Tablet PC Team Blog : Vista

All work and no play?

Tablet PC Team — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:56:12 GMT

The Tablet isn’t all about productivity. It is good for playing games! I have been scoping out the wide world of internet for games that I can play on my Tablet and that are also fun and friendly--casual games that are good for pen or touch.

I’m not really going to be reviewing the games, some will probably be more interesting than others; but I will be highlighting some interesting features. So, what am I looking for in a game? Potential! Hopefully this will be a fun public investigation of some unique and interesting interactions that pen and/or touch can provide; whether it is in a game or more broadly.

This week I would like to give special recognition to some students at Stanford (Daniel Salinas, Travis Skare, John Shedletsky, and Douglas Wilson) who used the Tablet SDK to create a game called Euclidean Crisis. The game was nominated for an award at the 2007 Independent Games Festival. They didn’t win but I say game on!

As a general aside, I feel compelled to note that this is from my own personal opinion and I’m not representative of Microsoft. So, with that said, a pen friendly game will be coming up next week...

Technorati tags: Tablet PC, Tablet, Games, Pen, Touch

Lindsey Noll | Windows | Tablet PC | Software Design Engineer

Working hard by playing some games

Media Center improvements for pen and touch.

Tablet PC Team — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:17:00 GMT

Aaron Stebner provided instructions in this blog post to help users optimize Media Center for Pen and Touch interaction.

"There are 2 new settings available in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista that can be used to control the visibility of mouse-related controls in the Windows Media Center UI. These settings are primarily designed for touch-screen development scenarios, but can be useful in other situations as well. "

Navigational arrows and playback controls are always visible after enabling both settings.

Registry Keys that need to be changed:

Show playback controls all the time:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Capabilities\TBP = 1
Navigational arrows are visible whenever toolbars are visible:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.GlobalSettings\bindNavHintsToToolbars = 1

For more detailed instructions, read Aaron's blog post.

Tom Alphin, Program Manager, Windows Core UX / Tablet PC

Using Flicks to Switch Windows via Alt+Tab or Win+Tab

Tablet PC Team — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:31:00 GMT

Here's a great trick I learned recently... the window-switching experiences you get by pressing [Alt+Tab] or [Win+Tab] can be made "sticky" by holding the [Ctrl] key (ie, [Ctrl+Alt+Tab] or [Ctrl+Win+Tab]). The window-selection mode will persist, on-screen, until you choose a window (or press [Esc], or click somewhere else on the desktop).

This trick is super-useful. Why? For configuring Flicks to switch windows, of course!

Background: Flicks are a mechanism built into Windows Vista, for Tablet PC systems, which allow you to perform common keyboard operations with a quick flick gesture of the pen.

By default, only the "navigational" Flicks are enabled -- these are the most useful (scrolling up/down, navigating forward/back) and the easiest flick gestures to perform. You can optionally enable another 4 flick commands, which default to common editing operations (clockwise from the top: copy, paste, undo, delete).

To configure Flicks, type "Pen and Input" into the Start menu. (Or, just make a few furtive flick gestures on your desktop, and respond to the little balloon which pops up. :-)

Personally, I've never felt so great about "delete" being mapped to some gesture of the pen I could perform by accident (not every app has undo support)!

The good news is, you can remap this flick gesture to virtually any appcommand or key combination. May I suggest [Ctrl+Win+Tab]? (Stick with [Ctrl+Alt+Tab] if your Tablet PC is glass-challenged, or if you're miserly with your battery.)

The real magic with all this is in how well it works -- the Flip3D team clearly put a lot of effort into accurate hit-testing on the 3D windows they render. This makes it gratifyingly intuitive to tap on the 3D windows' representations, with the pen. You can even flick forward/backward, and the "deck" of windows will respond as expected. Awesome.

Amaze your friends! Terrify your enemies!

eWEEK says "Vista Shines as a Tablet Platform"

Tablet PC Team — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:53:00 GMT

Vista Shines as Tablet Platform

Nice quotes:

“The handwriting recognition is greatly improved, and pen flicks, which allow users to navigate the notebook using a flick of the pen, is an addition Tablet PC users are bound to use extensively.”

“Handwriting recognition was faster and more accurate than it was pre-Vista, and the device's full-featured TIP (Tablet Input Panel) made input easy.”

- Ken Dacey, Tablet PC Test Lead

Windows Vista Secrets for Tablet PC?

Tablet PC Team — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 11:12:00 GMT

Tim Sneath has been posting a wonderful series of "Windows Vista Secrets". (The ability to start Quick Launch items with the [Win+<n>] keys has changed my life -- thanks Tim!)

I have my own set of tips for Windows Vista -- some secret, some not -- that apply mainly to laptop and Tablet PCs, so I thought I'd share.

#1: Windows Mobility Center

Windows Mobility Center is a great one-stop portal for managing a LOT of settings on your laptop or tablet -- power scheme, audio volume, screen brightness, projection, rotation, as well as one-click access to myriad other Control Panel applets for stylus input and handwriting recognition.

It's definitely not meant to be a "secret", but for some reason we really did bury it in the Start / Programs / Accessories menu... Place a shortcut to MblCtr.exe on your Quick Launch bar, or pin it to your Start Menu, for easier access.

Update: Reader benwatt reminds me that [Win+X] will launch the Mobility Center -- for laptops and Tablet PCs with keyboards!

#2: Snipping Tool

The big "secret" here is that Snipping Tool is no longer just for Tablet PCs! Use it from your laptop or desktop, to snip a rectangular region of your screen -- and use the mouse to highlight.

As above: Snipping Tool is buried in the Start / Programs menu -- so, place a shortcut to SnippingTool.exe on your Quick Launch bar, or pin it to your Start Menu, for easier access.

#3: DPI scaling via DWM

A screen resolution of 1400x1050 on a 12" diagonal display is about 144dpi, measured horizontally (or vertically). That's about 50% higher resolution than the 96dpi which Windows assumes of your display, by default! This has the effect of making small fonts difficult to read and small user interface elements hard target, with a stylus or touch-screen.

Many users address this by turning down the resolution on their displays to something like 1024x768, but that's suboptimal -- it makes user interface elements larger, but blurrier. And hey, you paid for all those pixels, you should get to use them... Windows Vista offers a better way. Enter DWM -- the Desktop Window Manager -- the new graphics plumbing in Vista which enables the Aero Glass theme and effects, as well as the "Flip 3D" and "Taskbar Thumbnail" experiences, for switching windows.

DWM is not just good looking; it's also functional -- it facilitates the smooth rescaling of your desktop and applications, at resolutions higher than 96dpi. On systems which support the Aero Glass theme, you should take full advantage of the DWM and configure your display resolution properly -- the DWM will enlarge text and other user interface elements, but without sacrificing the smoothness and readability of fonts, or the detail in high-resolution images.

So, if you're tired of squinting, set your DPI properly instead of scaling down your resolution. You should find that applications work more reliably on Vista, than they did on XP, when the DPI is set greater than 96.

#4: Enlarge the caret (text insertion point)

Consider making the caret (text insertion point) easier to see in bright / daylight conditions, by increasing its thickness slightly. I don't know if this setting is available anywhere in the Control Panel, but you can increase the caret width with this straightforward registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"CaretWidth"=dword:00000003

This trick can be especially helpful on Tablet PCs, for visually identifying which field on a form has the input focus (ie, the field which will receive results from the Tablet PC Input Panel).

Update: This setting, plus a few more, are available in the new Ease of Access Center under "Make the computer easier to see". (I also really like "Make the focus rectangle thicker", on my desktop systems.)

#5: Get the most out of your battery

Battery not lasting as long as you'd like? Give your system less work to do, by turning off some nonessential features and services.

Everyone's definition of "nonessential" is different, of course, but I like to start by reducing the frequency of scheduled tasks (like defragmentation). Start Task Scheduler, and you'll be presented with an array of tasks which Windows Vista runs, in the background. Many of these tasks can be configured to wait until the system is plugged into A/C power (and likewise, pause when switched to battery power).

Here's an oldie but a goodie, for reducing hard disk access: the NTFS file system tracks (by default) when files and directories were last read from. This is a cool feature, but it effectively turns every read operation into a potential write operation -- and really, how often do you use this feature?

~~Run FSUtil.exe behavior set DisableLastAccess 1 from an~~ ~~elevated command prompt~~ ~~(and reboot) to turn off this feature.~~

Update: This is a little embarassing, but in a good way -- reader Kurt Geisel (aka my boss) tells me that Windows Vista is actually configured to disable last-access tracking, by default! I've been doing this tweak for so long, I guess I never noticed the change. So, nevermind the above -- although it's something interesting to keep in mind, when browsing file properties on Vista. Thanks, Kurt!

The graphics processors in laptops consume a lot of watts -- the Aero Glass theme is great, but do you really need the transparency / blur effect? Making your glass opaque can reduce the load on your GPU, while otherwise maintaining the full functionality of the DWM (Flip3D, Taskbar thumbnails, high-DPI support, rotation, etc).

Similarly: the new little round "start" button is cool, but it forces the GPU to perform a non-rectangular clipping operation, when it overlaps a maximized window. This has been seen to cause performance problems in some lower-end graphics hardware (the kind found in some older laptops and tablets). If you notice an application responding more slowly when it's maximized, try this simple remedy: resize your taskbar so it's at least 2 rows tall (or dock it vertically to the right or left edge) so that it joins flushly to the working area of your desktop.

That's all for now... any other good tips to share? Leave us a comment, or a trackback!

Improve Your Tablet PC Experience with Windows Vista

shawnvn — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 21:55:00 GMT

Terri Stratton [MVP] wrote an excellent summary (with copious screenshots!) of the improved user-experience Vista offers on Tablet PC:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/community/improvetabletpc.mspx

And for developers... our own Eliot Graff has written a similar high-level overview of what's new:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/editorial/2006-07/default.aspx

Shawn Van Ness | Program Manager | Tablet PC Platform

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/products/getthebeta/

Tablet PC Team — Tue, 23 May 2006 23:52:00 GMT

The title URL says it all -- Windows Vista Beta 2 is on the way out the door!

Shawn Van Ness | Program Manager | Tablet PC Platform, WinFX Team

Windows Vista Feb 2006 CTP Rocks on Tablet PC!

Tablet PC Team — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 07:33:00 GMT

When we first started this blog, last summer, Beta 1 of Windows Vista had just become available. Looking back, it seems we had to make a lot of noise about how to get Windows Vista bits working on Tablet PC. Wow, what a difference a Beta makes!

Actually, we're still some time away from a formal "Beta 2" release, but I feel somebody should report on our progress… we released a new CTP a few weeks ago (Feb 2006) which is a snapshot of our Beta 2 work -- available for download by MSDN Subscribers -- and if I may say so, the overall experience on my Tablet PC is really quite nice.

For starters, everything's there -- the cool new Input Panel, which docks to the side of the screen. Pen Flicks (which greatly mitigates the pain of using a scrollbar with a stylus). Journal and InkBall are there. Ink Watson and Handwriting Personalization. Support for Network Projection. And there's Mobility Center, a one-stop-shop for managing power settings and sync'ing files. Also, a special surprise -- a lightweight version of the Snipping Tool powertoy is now included and installed by default, on Windows Vista! (Just start/run "SnippingTool", and have at it!)

Well, almost everything's there -- we're still missing a complete driver story, for all makes and models. And I don't get Aero Glass effects on my Toshiba M200. And screen rotation still isn't ironed out. These things will come, in time. But for the most part, all the critical drivers (display, networking, etc) for my M200 were installed and working just fine, when my system emerged from setup. (If you tried earlier CTPs but were put off by the difficulty of finding/installing drivers, try the Feb 2006 build. No guarantees, but you're likely to be pleasantly surprised -- I was!)

Perhaps what's most amazing, is this: I now no longer feel the need to revert to Windows XP, to get work done from day to day. In fact, I just "took the plunge" and removed XP from my Toshiba M200 -- Windows Vista Feb 2006 CTP is now my OS of choice! Office 2003 works great. Visual Studio 2005 works great. All my favorite games work great...

The performance of the Feb CTP build is not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of where it was, in previous CTPs. True, there are still some bad actors (the disk defragger and search indexer services like to run, when I'm on battery :-). But overall, the system is very usable -- and perf will continue to improve, as we march onward to the next Beta, and beyond...

Update: I forgot to mention a few features: Windows SideShow (not to be confused with Windows SideBar, which is something else) is a cool new technology in Vista. Not strictly Tablet-specific, but it's cool. Follow the link for more info, and cool demos!

Also, I left out one of my favorite new features: the enhanced stylus cursor feedback. (The pointer changes when you use a stylus, in lieu of a mouse, and it's animated to provide subtle feedback when you tap, or press the barrel button.)

Shawn Van Ness | Program Manager | Tablet PC Platform, WinFX Team