Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Surface Digital Pen is Awesome – here’s why (featuring Toolbar Creator)”.
Welcome to surface sessions, I’m Robin Vincent and today going to revisit the awesomeness of the Microsoft digital pen, and I want to try to get across to you why. I think this is one of the most exciting things about the Microsoft Surface. The Microsoft digital pen sets it apart from any other windows-based tablet or hybrid, and it was someone’s little stroke of genius, but probably not for the reasons that Microsoft tell you they’ve been doing some cool marketing recently, where they demonstrate exactly how awesome the pen is in The right app, my favorite feature of the service pattern is the fact that it feels and looks like a real pen and as silly as that sounds is really important. The way it feels in your hand, Beethoven Bach Mozart, you name it they all wrote.
The same is also great because I can use it in Photoshop and an illustrator as opposed to using the mouse and the keyboard. So as a scientist baking, one click into one note and recall all my notes, as well as to be able to write equation. They’Ve. Also just brought the company that makes the digital pen, so all of that tells me that Microsoft are very committed to the idea of the digital pen remaining in the surface DNA and that’s pretty exciting. I like that, but Microsoft’s focus appears to lie within these specialist apps that are sort of designed and tailored for the pen.
However, what they seem to have missed is that the pen has a secret gift, a sort of unexplored function, which is to make non touch Phnom Penh, regular desktop software usable on a tablet. But once you start getting into desktop software like Cubase or reason or Ableton Live, you can become frustrated very quickly, trying to use your fingers to navigate your way through menus or to operate GUI controls, but not with the pen. The pen can very quickly take on the role of the mouse and once you’ve got used to it, you find yourself just flowing all over the place in some areas, particularly in the drawing of automation or the entering of notes into memory. The pen has a distinct advantage and I even find myself discovering handwriting recognition and being surprised at how well that works.
So with the surface pro 3. The way I’m using the software has changed. I’Ve moved beyond the constraints of the keyboard and the trackpad, and I’m using my fingers and the pen to easily navigate my way around desktop software.
Now, it’s not all perfect. Well, not yet once in tablet mode. The biggest loss when you’re using creative software is all your keyboard shortcuts and although the on-screen keyboard supply this to a degree, it takes up a whole load of the screen and prevent you from seeing what you’re doing. Of course, you can use the pen to access menus or you can tap and hold in order to bring up the right click menu, but this drastically increases the amount of time it takes to perform very simple actions so simply to copy a folder on the desktop. I have to tap and hold to bring out the right-click menu, go to copy and then tap and hold paste.
No, so what window so desperately needs is some kind of shortcut toolbar that complements the pen, something that can that can hover at the side of the screen, something that can give you customizable buttons and keyboard shortcuts. You know copy and paste is an obvious one, but there’s lots of other commands that you might want to use within your creative software like bringing up the mixer or bringing up the inputs or changing into draw mode or edit mode or select mode or delete mode. Splitting mode, all those kind of things which you would have to access through top level menus would be so much easier if you could just poke at a toolbar, and this would release you from having to ferret around inside the menus and there wouldn’t massively improve your Workflow now, thankfully, there is a piece of software which does exactly that and it’s made by something like in his spare time and it’s called toolbar creator. It is absolutely brilliant and I urge anyone who has a surface to go and get hold of it. It allows you to create pretty much any sort of menu you like with any sort of keyboard shortcut. So here’s a very simple one. I’Ve got a move button at the top, so I can move it about and place it wherever I want to on the screen. I think got copy paste, undo, ctrl, alt and shift which are toggled on and off.
So when I go back to the idea of copying and pasting folder on the desktop, I can just tap on something copy paste and it’s there. I can undo that PC was that, but if you compare a very simple action by copying from a webpage onto it onto a document, see I’m quite loving the handwriting recognition that actually works far better than I ever thought. It would another reason why you don’t want to use the on-screen keyboard because it does that to your windows. I hate that.
Why does it do that? Why doesn’t it go back to how it was? I’Ve now got eyes, that’s just major-league frustrating. So anyway, let’s find some text and let’s open up WordPad. So traditionally you select some text. I can now go to a menu.
I can’t remember where it is, or I would tap and wait copy then go into my document here: tap and wait paste. The tapping and holding thing is never great. You know it’s very easy for that, not to actually work and not to happen, but using my my toolbar here you know I select I press copy. I come here.
I press paste door, that’s just so so easy and that’s just from the easiest toolbar in the world. Similarly, you know, as I talked about moving things around here, a copy in a PC, and I can also hold ctrl and copy and paste that way. Total control on and off, or do that with, I want to select lots of different things together. You know, we all know how this stuff works.
I don’t need to explain that to you, but without some kind of little toolbar like that, those actions are really difficult to do with the pen, not difficult as such they’re just laborious and take a bit of time. The toolbar creator is enormous, leave versatile. It’S got an editor which is pretty simple. You have settings on how big it is.
You can make it a lot bigger if needs be or transparency, so things show through very easily which is pretty cool, and then you choose your individual buttons here. You can replace them all with with graphics and they’re, not just text, and you can select your button and then tell we tell it what you want it to be the hot key. Don’T it to toggle Georgia Capri defines got a whole bunch of predefined stuff.
In here – and you just stick in what you want it to be, and you can design a toolbar to be as crazy or as complicated or as simple as you want it to be, and off you go it’s an awesome bit of software created by the link. Is in the description I want you’re using it, your workflow just just kind of expands and the beauty of the pen becomes kind of gloriously evident, and it’s not just that, because even if you don’t have the pen, even if you have a regular touchscreen tablet, this Sort of thing is so useful because of everything that I’ve said: it’s just bonkers, that it’s not part of Windows. So what I’ve done is that I’ve created a couple of toolbars with different pieces of software, so I’ve gone, Ableton Live 1 and a reason.
3. Let’S go and have a look, so I’m just select, it was alive, made it a bit smaller. I’Ve also made it transparent so that I can see projects through it, which seems to make some kind of sense. So, with my toolbar here, there’s some very simple things. I got, I can add an audio track. I can add a MIDI track.
I can add a scene which is what’s happening over here with the pen in order to to draw notes in because it’s automatically in select mode I’ll have to go to options draw mode, and now I can do that. However, with my toolbar over here, I can just turn it on off. As simply as that open up a project, you know I can turn the mixer on and off. I can turn the browser on and off all of that stuff.
Of course you can finger in here and you can get things to work, but it’s a little bit hit-and-miss to say the least, whether with the pen, your bang on every time. But if you look at automation, for instance over here, get rid of that browser. I can go into draw mode, let’s go to volume and I can write that in like so very easy. I can also do it with my finger, but the pen makes it more.
One thing I don’t have on here is snap to grid, so I can go to the menu and turn that off. Then you can see like and draw immense bits and pieces. Let’S do that all the way down – and this is stuff which is actually quite difficult. It’S what difficult to do with a mouse but more awkward than that to do with a mouse, and then, if I play this bit back, that’s now moving all the mixer parts up and down over here today.
So the pen is enormous, ly helpful in accessing all of the controls on something which is not designed for pen or touch. I’Ve got another one for reason. That’S ever look at that: let’s bring up a demo a song, so I can easily hide the toolbar if it’s in the way. Oh, it’s just so easy, but you know in here: let’s move it over this side, so we can see a bit more. I can bring up the rack and bring up the mixer. I can turb things backwards and forwards bring the sequencer back.
I can go into whatever mode I like you know. I can move things around on here brilliantly with the pen I can copy and I can paste I can duplicate. In fact I think yes, I can there are. I can undo that, let’s undo a cup of those, I can go in double click that will tap whatever you want to call it and have a look here, and it was even a little bit.
I select my pencil tool and I can add more notes or I can draw in a velocity curve here. I can get involved intimately in the after touch profile using the pen. You know I can sort of do that with a finger, but nowhere near as accurately, whereas with the pen you know, let’s go back to the mixer. Look at the size of these knobs.
I mean it’s impossible. Are you ever going to get in there without being able to see anything cuz your fingers in the way, whereas with a pen, it’s just perfect, and this is a perfect example of. Why is the pen that enables desktops or we’re to work on the surface, to make it comfortable? Let’S go to the rack what whole load of stuff tab through the back. I have to use my finger over here to move things around, but then to rewire it with the pen.
Yes, you would have to do that with a mouse. You can’t really deal with your finger because you end up moving things by accident. Oh did that one right did that one alright, but otherwise to get to all of these shortcuts, I’m having to go up here and go options edit, it edit knows a file tab, create no options: Oh toggle, toggle front and rear there. You go guys with the pen, I’m straight in I’m doing stuff come down here.
I’M writing notes in. But it’s only when you combine the pen with something like this, that the workflow really works and it becomes more than a tablet. It becomes more than a touchscreen device, it becomes a working computer because I can use proper software properly with the right tools, which is what you want in it. That’S what you want. So, of course, staff pad is awesome. You’Ve just got Bo to write properly, so without the pen the surface just becomes a regular tablet with all the same frustration of trying to finger desktop software.
You know it can be done, but it’s not a joyful experience, but with the pen desktop software suddenly becomes accessible and usable, which is currently unique to the surface. Once you combine that with the toolbar you get this unparalleled workflow, which of course, naturally increases your productivity. That’S why the pen is so awesome because it allows you to use the surface successfully with any kind of software until next time. Please subscribe.
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