Invoking the Keyboard in the Windows Phone 7 Emulator
I have been trying out the Windows Phone 7 SDK off and on since it was released this past March during MIX. There is one thing about the Windows Phone 7 Emulator that was driving me nuts and that is the onscreen keyboard. For example I really do not have the patience to move my mouse and click to negotiate tying URLs in the browser.
I mentioned this during my Philly Code Camp session on mobile web development and was told I could press the BREAK key. I was excited, till I looked down and realized my modern laptop does not have a BREAK key. Well short of finding a 15 year old PS/2 keyboard I was not deterred and eventually, with the help of some other community folks have solved the problem.
Pressing CTRL+Page Up in fact enables the computer’s keyboard as input to the Windows Phone 7 Emulator! This is a huge time saver for development because now I can just enter text as I normally would or at least almost normally. Copy and Pasting does not work. I think this might be more because the OS does not support copy paste operations.
But just because you can now enter text using the computer’s keyboard does NOT give you license to not consider your end user’s on screen keyboard limitations. One of the most important mobile usability features all mobile applications, native or web, should do is offer solid auto-complete and other visual guides to shorten the input process. My frustration with the on screen keyboard should make you realize even more just how frustrated users will be when your application requires them to type mice sized keys with their Green Giant fingers. So you should architect your applications to minimize this frustration. In fact I think this is one of those design opportunities to be creative in how you collect user input.