Blog:: Craig Pringle

Great news – yours truly is confirmed as a speaker for TechEd New Zealand.  My session is titled “Getting Started With Tablet Development” and my main goals for the session are:

1)      Introduce developers to the tools ad resources they need to get started with Tablet Development.

2)      Get more developers enthused about the tablet PC as a platform.

The only bummer is the timeslot that I currently have allocated – 9a.m. the morning after the party!  Looks like I won’t be cutting loose this year.  That could still change so here’s hoping!

Sadly – for those of you in NZ – if you have not already registered for TechEd then you are missing out this year as the event is sold out.  Is it just me or is there a need for a bigger purpose built conference venue in New Zealand?  I vote for building one in Wellington!

Darren over at Tablet Minds provided this space saving tip in a comment to an earlier post:

“One thing I use is TrayIt (http://www.teamcti.com/trayit/trayit.htm). It allows you to send programs into the tray, and you double click them to restore them. This is great for Lotus Notes, which I have to have open all the time, but won't minimize to the tray. With TrayIt, it will. Now I don't have to suffer with Notes hogging a spot on my taskbar when it isn't in use.”

Sounds like TrayIt could be useful for any app you need to have open in the background all day. Great tip!

Outlook, for those that use it, provides a native way to do this. Simply right-click the icon in the systems tray and select “hide when minimized”. When you minimize Outlook there will be no icon on the Task Bar, just the icon in the System Tray.

Einstein Technologies has released the long awaited new version of Tablet Enhancements for Outlook - TEO 3.0. This is a great Outlook Add-in and will be a huge help to heavy Outlook users. There is a 15-day free trial available and I recommend giving it a try.

Tablet Enhancements for Outlook is an add-in for Microsoft Outlook® 2003 and 2007 that turns the popular personal information manager into a fully pen-enabled application on your Tablet PC, UMPC, or Origami device. TEO 3.0 replaces Outlook's standard UI with fully ink-enabled forms and lets you write and keep your notes in your own handwriting. No synchronization required.

If you want to learn more GBM has posted an Exclusive chat with developer Josh Einstein, so check out the GBM Audio Ink Show.

Josh Einstein, creator of Tablet Enhancements for Outlook (TEO), sent me this tip…

"If you want to add TEO to your list of tweaks, you can use the TEO tab settings to squeeze out a little bit more vertical screen real estate. By settings the tabs to the left or right (in Tools -> Options) TEO will fit better on wide-screen devices such as 800x480 Origami devices.”

Great tip for Origamis Josh!

In Part One of this series I suggested disabling the TIP icon because lets face it – taskbar real estate is a scarce resource.

As much as I love ActiveWords I don’t like the default placement of the inkpad icon. The good news is you can change it.

I un-dock the Ink Pad icons and configure it to be semi transparent. To do this:

1.       Right-click the Ink Pad icon in the System Tray (not the big one on the Taskbar)

2.       Select Undock

3.       Right-click the Ink Pad icon in the System Tray

4.       Select settings

5.       Adjust the transparency to suit. You may also want to change the “show Inkpad on” setting to Click.

By default this puts the inkpad in the top left corner but I find it gets in the way of menus there. I prefer it towards the bottom right corner. To move it:

1.       Right-click the Ink Pad icon in the System Tray (again!)

2.       Select Show size handles

3.       This puts two white boxes on your floating Ink Pad icon. Dragging the top left one moves the icon, dragging the other one resizes it.

The other tweak I perform for ActiveWords is to Hide the monitor bar.Just right click the ActiveWords icon and select AWMonitorBar > Hide monitor bar

I’m looking at how to tweak the OS and applications so that they make the best use of the small screen on my LS800.  In part 1 I looked at the OS and in Part 2 I looked at one of my favorite application – Mind Manager.  In this post I’ll look at how to make the best use of the space in Office 2007 (Beta 2) and IE7 (Beta 2) and a few other bits.

Outlook – the “Shell”

In Outlook speak the shell is the main window – i.e. when you are not editing a message, appointment or other item.  It is to Outlook’s great credit that there is not much tweaking to do here.  I often use Outlook as an example of how to write an app for mobile PCs.  Why?  That will need to be another post

However there are some things to do – especially when working in portrait mode.  Don’t forget that you can minimize the folders pane and the new “To-Do Bar” this will give you a lot more room to skim your messages on the go.

Portrait mode before

Portrait mode after:

Other Office Apps

There are a couple of things that are common to the core Office 2007 applications that are also of use for the smaller screen tablet user.  Firstly is the Ribbon interface – or rather getting rid of it.  If you need a bit more space to work in a document (this also applies to composing email messages in Outlook) you can reduce the amount of space that the new Ribobn interface takes up.  If you double-tap a tab the ribbon will “minimise” to just a row of tabs.  Just double tap again to restore the ribbon interface.

Before:

After:

Another handy feature that is common to the core Office 2007 applications is the zoom slider.  Located in the lower right hand corner this slider can be used to quickly zoom in and out in a document.  I find that because of the low resolution of the LS800 I can zoom out to about 70% and it is still quite readable, but I fit a bit more text on the screen.  Sadly the zoom slider is not included in the message reading window in Outlook.

One Note 207

OneNote 2007 includes a fantastic feature.  There is a button on the tool bar that, with one click, maximises the writing area.

The screenshot below shows where the horizontal edge of the writing area is on the LS800 in the following modes:

·         Standard Portrait Mode

·         Portrait mode with folder pane hidden

·         Portrait mode maxed

·         Landscape mode

·         Landscape with no folders

·         Landscape maxed

My favorite mode for note taking is portrait maxed and as you can see it offers more width than landscape with the folders showing (and much more height of course).

Live Messenger

I have seen people struggling away to enter ink into Messenger at its standard size.  Don’t forget you can resize or maximise the window!

IE

The absolute best feature in IE7 for users of a small screen tablet is the zoom tool.  Don’t just take my word for it Kevin Tofel has fount the same thing on his Samsung Q1.  Read about Kevin’s Favorite IE 7 feature for UMPCs

Ditto.

In Part  1 of this series I looked at tweaking the tablet OS to work better on my LS800.  But the OS is just the tip of the iceberg.  After all I have often said that it is the applications that make the tablet a powerful tool.  In this post I’ll look at tweaking Mind Manager for the small screen tablet.

I love mind mapping on a tablet. It is such a natural way to formulate and flesh out your ideas. However it can be a bit hard getting Big Picture on a small screen. Can do to give you a bit  more room to work.

Maximize your working area

 That if you switch into pen mode in Mind Manager that it will close a couple of toolbars to give you more room. In fact you can take this a bit further. Once you havce a map open you don’t need the taskpane, so close that.  Next there is full screen mode, which you can activate with this button on the standard toolbar.

But wait, there’s more… Once you are in full screen mode you canclaim back a little more space by turning off the remaining toolbars. Right-dish on a toolbar and clear the checks next to each of the toolbars as shown below. When you are in full flight building a map, you don’t need them.

Lastly you can reclaim another bit chunk along the bottom edge by turning off the workbook tabs.  I rarely work in multiple maps at the same time so I am happy to do this.  I no other Mind Manager users who would not even consider it.  To do this:

1.       From the Tools Menu select Options…

2.       Ensure View is selected

3.       Clear the Workbooks Tabs checkbox as shown below

Once you have done all of that you will have heaps more room to work in.  Here’s what it looks like before the modifications:

And here is what it looks like after the modifications – at the same zoom level:

Now that you have more space to work in, you can configure Mind Manager to make the best use of it.

Reduce font size for topic text

For topics that have been converted to text you can make them smaller by dropping the font size.  As with the TIP the default settings are not optimised for the relatively low resolution of the LS800.  The default setting was 14pt.  I have droped it down to 10pt.  Here’s how:

1.       Right click a topic with text (as opposed to ink) in it and select font.

2.       Select the desired settings

3.       Click the dorpdown next to Style and select Save as New Style Default as shown below.

Select extra  fine pen

To give youself more room to write in ink entry mode you can drop the stroke size of the pen.  Note that this only effects ink that is entered in topics – not the strokes that are displayed when performing a gesture.  To do this (you must be in Pen mode):

1.       If you have gotten rid of the Formatting Menu as described above you will need to bring it back.  Right-click the Menu Bar and check Formatting.

2.       Double-tap a topic to enter ink entry mode

3.       Click the dropdown next to the pen in the bottom left corner of the Formatting bar

4.       Select “Extra Fine”

Reduce size of ink after it is entered.

Another useful strategy is to reduce the size of ink after it has been entered.  The trick is to find the setting that works best for you.  The goal is to be as small as possible and still readable.  To configure:

1.       Select Tools > Options…

2.       Select Tablet PC

3.       Adjust the value in the Reduce size of ink in map (in %) to suit.

I ended up setting mine to 50% - YMMV.  You can also adjust the size of the ink entry field.  I found the default value worked for me.

Pan  &  Zoom tool

When working in a map on a small tablet it is a given that you will only be able to see a small portion at one time.  A useful tool is provided to quickly navigate large maps.  The way this works is quite simple.  There is a small menu bar that floats over your map – you can reposition it to suit.  As you move the mouse pointer over this a box appears below it that has a thmbnail of the whole map with a rectangle that indicates the bit you are looking at now.  You can drag this rectangle around the panning window and your view is adjsuted acordingly.  You can also resize the rectangle to zoom in or out.  Very handy.  To toggle this tool on or off you just select Pan and Zoom from the View menu.

I have slowly been moving my life over to the LS800 that i-Toyz provided to me. I was a bit apprehensive about using a device with such a small screen but it has not been as limiting as I had feared.  There are of course some limitations, particularly around the screen resolution. However with a little tweaking you can squeeze a little bit more out of a small screen tablet.

About the LS800

I first reviewed the LS800 last August and it is a sweet machine. It tips the scales at just 1 KG (2.2 lbs) and is so portable but some of the side effects of the portability of the LS800 present some challenges. Specifically:

·         8.4 inch screen

·         Screen Resolution

o   800x600 in landscape

o   600x800 in Portrait

Of course, the LS800 is no longer the only tiny tablet. Many of these tweaks will also be applicable to Origami devices and other UMPCs. Some of these may even be of use on larger tablets. You could also reverse some of these if you are running a hi-res tablet. I encourage you to experiment.

Tablet OS tweaks

Small icons on start menu

In order to fit more icons on the Start Menu it pays to configure the menu to use small icons.

Before:

After:

To do this:

1)      Right click the Start button and select properties on the context menu.

2)      In the Task Bar and Start Menu Properties dialog select the Start Menu tab.

3)      Click the Customize button next to Start Menu

4)      Select Small icons

Tablet Input Panel

Ink strokes are measured in pixels, so a relatively low resolution like 800x600 makes the pen strokes seem quite fat. This causes you to write bigger than you need to, limiting how much you can fit on a line. You can tweak the TIP to give you a bit more writing space.

Set Pen to "extra fine"

One really easy win on a small form factor tablet is to change the pen used in the TIP from the default setting of fine to extra fine. You will need to do this for both the character pad and the writing pad. To do this:

1)      On the TIP click the drop down next to the little gear wheel on the right hand side of the TIP and select Options…

2)      On the Character Pad tab select Extra fine in the Ink Thickness dropdown.

3)      Repeat this on the Writing Pad tab.

Reduce Size of Writing Areas

While you are messing with the TIP you can tweak it further. By reducing the spacing in the Character Pad and Writing Pad you force yourself to write a bit smaller. While this is obvious in the case of the former I find it works for the latter too. You will need to experiment to find as size that works for you. To adjust the Character Pad:

1)      On the TIP click the drop down next to the little gear wheel on the right hand side of the TIP and select Options…

2)      On the Character Pad tab adjust the slider and click OK.

After a bit of trail and error you will find something that works for you. I’ve got mine configured as below.

The difference this makes is quite noticeable.

As mentioned above you can also repeat this on the Writing Pad tab.  You may need to experiment a bit to find a setting that works for you.  The change is less noticeable  on the Writing Pad, though by reducing the height of the space above the base line you are forced to write smaller, which allows you to fit more on the line.

Consider removing TIP icon

Space on the Taskbar can be a scarce resource, especially when you work in Portrait mode.  I like to turn off the TIP icon, though not everyone will like this.

To disable the TIP click Start >Run… and enter the text below exactly as it appears.

regsvr32 /u "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll"

The next time you restart the TIP icon will be gone.  If that is too scary the command to put it back is almost the same:

regsvr32  "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll"

Again the changes will not take effect until you restart.

If you do turn this off you need some other way of launching the TIP.  You can assign a hardware button to launch the TIP in the Tablet and Pen Settings control panel applet if you like.  My preferred option though – also configured in the Tablet and Pen Settings applet – is to use a gesture to launch the tip.  This is enabled by default so if you wave the tip of the pen left to right just above the surface of the screen the TIP will appear.  You can fine tune the gesture by:

1.       Launch the Tablet and Pen Settings applet in the Control Panel.

2.       Select the Pen Options tab

3.       In the list of Pen Actions select Start Input Panel Gesture and click settings.

4.       Adjust the slider to configure the size of the gesture.

Steve over at carrypad.com links to pictures of the eo extended battery, which are now on the TabletKiosk site.

I’m still working through the process of getting the LS800 set up just so.  In the process of what I was doing this evening I needed to mark up a PDF and I realized I had not installed PDF Annotator yet.  I have a license for it so I grabbed my external hard drive with all my migration data on it to install… and it’s not on there.

No problem – I’ll just shoot over to www.ograhl.com and download it.  Oh wait – that’s not there either.  Not even a 404 error, just a connection refused message served up by my proxy server.  Panic starts to set in…

I’m hoping this is just a temporary outage – I’ll check back in the morning and see if the site is there.