By Nathan Weinberg
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-12-19
The soft keyboard, or the on-screen keyboard, has long been a sore spot for Windows Mobile.
Even attempts lately at literally ripping off the iPhone's keyboard have been mostly failures, since merely going with a bolder design does not make up for the fact that the iPhone's keyboard is accompanied by good software, not just good looks. CooTek believes it has the answer, with their new TouchPal keyboard, and it is currently available for a limited time as a free download.
As shown in the video below, TouchPal works by having easy to hit, large buttons with multiple keys mapped to them. Hit the button, then slide your finger to indicate which key on the button you are entering. For example, to enter the letter E, you'd hit the ER button, then slide your finger to the left to select the E. To get a capital E, you slide your finger up, to indicate caps, then left for E. You can also forget about the sliding, and let the word predictions do all the work for you. You can even re-order the placement of buttons on the keyboard by dragging and dropping them into place.
Once installed, reboot your device (turn off, then on) and click the keyboard icon when inputting text on your Windows Mobile device. Tap the arrow next to the keyboard icon and select TouchPal. Try as I might, I can't get the damn thing to run on my device, but at least I've got it downloaded free until I figure it out.
(via Jason Langridge)
Comments About the Author: Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
