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I am a previous owner of a Surface Pro 2, and loved the capability it provided of customizing the button commands per program through the Wacom drivers. As a new owner of the surface Pro 3, I a very disappointed to discover that the same functionality is not available in the N-trig driver options. As an artist, the primary use of my surface is for drawing inside of programs like Adobe Photoshop. Not being able to customize the button functions on the new pen is detrimental to my efficiency as a digital artist. Without the ease of having quick access to specific commands through the pen buttons, I am forced to either dig through the menus and submenus of the program to execute a simple command, or connect a keyboard to use hotkeys. One of the greatest features of the surface is the ability to draw inside of photoshop as if it were a paper notebook, freeing me from my desktop work space and removing the requirement of the mouse and keyboard. Without the customization of these pen buttons, I lose that freedom.
I spoke to a Microsoft support tech this morning who informed me that "hopefully" in the next month or two, this feature will be added to the pen drivers. While this is a new product, and I understand that some features are still in development, this feature is crucial in the workflow of any artist using this device. I already own a desktop computer and a laptop; so again, the primary function of the Surface Pro 3 for me is drawing inside of programs like Photoshop without the need for a mouse and keyboard.
I don't know if any Microsoft representatives read these discussions, but if there is a way I could be included in any sort of pre-release developmental versions of drivers that introduce this capability, I would love to be a part of it and am happy to provide feedback from an artist's perspective.
Thanks for reading.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
There are some autohotkey scripts that allow remapping of the SP3 pen buttons, as well as my Radial menu app that allows for it as well - http://radialmenu.weebly.com
Do you have a link to any of these autohotkey scripts? I've not been able to track any down.
Thanks.
I second that. Radial menu does a pretty good job (it does produce some buggy responses with hover click though) but to be honest I'm really angry (first world problems) at the stupid decision microsoft made with the pen and the fact it's been left up to someone else to fix it. It's made the sp3 pretty much unusable for 3d applications and photoshop for me. Why they don't allow hover click and configurable buttons is beyond comprehension I hope that they are listening and sort this out asap.
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This can be solved using the radial menu.
-Michael
It is good that RadialMenu at least lets you remap squeeze'n'tap to emulate a middle-click, but it may be confusing or misleading (in a thread about how/why the barrel buttons don't work as expected) to call the issue "solved", when no, the barrel buttons still cannot be made to work as expected.
For the benefit of other readers, I'd like this to remain clear: RadialMenu does not enable a normal right-click or middle-click. The barrel buttons are only 'modifier' buttons like the awful 'Fn' key, and with no fix for this on the horizon, many programs that expect a three-button pointing device (or even a two-button pointer) will not be usable with the pen on the SP3, and you'd be better off with a Wacom, or a Wacom clone, or even using a mouse like a peasant.
Besides, if anyone from Microsoft is actually paying attention, we don't want them to go away thinking that the problem somehow resolved itself before they even had to schedule a meeting to figure out "what are those buttons doing there anyway".
Did you read my post, MichaelMroczka?
lol, yes. Easy tiger. And I have no solution to your problem. You're right and no third-party software that I'm aware of can fix your problem. My reply was directed towards FertileOctopus (not you) who didn't seem to even read my post already addressing the middle click issue. This can be solved using the radial menu.
-Michael