Somewhere around six years ago I discovered a very cool piece of software. It's called OnScreen and it's a virtual keyboard that allows the user to type using their mouse pointer rather than their fingers. A virtual keyboard acts just like your standard keyboard. The only difference is that the virtual keyboard appears on your screen rather than being one that you have to touch in order to activate.
When I first discovered OnScreen there was a 14 day trial available and I was very excited about that because I didn't have the ability to afford it at the time. It had a lot of cool features that I had been looking for for some time in a virtual keyboard but had been unable to find up until that point. I used it very enthusiastically until the 14 day trial expired, at the end of which I knew I was going to have it at some point! It was so well thought out and so well designed that I knew I just didn't want to be without it!
Well, approximately six years have gone by, and I was just recently able to afford it! Having the full program is even better than having the demonstration version because working with the demonstration version meant that it was closing every hour which meant that if I was using it, I would have to stop whatever I was doing every hour to reopen it. While having to do this wasn't the end of the world, it was more than a little annoying. Not only that, but having the full version has allowed me to find new features that I hadn't found when I had the demonstration version. They were probably there all along, but when I had the demonstration version I was more focused on determining whether it was going to fit my needs in terms of helping me type quicker and more efficiently than I was customizing it. Now that I know that it fits my criteria for typing, I've been able to do a lot more customization which has actually sped up my typing even more.
Let me give you some quick examples of some of my favorite features.
First there is the WordCompletion feature. This is a feature in which the keyboard will pop up a list of five possible words that you may be trying to type based on the letters that you have already typed. If you happen to see the word that you want, you simply select it from the word list and OnScreen finishes typing the word for you. This can be especially helpful for longer words. One of the cool things that goes along with this feature is the fact that there is a more button on the WordCompletion panel of the the keyboard. This means that just because you don't see your desired word in the first five words listed doesn't mean it isn't further down in the possible word choices. You can get to additional word choices one of two ways: you can either keep adding letters to the word you're working on until you see your desired word, or you can click the more button on the WordCompletion panel. Sometimes your desired word isn't going to be in the list of possible choices at all. That's okay! OnScreen can and does learn new words that are more than three letters long. Once it learns a word, it automatically adds it to the appropriate word list (there's a word list for every letter of the alphabet) and makes it a possible word choice for next time. Yet another cool aspect of this feature is the fact that you can make words into other words by adding suffixes. For example, if I have the word "write", and I need to make it "writing" to fit my sentence, as soon as I've finished selecting the word "write ", a list of suffixes automatically pops up. All I have to do is choose the suffix that I need and my original root word becomes a whole new word. This particular aspect of the WordCompletion feature has saved me an abundance of time over the course of using the keyboard. One last cool thing about the WordCompletion feature of OnScreen is that it keeps track of how many times you use words and prioritizes them in your possible word choices based on that number. The more often you use a word the more likely it is that it's going to become one of the first five words you see when you start typing those letters.
My next favorite thing about the keyboard is that there are panels to do almost everything and you can open and close each of them as you need them. For instance, there's an "Edit" panel. This has things like the HOME key, the DEL key, the END key, the PGUP and PGDN keys, the INS key, and the keys that I probably use the most in the panel, the arrow keys.
There's a numeric keypad panel. I think what that panel does is pretty self-explanatory.
There's the Windows Control Panel and this particular panel is pretty unique because it has keys to be able to minimize, maximize and close windows that you have open on your desktop. It also has Yes and No keys so that if you’re going to close a particular program and that program is going to ask you if you want to save changes, you can click yes or no without ever having to leave the keyboard. Another cool key on this panel is the NEXT key. This is a key that allows you to search through all the windows that you have open on your desktop until you find one you want. It's just another function that allows you to do things without ever having to leave the keyboard!
There's a calculator panel. This opens up a great big giant calculator that is connected to all the other panels that you have open. This means that if I'm paying bills and I need to do some quick math, I don't have to go outside the keyboard to do it. It's very handy!
Last but not least, there is my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, FAVORITE panel! It's the macro panel. This is a panel that allows you to create shortcuts that are either keystroke shortcuts, shortcuts to other macro panels, or shortcuts to launch programs. For instance, I use Yahoo Messenger daily, so I created a macro that with one click of the key on the keyboard Yahoo Messenger pops up in front of me on my screen. As for keystroke macros, I've created several for YouTube videos and other websites that I visit regularly. I check my email several times a day so I created a keystroke macro to get there. I simply click in my address bar of my web browser to highlight it, click the key on the keyboard that it has the website for my email inbox attached, and my web browser automatically takes me there. The way keystroke macros are created is that I go in to my keyboard, create a new macro, type or copy and paste the text that I want the keyboard to type, and save it. The next time I want to type that text I just click on the key within the macro panel that has that text attached to it and the keyboard generates it.
All of the panel colors can be customized to fit a user's needs and desires. What you see here is only a small fraction of why I love this program so much! If I were to write everything that I love about it and go into as much detail as I could, it would probably take me weeks and it would probably take you even longer to read. It may have taken me a long time to save up for it, but it was worth every penny and it was worth every little thing that I had to go without in order to make it happen!
Thank you, RJ, for creating a product that is smart, easy to use, and fun to use all at the same time! You can be guaranteed I'll be watching for more things to try, and likely, more things to buy! :-)
