How can we use Touch Keyboard Windows 7 tabtip.exe with Windows 8?

Question

Is there a way that the touch keyboard tabtip.exe (not on-screen keyboard osk.exe) to be programmed in windows 8 to operate like the windows 7 touch keyboard tabtip.exe?

I find the win7 touchscreen keyboard can be reduced in size smaller than the win8 version. Also a small "keyboard" icon automatically appears near a text field when I hover my cursor over a text input field. When I click on that icon the touch keyboard appears allowing me to type. When I move to another area of the display, the touch screen keyboard disappears. How nice that Win7 version is for my use!

In Win8, the tabtip.exe touch keyboard does not have the ability to be a smaller size like the win7 tabtip.exe.

Does anyone any suggestions for a smaller touch screen keyboard for my pc tablet? Or is there a way I can use a third-party type that can make a touch keyboard appear automatically when I insert my cursor into a text input field (such as username input fields)?

Answer 1

I do agree with all of the comments below, we need a way to adjust the size of the touch Keyboard !!!

I just bought an incredible touch Screen a Dell S2340T It's of course a 23 inch Screen that you can move into any position, I connected my new Surface Pro II to it and finally decided to forget about the physical keyboard and mouse and try only the touch screen.

Well my surprise is that I am not able to write on it, the Keyboard is so big that I needed to move my fingers around my big screen which caused making mistakes 90% of the time. Even if I split the screen to reduce the size of my app the keyboard is not reduced.

Unfortunately as much as I love my new touch screen and my Surface Pro II I had to connect the USB keyboard and mouse back.

Disappointed... Yes, probably a physical keyboard with a touch pad and my old screen might work better than my touch screen.

Let's hope Microsoft consider this change into future Windows 8 Service Packs or versions.

Jorge.

Answer 2

I know this is a pretty old thread but it still shows up when googling for tabtip replacements so I thought I'd let you know:

Per an earlier poster I'm currently using MyScript Stylus, which I'm liking better than tabtip anyway. The only problem with it is that it only pop-ups when tapping the tray icon, with no easy way to make it pop up when using the alternate pen button like tabtip does.

If anyone here is familiar with AutoHotkey, however, you can assign the pen button to a keyboard shortcut, then override that shortcut with the below code, mimicing Tabtip's functionality. I'm pasting that code below in case it helps anyone who knows what to do with it:

MyscriptStylusToggle:

  DetectHiddenWindows, On

  WinGet, pid, PID, MyScript Stylus

  WinGet, mslist, List, ahk_pid %pid%

  Loop, %mslist% {

    id := mslist%A_Index%

    SendMessage, 0x8065,0,0x201,, ahk_id %id%

    SendMessage, 0x8065,0,0x202,, ahk_id %id%

  }

return