Surface Pro 3 Pen Button Customization

Anonymous

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.

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171 answers

Anonymous

2015-01-19T07:12:25+00:00

Thanks for sharing this alternative. I was tearing my hair out trying to think of a better way to use my programs than to go back and forth between tools and brushes. The Surface is a wonderful piece of technology, but not in the way that I was looking forward to. I hope there will be an official solution in the near future.
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Anonymous

2015-01-20T13:27:54+00:00

Did you even read my post? RadialMenu has the solution you're looking for. It's not ideal to have to install something to get (what some would argue to be) basic functionality of the pen, but at least there is a solution now.
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Anonymous

2015-01-20T23:28:46+00:00

Did you read my post, MichaelMroczka?

RadialMenu appears to be an elegant solution to other problems, but there's basic functionality missing from the Surface Pro 3 that RadialMenu doesn't seem able to provide, and that's the ability to use the barrel buttons while 'hovering'.

From a regular Wacom user's point of view, this means there's still no proper right-click or middle-click on the Surface Pro 3's primary pointing device. Some might be able to live with it, but do you think people would accept a mouse that worked that way? It renders countless apps & games unusable, unless you add... say... a three-button mouse, or a Wacom tablet. Do we want mobile/tablet PCs that can only successfully run a handful of apps, or that require a bag of peripherals?

This remains an open & unsolved problem, and apparently it's exclusively Microsoft's problem to fix. They maintain the driver for the pen (the hardware vendor N-trig doesn't seem to be in a position to help), and it's their fault that the driver doesn't pass right-click or middle-click through to applications like RadialMenu unless you also left-click at the same time. Microsoft clearly don't understand pens yet; everything they touch that's pen-related gets broken and left that way indefinitely.

FertileOctopus: if the lack of Wacom-style left/middle hover-click is a deal-breaker, you might as well return it to the shop, rather than waiting for a fix from Microsoft. I replaced my SP3 with a competitor's model using a Wacom digitiser, and I'm much happier with the replacement.
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Anonymous

2015-01-22T14:26:45+00:00

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
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Anonymous

2015-01-22T21:51:59+00:00

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".
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