I’ve recently had the pleasure of testing out Windows 8 on my primary laptop. Initially I was filled with a bit of dread and foreboding due to some major UI changes. Having spent a few weeks on it, at this point I have things functioning smoothly and the few UI quirks are no longer a hinderance.
Overall, Windows 8 seems to have taken a stab at the “multi-level” interface in and some way gotten this very right. By “multi-level” interface, what I mean is an interface that is discoverable by the novice (tiles that function like we expect from iPads and Android devices) but does not hinder the “expert” (most apps/functions can be accessed via shortcuts and “search-as-you-type”, the tiles are just eye-candy).
I don’t consider myself by any means an expert in Windows 8, however after years of various OS’s and a proclivity towards command line interfaces I feel I can bypass the tile interface and start to optimize my keyboard usage.
One of the first mods I make in any environment (Windows, Linux, etc) is to remap the Caps Lock key to be another Control key. Back in “Killing Caps Lock” (http://thehelpfulhacker.net/2012/02/15/killing-caps-lock/) I reviewed various methods for accomplishing this. Sadly my go-to tool, Ctrl2cap does not appear to work in Windows 8. Luckily, after some searching I did find a slightly more featureful applicaton that will do this – and more.
KeyTweak ( http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ ) does present a bit of a mystery. I’m not able to find any other official source then what appears to be someones personal site at Charter. I won’t go over much detail on mapping the actual keys, once you open the interface it is dead simple. This does allow you to tweak several other keys/settings so have fun. From everything I can tell this was last updated in 2009. As a service to everyone out there, I would like to host a copy of the exe and pdf in case the Charter site ever goes down.
Original Exe: http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/KeyTweak_install.exe
Original Manual: http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/KeyTweak%20Manual.pdf
Hosted Exe: http://media.thehelpfulhacker.net/bin/KeyTweak/KeyTweak_install.exe
Hosted Manual: http://media.thehelpfulhacker.net/bin/KeyTweak/KeyTweak%20Manual.pdf
MD5 Exe: 0437c75eb8b510b7d3715f047b6a84ff
MD5 Manual: 700e1d4bf276b4d155a68113c09c71ba
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