, so, if you haven’t done so already, view the video portions of Tablet PC Tutorial and Tablet PC Input Panel Tutorial. Ideally, do the exercises as well.

The key items to take away from these tutorials are:

  • Use your pen instead of a mouse.

  • Use Input Panel on a tablet where you would have used a keyboard to enter text on a standard computer. You may use script or printing, but use upper and lower case and write using the line as a guide.

  • Open Input Panel using the icon on the taskbar. Close it when you’re not using it if you need more screen space.

  • Tap once in the spot you want the type to appear before you start writing in Input Panel.

  • To enter text using your handwriting, tap the Writing Pad tab on the lower left of Input Panel. Correct the text using the onscreen keys to the right of the writing area for cursor control and deleting mistakes.

  • If you get frustrated with the writing pad, switch to the Input Panel keyboard by tapping the Keyboard tab on the lower left of Input Panel.

That’s enough to give you rudimentary text input with the pen. If you just can’t wait to find out more, go ahead and skip to Chapter 2 and come back here once you’re an Input Panel expert. If you want to put off using Input Panel entirely for a while and you have a USB keyboard, simply plug it into tablet and use a standard keyboard instead.

The Tablet PC Tutorials are worth going through at least once.
Figure 1-4. The Tablet PC Tutorials are worth going through at least once.

Note

Many of the peripherals on your tablet will use the Universal Serial Bus (USB). USB is easy to use, but there are a few things to be aware of. See Appendix A, if you are having trouble with USB peripherals.

Power Management

Power management issues are technically no different on the tablet than on any laptop. If there is a difference, it’s simply that you’re more likely to use the tablet on battery power and for longer periods of time. Here are some of the most useful ways for getting your batteries to last the longest. For a detailed discussion of power management under Windows XP, see Chapter 9, “Configuring Shutdown and Power Management Options” in the book, Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out (Microsoft Press: 2001).

Setting Power Options

The default power options settings for the tablet are a compromise between decent power savings and making your tablet behave similarly to a desktop or laptop computer. If you’re willing to adjust these settings in the Power Options control panel, you can often squeeze an extra 15 to 30 minutes out of your battery life. Open the Power Options control panel by right-tapping on the Power/Battery icon in the notification area and selecting Adjust Power Properties or by using Control Panel. The control panel opens with the Power Schemes tab visible, as shown in Figure 1-5, which lets you set time of inactivity before the tablet invokes any of four power-saving actions:

  • Turn off monitor

    On the tablet, the screen (monitor) backlight eats 40% of the power. Turning it off when you aren’t using it is the single biggest power saver there is.

  • Turn off hard disks

    The motors that spin your hard disk also use a sizable percentage of the power. Usually it’s best to stop them when they’re not needed. The only exception is if you’re reading or writing large files (such as video or music) off the hard drive every few minutes. The power used to start the drive spinning is equal to the consumption during several minutes of steady operation.

  • System standby

    Standby turns off the monitor, hard drive, and main processing functions of the tablet and consumes very little power. By design, all tablets must be able to resume from standby to full operation in 2 seconds or less, so having your tablet go in and out of standby often is no big deal.

  • System hibernates

    Hibernation involves actually saving the contents of memory to the disk and shutting down. Once in hibernation, the tablet consumes no power, but it can take a minute or more to resume normal operation. When the tablet comes out of hibernation, all applications and any unsaved work are available, exactly as you left them.

Note

Hibernation must be enabled on the Hibernate tab to appear as an option.

Power Schemes organizes four power-saving properties for use in different situations.
Figure 1-5. Power Schemes organizes four power-saving properties for use in different situations.

These power-conservation behaviors are organized for different situations. For example, you can make sure the screen normally turns off after one minute of inactivity but doesn’t go blank at all when you are giving a presentation on battery power. There are quite a few power schemes by default, but none geared specifically for a tablet. Figure 1-5 shows custom settings for my tablet, in which the screen goes off after one minute and standby happens after three when running on batteries. Because the screen comes alive as soon as the pen gets near it, I hardly notice whether it’s on or off, so I want it to happen as soon as possible. I set standby to a wait long enough that I can pause while working for a moment, but short enough that I don’t waste power if I sit and think. Hibernate is set to one hour because I don’t want the tablet to hibernate while I’m working, even during a long break, but I do want it to hibernate if I forget to turn it off. Notice that the settings are different for when I am plugged in and presumably working at my desk. The tablet switches between these two sets automatically when you plug into a power outlet and when you unplug again.

Tip

You can quickly switch between power schemes by single-tapping the Power /Battery icon in the notification area and selecting from a menu of all the saved power schemes. Since there are probably more power schemes in the system than you will ever need, deleting the ones you don’t want makes this feature easier to use. If the Power/Battery icon is not visible in the notification area, you can add it by checking the Always Show Icon On The Taskbar check box on the Advanced tab of the Power Options control panel.

The Alarms tab and the Advanced tab are two other tabs in the Power Options control panel worth checking. The Alarms tab determines the actions taken at low and at critically low battery levels. Usually the defaults are fine, but you can adjust how much warning you get before you run out of power. You should ensure that when the tablet reaches a critical battery level, it either hibernates or shuts down to prevent you from losing your work. The Advanced tab has a check box for prompting for a password when resuming operation from standby. If you use standby often, uncheck this box. There is little point in a super-fast resume from standby if you must enter a password each time. Use the tablet security button to password-protect your tablet if you step away for a moment.

Tip

If you run on batteries for long periods, the best policy is to have a second battery. To switch batteries quickly, hibernate Windows and switch rather than shutting down and restarting. You should still save your work first.

Here are a few other items that help prolong battery life:

Recharging Batteries—What to Do

There was a time when most rechargeable batteries were made with nickel and cadmium, so-called NiCad batteries. These batteries had the unfortunate property that if you did not run them down all the way before recharging them, they would develop a “memory” and not recharge fully in the future. Most modern rechargeable batteries are nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) or lithium ion (Lion) batteries, which have much less of a memory problem and can be periodically refreshed if a problem does occur. While you should follow your manufacturer’s recommendation for recharging your batteries, it’s usually the best policy to plug in your tablet whenever you can.

Configuring Your Workspace

Perhaps more than any other computer, tablets are very personalized machines. Throughout the book, I’ll offer suggestions for getting the most out of specific applications, but here are a few global suggestions that may help you use your tablet more effectively. All of these items are matters of personal choice. Try them out and keep the ones that work best for you.

Ideally, you will be able to keep the text and icons on your tablet at the standard size to make the most of the limited screen space inherent in a portable computer. If you are having trouble seeing the icons and on-screen buttons on your tablet, however, you can adjust the dots per inch, or DPI, setting and increase the size of most of your icons and on-screen text. First close any programs you have running, and switch your tablet to a landscape screen orientation. Open the Display control panel, and tap the Settings tab. Tap the Advanced button to see the General settings shown in Figure 1-7. Change the DPI setting from 96 DPI to 120 DPI, and tap OK. You will have to restart your tablet to apply the new settings. The increase in size is only 20%, but it can make a big difference. The downside is that the screen will seem a bit more crowded, but it should still be usable.

If you have trouble tapping icons that are too small or reading the names of folders, you can increase their size.
Figure 1-7. If you have trouble tapping icons that are too small or reading the names of folders, you can increase their size.

Navigating hierarchical menus such as the Start menu with a pen is a bit slower than navigating with a mouse, since you must lift the pen after each tap to see the next submenu. Customizing the Start menu using the Taskbar And Start Menu control panel can help by putting the most common items only two taps away. The control panel also provides some advanced options for adding recently used documents and favorites to the Start menu. Open the Taskbar And Start Menu control panel by right-tapping on the taskbar and selecting Properties or by using Control Panel. Tap the Start Menu tab, and tap Customize. The dialog box shown in Figure 1-8 appears with three basic options.

Tip

When using the Start menu, tap to open each submenu rather than hovering and waiting for the menu to expand on its own.

Small icons and a greater number of recently used programs help make the most of your Start menu.
Figure 1-8. Small icons and a greater number of recently used programs help make the most of your Start menu.

Permanently adding, or pinning, items to the Start menu is a new feature in Windows XP. The idea is similar to the recently used items list, except pinned items will always be there. Pinned items are automatically excluded from the recently used list, so if you pin Word to the Start menu it will not appear in the list of recent programs. To pin a program to your Start menu, find the program anywhere on your computer—on the desktop, in the All Programs menu, or in Windows Explorer—and drag the icon to the Start menu. It will automatically appear in the pinned items list. Alternatively, you can right-tap that icon and select Pin To Start Menu from the shortcut menu.

Note

If you prefer to use the Classic-style Start menu, select Classic Start Menu on the Start Menu tab of the Tablet And Pen Settings control panel. The new Windows XP Start menu features such as pinning, however, will no longer be available.

Customizing the Tablet Taskbar

While you should definitely set up your tablet in the way that is most comfortable to you, there are a few things you might want to do a bit differently because of the differences between pen input and a conventional mouse and to conserve space. To adjust any of these settings, right-tap anywhere in the taskbar and select Properties from the shortcut menu or open the Start Menu And Taskbar control panel.

Tip

Most people know that tapping (clicking) a running program in the taskbar will maximize it, but many people don’t know that tapping the taskbar icon a second time will minimize it. This feature provides a very handy way to switch back and forth between two running programs on the tablet. Windows XP also offers the handy option of closing a group of windows at once when you right-tap on a running program in the taskbar.

This idea is a bit more radical, but I think it is well worth trying. Consider moving the taskbar to the top or side of the screen, instead of to the bottom, as shown in Figure 1-9. For right-handed pen users, reaching down to the bottom left of the screen for the taskbar Start button is somewhat awkward and when the Start menu pops up, you must lift your hand to see the menu items and then tap again. If you are drilling down through several folders, then you must do this several times. For left-handed users, the menu is visible, but the motion is even more awkward. Moving the taskbar to the top or side of the screen puts the Start button close to your resting hand and keeps the menus in view. While it might take a little getting used to, it’s one of the most useful configuration changes you can make when using your tablet.

To move the taskbar, you must first ensure it is not locked. Right-tap in an area that does not contain any icons, and look at the shortcut menu. If there is a check next to Lock The Taskbar, select Lock The Taskbar and tap. The check will disappear. If the taskbar is already unlocked, tap anywhere outside the shortcut menu and it will close. Next tap an area that does not contain any icons, and drag the taskbar to the top or side of the screen. If you try the side, use the same side as your dominant hand. Nothing happens until the cursor gets close to the side of the screen, and then the taskbar will jump to the new position.

If you try the side position, the taskbar will be fairly wide. To make it narrower, hover your pen near the border between the taskbar and the rest of the desktop and adjust the position until you see a double-headed arrow. Drag the border of the taskbar towards the edge of the screen until it is the width you want. The word Start will disappear off the Start button, but the menu will still work. Horizontal space on the tablet is precious, so if you use a side taskbar, you want to make it as narrow as is comfortable. Losing horizontal space is the biggest drawback of the side taskbar, but the length of it allows you to see many Quick Launch bar icons for easy program launching and many open documents all at once. Having the taskbar on the top keeps the full screen width available for your applications and is a little easier to get used to. Try each setting for a few days and see how well they work for you.

A top or side taskbar is much more comfortable on a tablet once you get used to it.
Figure 1-9. A top or side taskbar is much more comfortable on a tablet once you get used to it.

One other potential drawback is that when you switch to landscape view, as will happen when you work in laptop mode or when connected to an external monitor and keyboard, the taskbar will still be on the top or side. You can either move it back to the bottom of the screen when you switch to landscape mode or keep it in the new position and see what you think. I like the side taskbar in landscape mode because the documents I work on are longer than they are wide, and I have lots of unused real estate on the sides of my monitor anyway. Having the taskbar on the side gives you maximum vertical space while giving full access to all the taskbar features—and without the need for auto hide.

Controlling Tablet and Pen Settings

You might want to use your tablet for a while before you change the default pen options, but taking a little time to customize your tablet and pen settings is well worth the effort. Not only will you get better results while using your pen, you will have a better idea how the tablet interprets and responds to your pen inputs. You will probably need to come back a few times to get your settings just right.

“The default [pen] settings are good for the novice user. We expect people to want to change the settings after a month.” –Anoo Padte, Tablet PC Team

Open the Tablet And Pen Settings control panel from the Printers And Other Hardware group or by selecting Properties from Change Tablet And Pen Settings in the notification area. The control panel opens with the Settings tab selected as shown in Figure 1-10. The Settings tab has a calibration tool to calibrate the accuracy of your pen. The calibration tool is a bit limited in that it samples only four points on the screen, but it’s still the best way to make the cursor move where you want it to using the pen. To begin the calibration process, tap the Calibrate button. Calibrate the screen for both landscape and portrait orientations. When you calibrate, keep your head in the same position it is in when you use your tablet. The whole point of calibration is to adjust for your personal perspective between pen and screen. Use your tablet for a while to see how well the pen directs the cursor, allowing for a bit of lag time between them. If the cursor isn’t following the pen well over the entire screen, try holding your pen more upright. If the cursor seems to be following the pen fine over most of the screen, but has a problem area, try adjusting the calibration again. The Settings tab also controls the “handedness” of your tablet, but that should have been set when you went through the Welcome To Tablet Computing tutorial. The handedness determines both the way the tablet interprets certain characters in Input Panel and on which side of the cursor menus appear.

Customizing the calibration of your screen can improve pen-instead-of-mouse accuracy.
Figure 1-10. Customizing the calibration of your screen can improve pen-instead-of-mouse accuracy.

Caution

During calibration, if you accidentally tap the screen somewhere other than the target, you can end up with a cursor that’s difficult to control. Tap Cancel to end the calibration without saving the changes, and then calibrate the pen again. If you noticed too late and now can’t control the pen, use the touch pad if available or hook up an external USB mouse to control the cursor and launch the calibration again.

We already looked at the display settings in Figure 1-2. The Display tab also lets you set the screen brightness for when the tablet is plugged in and when it is operating on batteries. While it is true that the screen brightness affects battery life, in practice you must manually adjust your screen brightness on a tablet as you move from office to conference room to outdoors to adjust for different lighting, so the setting here is fairly irrelevant.

Hardware Buttons

The Tablet Buttons tab, shown in Figure 1-11, lets you configure your hardware buttons to perform many different actions or to enter common keyboard commands. The default settings for these buttons are probably fine for most users, but you might wish to customize them for your own needs. Figure 1-11 shows a custom set I used for writing this book. Two of the buttons are set to quickly take screen shots for this book and another is set to turn the screen off manually. Having one-button control of the screen allowed me to turn it off and save power during interviews with the Tablet PC team without looking down. Notice that the hardware buttons on this tablet included a function button, similar to a Shift key, that allowed defining two actions for each hardware button.

Tablet buttons give you access to your most needed keyboard commands.
Figure 1-11. Tablet buttons give you access to your most needed keyboard commands.

Tip

Pressing the function hardware button twice displays the Change Tablet And Pen Settings menu, providing quick access to Change Screen Orientation, Turn Off Screen, and Turn Speaker On Or Off. If your tablet has only a few hardware buttons, this shortcut frees the remaining hardware buttons to use for other commands that are very handy, such as Delete.

By default, hardware buttons are the same for all screen orientations, but they can be set for different functions depending on the screen orientation. Customizing the buttons for common commands such as Up, Down, and Enter is useful when in tablet mode, but these are not needed if your keyboard is available, as it often is in primary landscape mode. You can change the functions of these buttons so that when you are in landscape mode, they launch often-used programs or let you easily perform common actions, such as skipping to the next track on your music CD. To create a custom hardware button set for a particular orientation, first select the orientation you want from the drop-down list in the top half of the Tablet Buttons tab of the Tablet And Pen Settings control panel. Next select the hardware button you want to change and tap Change. Select the command you want for that hardware button from the drop-down list as shown in Figure 1-12, and tap OK. To set a hardware button so that it will enter a keyboard command, such as Delete, choose Press A Key Or Key Combination and enter the key combination using the on-screen keyboard. You might also select any application on your computer so that it launches with the touch of a hardware button. Usually icons on the Quick Launch bar are a better option for easily opening programs.

You can customize tablet hardware buttons to meet your specific needs.
Figure 1-12. You can customize tablet hardware buttons to meet your specific needs.

The Pen Options tab allows you to customize the pen behavior to match your expectations and is helpful if you aren’t getting a good right-tap. First-time tablet users are often frustrated when they accidentally press the pen button and get shortcut menus where they don’t expect them. You can disable the pen button by unchecking the Use Pen Button To Right-Click check box shown in Figure 1-13.

You will still be able to right-click by using the pen to press and hold, but you will no longer be able to right-drag. Unless you use right-drag often, this is a helpful change for many people. By default, the wait for a shortcut menu when you press and hold is annoyingly long and, because you must lift your pen to see the menu, it sometimes disappears before you can find and tap your selection. To adjust these properties, select the Press And Hold pen action and tap the Settings button. Adjust the sliders so that the right-click mode activation is shorter and the press and hold duration is longer as shown in Figure 1-14. You can test your settings on the light bulb animation but trying the new settings in the programs you use most is more telling. If you like the pen button and want to disable press and hold, uncheck the Enable Press And Hold For Right-Click check box in the Press And Hold Settings dialog box.

Customizing your pen options is essential for reliable pen input.
Figure 1-13. Customizing your pen options is essential for reliable pen input.
Customizing your press and hold options.
Figure 1-14. Customizing your press and hold options.

Tip

Some pens with pen buttons have a combination button that acts as a right-click if pushed one way and an eraser if pressed a different way. Use Top Of The Pen To Erase is enabled and disabled on the Pen Options tab and can be enabled independently of the pen button for right-tap.

The Pen Options tab also allows you to adjust your double-tap speed and spatial tolerance for double-tapping and point and hover used to get ToolTips to appear. The Double-Tap Settings dialog box is shown in Figure 1-15. Spatial tolerance determines how much your pen can move around in a confined area and still register as staying in one place. If you have the hands of a surgeon, then you can use a small spatial tolerance because your hand will tap twice in almost exactly the same spot. If you have had one too many cups of coffee, then you will need a large spatial tolerance. The only disadvantage to a large spatial tolerance is that you might double-tap when you didn’t mean to. If you are having problems with your double-tap, the most likely cause is that your second tap wasn’t firm enough for the pen to sense. Think “woodpecker,” and try double-tapping again. If that isn’t the issue, you can increase your double-tap spatial tolerance and play with the double-tap speed. Test effects of different settings on the animated door until you can make it open and close with 100% accuracy. If your ToolTip menus keep disappearing before you can read them, increasing the spatial tolerance should correct the problem.

Customizing your double-tap speed and spatial tolerance.
Figure 1-15. Customizing your double-tap speed and spatial tolerance.

Try This

Sometimes the best way to really understand a system is to experiment with its extremes. Try setting your press and hold, double-tap, and spatial tolerance settings to one extreme and seeing how it affects your pen. Now go back and try the other extreme. This should give you a better feel for what each control actually does and allow you to fine tune them to your needs.

There are a few situations in which press and hold for right-tap is a problem. The most common conflict occurs when dragging a scroll bar to scroll through a document. If you press and hold on the scroll bar but wait too long to start scrolling, you will get a shortcut menu. Another conflict occurs with some programs using floating tool palettes, such as Adobe Photoshop, where you must press and hold to change or select items on the palette. If your tablet’s press and hold is active, you might not be able to use the tool palette fully. If you are having conflicts, try increasing the delay for press and hold or turning it off. You might also notice that on-screen buttons, such as the New, Open, and Save buttons near the menus in Word, do not appear to press down on your tablet. This is because the animation for button pressing is incompatible with press and hold. If you disable press and hold, the on-screen button animation will work again. The button-animation conflict is strictly a matter of visual preference; the buttons will still work even if they are not animated.

Key Points