The Misadventures of Quinxy von Besiex truths, lies, and everything in between

Free Software for Touch / Tablet / UMPC (and the Viliv S10 Blade)

I've created a collection of little apps to help you get the most out of your touch, tablet, and UMPC.  My current device is the Viliv S10 Blade so some of the apps below are for the software installed on Viliv devices, but others will work for any platform.

The Viliv S10 Blade is a great piece of hardware, but like my OQO Model 02 before it, the usability of these small touch devices suffers from a lack of customized apps!  I've been writing a bunch of little utilities to help make the customizations necessary to improve the usability, especially for using as a touch-based tablet.

I'm working on more free items which I'm still testing before release, so subscribe or come back to see when they come out.

Free Software Included in the BesiexTouchPack.zip

Below are descriptions of the software apps included. There's no malware, viruses, or anything. There is as yet no installer, and it's beta software. If your computer bursts into flames or somehow makes your computer sentient you have my sympathy but it's on you, bud.

Viliv Specific

FastWeb Launcher

The FastWeb browser Viliv included with the S10 is a pretty good touch friendly browser, but it's only really usable at 800x600 with a landscape orientation.  Switching your screen resolution and rotation every time you want to use the FastWeb browser is a pain...  until now.  I wrote a little program that first changes your resolution and rotation then runs FastWeb, and restores your original resolution and rotation when you exit FastWeb.  (Note: It currently only returns to 0 or 90 degree orientation.)

VilivPlayer Launcher

The VilivPlayer suffers from the same resolution and rotation expectations as FastWeb, so I made a similar wrapper to set and restore the resolution and rotation before and after launching VilivPlayer.

For Any Tablet, Touch, UMPC

Resolution & Rotation Changers

The Viliv S10 Blade lacks any external buttons or accelerometers, so changing resolution or orientation is a pain in the ass!  So I wrote a few little executables you can use as shortcuts to switch to the given resolutions/rotations!  I have included the resolution and orientation combinations I use most frequently.

I personally use these with the great free RocketDock and Stacks Docklet to let me easily change orientations any time using only touches.  I'll post more info on my setup later.

Resolution exes included:

• res_600w_800h_32b_60hz.exe (portrait)
• res_768w_1366h_32b_60hz.exe (portrait)
• res_800w_600h_32b_60hz.exe (landscape)
• res_1024w_768h_32b_60hz.exe (landscape)
• res_1366w_768h_32b_60hz.exe  (landscape)

Toggle Touch Pointer

If you use your finger and not the stylus you will probably find many times when it's hard to click on exactly what you meant.  There is a feature buried in Windows 7 called “Touch Pointer” which when enabled offsets the mouse pointer from where your finger touches, and also gives you the representation of a virtual mouse you can use for moving and clicking.  In some situations it is truly useful.  But it is NOT something you want to use all the time, and they have not given you any easy way to enable or disable it.  You need to navigate into a specific tab in the control panel, click a checkbox, and click OK.  Too much of a pain to actually bother with more than a few times.  But this feature is sometimes the only way to interact with hard to deal with touches when you don't want to use a stylus.

I created a little app which toggles this feature on and off, just by running the app!  The app uses the AutoHotKey macro language to quickly do all the clicking I'd need to otherwise do by hand.  There was no more elegant solution I could easily create.  I did try to improve it by making the control panel portions invisible during the operation, but sadly that didn't work.  So my final solution is one click, but you do briefly see the control panel dialog flash on the screen as it makes the change.

RocketDock Revealer

As I mentioned, I use the awesome and free RocketDock (with Stacks Docklet) to easily access anything I want via touch.  While RocketDock has an autohide option it's tough to get it to reveal itself since touching (at least with a finger) along the screen edge is rarely successful.  So I wrote an app which uses the default RocketDock hide/reveal hotkey to control its visibility.  You run RocketDock as you normally do, then run RocketDockRevealer.exe.  It will then hide your RocketDock window.  To make it visible again just do a triple tap anywhere on the screen (tap three times quickly), and the RocketDock window will reveal itself for 5 seconds, then hide again.

Firefox Fullscreen

Run this little app to toggle Firefox's full screen mode.  I use this in RocketDock to let me easily go into and out of fullscreen Firefox.

Download Now Version 1.0 (1.9 MB)