To support
alphanumeric entries using touch, Windows 8 comes with a greatly
enhanced touch keyboard. In previous versions of Windows, this feature
was primarily used as an Ease of Access tool and was referred to as the
on-screen keyboard. In Windows 8, the touch keyboard comes in three
basic flavors, two of which are much more useful when you’re working
with your fingers:
• The QWERTY keyboard, in either a docked or floating form
• A split keyboard that is primarily
useful when holding a tablet or cell phone with both hands, because it
allows for thumb input
• A pen input keypad that is useful when you are using a tablet that comes with a stylus or digital pen
When you are working on a tablet or phone,
chances are that the current application will automatically display the
split keyboard when you need it. You can work with all the types of
touch keyboards on the Desktop. However, there are no commands on the
Computer Management menu for the touch keyboards, nor does the
tile-based Start screen come with a tile that activates it. So the
quickest way to work with the touch keyboard is to enable the touch
keyboard toolbar that lives on the Desktop taskbar.
To open the touch keyboard
1. Right-click the Desktop taskbar, select the Toolbars command, and then select Touch Keyboard from the submenu .
When you select Toolbars > Touch Keyboard, the touch keyboard icon appears at the bottom right.
2. Tap or click the touch keyboard icon to display the touch keyboard in the state that it was in when you last opened it.
shows the touch keyboard fully maximized across the bottom of the screen.
The touch keyboard toolbar in its QWERTY form and docked
To display the split keyboard
Tap or click the Change Keyboard Type button, and then click the split keyboard icon . The split keyboard displays .
The Change Keyboard Type menu with the split keyboard icon selected
The split keyboard in its undocked state
The split keyboard is particularly useful on a tablet because you can use your thumbs to type on it.
The two icons to the right of the split keyboard icon are the Pen Input
panel icon and the minimize keyboard icon. The minimize keyboard icon
removes the touch keyboard from view. The Pen Input panel converts your
pen (or finger) input into characters .
The Pen Input panel takes your handwriting and automatically converts it into alphanumeric keyboard entries.
Tip
Windows 8 ships with a speech recognition
feature as part of the Ease of Access toolset. To open and use this
feature, enter “speech recognition” into the Search function and open
the Speech Recognition control panel. Speech is useful for screen
navigation, voice commands, and many other functions, but not for speech
dictation. For that function you will need to use a program such as
Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
