Windows 8 Tablet / Touchscreen - On Screen Keyboard shortcut missing on Desktop

Question

Hi
On a windows 7 tablet, on the desktop, if I clicked a field (e.g. in Windows Explorer) a small keyboard icon appears with a shortcut to the on-screen-keyboard (OSK).
On windows 8, this no longer appears. Instead you have to click the field, then select the OSK from the taskbar, and then click back in the field before typing.
Technical Stuff:
So far we've found that in Windows 8 there is no 'Options' window for the Input Keyboard in the Taskbar. In Windows 7 there WAS an 'Options' window which included the setting "For tablet pen input, show the icon next to the text box". This setting controlled
the shortcut icon that appears when you click in a field, and changes the following setting in the registry: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\TabletTip\1.7\ShowIPTipTarget. This setting does not appear in the registry on a Windows 8 machine and adding it in makes no
difference.
Rant:
Within 5 minutes of issuing a new Windows 8 tablet this problem was noticed by the end user, rendering the device almost useless if you want to work at any pace - and it was promptly handed back. Very frustrating and annoying as this feature appears
to have been removed. With Windows 8 pitched directly at the tablet market, surely this setting is in there somewhere - I can't think of any reason why it would be removed.
Any help much appreciated,
Andrew

Answer 1

I fully agree with ssxIdent and all other posters who find the new touch keyboard rather dumb.
There is no point in explaining why MS has decided to do things this or that way and what philosophic reasons they can come up with. MS needs to understand that software has to be accepted by the users and should not irritate them.
But this is irritating.
I thought one of the main concerns of MS was to be as intuitive as possible and provide a most satisfying user experiance - this is definetly not.
Has anyone at MS ever tried to e. g. rename several files in a directory with the touch keyboard? Especially when you get to the bottom of the screen. Then you not only need to have show/hide the keyboard permanently, you even have to bother moving it or
resize the window. That is NO GOOD USER EXPERIANCE!
I'd find it intuitive, if there was a way for developers in WPF or in Windows Forms to tag any UI element if it
Needs a keyboard (making the touch keyboard appear automatically) or
Would like a keyboard (showing a symbol next to the box, just like the X in WindowsStoreApps.TextBox, to trigger the keyboard or make it pop up automatically, if the keyboard had an option that can be set by the user to respond to these UI elements) or
Can have a keyboard (behaviour as is now)
Once an application was built this way, users would intuitively be able to navigate through their beloved apps haveing the keyboard at hand when they will need it anyway, being able to access it just with a twitch of the hand if they want it and not being
annoyed by it when they normally would not need it AND not being annoyed by permanently having to show/hide/show/hide that dratted thing by making miles of hand movement for nothing.
For applications that are not tailormade this way some options to adjust the keyboard behaviour would help, too. Just provide an option to hook the keyboard to any focus change, and give users a selection of options to what major control types the keyboard
should respond. For geeks you could even provide white list where they can add the GUIDs for classes the keyboard should show up automatically, a black list where the keyboard has to disappear and a gray list where the keyboard comes up on enter and disappears
on leave.
Some other thing I'm not happy with:
I know Modern UI came somehow via Windows Phone 7, but our tablets, touch enabled laptops, ... are no telephones, so why has the touch keyboard numpad have the "1" at the top left corner and not at the bottom left like every other hardware keyboard
or even the MS Windows OSK???????? In this point I contradict the explanation in the otherwise quite interesting article about the
Design Concept because typing in numbers has more often to do with maths than with telephoning or switching TV channels. And calculators have the 1,2,3 in the bottom row, as have HW keyboards. The other misconception lies therin that you don't need to find
1,2,3 quicker with your eyes when you are typing lots of numbers e. g. into spreadsheets. The fingers of HW keyboard, calculator or cash register users are so used to the conventional position of the digits that won't be easy to reshape. Additionally when
typing in quantities of numbers right handed users (90% of world population)  will have the hand rest on the keyboard, the thumb on 0 and index finger, middle finger, ring finger doing their respective columns low value low down, high value high up. Who
is dialing phone numbers or changing TV channels this way? But what will users do more often with the numpad - especially when dealing with loads of input data?
Why can we not at least have digits on the alpha keyboard like on Android with long press on "Q"="1" ... "P"="0"? Password policy sometimes forces you to add digits in a PW, calling for switch alpha/num/alpha/num which
is annoying, too! Even with the peek thingy, since you need two hands.
Why is there no indication what special characters are hidden behind a long press? It's possible when you press Ctrl, despite most people already knowing what Ctrl+C means. e. g. where is the paragraph sign "§"on the touch keyboard? Or have
you left it out, so lawyers can't sue you for developing this touch keyboard ;-) You have added a set of emojos, but forgotten to put a character on that is on virtually any other keyboard??? Rather give us a layer user/developers could fill with their own
set of special characters and swap the Ctrl hints for a special character preview.
When I have my keyboard docked I can split the alpha key gaining access to the ODD numpad in the middle, but why can I not have the numpad when the alpha stays unsplit in the middle having a big black block to its left and right - there was space, why have
you not used it properly??? Nevermind feeling crowded, as mentioned in the article, give us an checkbox in keyboard options than we can decide if we want it or not. Since the article argues that users tend to get comfortable with the keyboard after a while
and needn't look at it, this "over crowded" feeling would fade away just the same. Or you might even dim it a bit when there is no finger near it.
Where are the Fn keys? Give us an option - we'll decide if we want it e. g. on the left side of the alpha block. Just as with numpad this could be dimmed, too.
I'd have a lot more suggestions to throw into this, but I fear you'll not even pick up on the easiest or most fundamental ones.
Prove me wrong! Please do! I dare you!!!