I received another cool email about InkSeine's Tool Ring this week. This user not only had one of his precious tablet hardware buttons programmed to open the Tool Ring, but he also sketched up a neat idea for a new feature:

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RE: inkseine is good

Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 12:34 PM

To: Ken Hinckley

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Ken,

I use Inkseine's crazy arrow for scrolling in many applications. I have one of the hardware buttons on my tablet programmed to open it. I really like the screen shot use of it too.

The only improvement I would like to see is a zoom in - zoom out feature too. When I'm on a desktop, I use ctrl + mouse scroll wheel to zoom all the time. I zoom on my tablet by using the zoom value drop down box in many apps.

If that is possible, and if there is a spare moment to build it, I would definitely use it!

Maybe something like this:  

 

Hmmm, very interesting!  The second I read this email, I realized I could zoom using the custom flicks that I set up on my Vista tablet the other day. I programmed one of them to be Toggle Ctrl (here's how to do it).

My Tool Ring already had zooming functionality, but I hadn't even realized it.

I just did my Ctrl flick on the Tool Ring:  

...and then I circled on the crazy arrow. Zoom zoom zoom!

As far as your tablet is concerned, doing these actions is the same as Ctrl + mouse scroll wheel. The Ctrl mode is only turned on for one stroke of the pen, so as soon as you lift the pen, it's back to its regularly scheduled functions. If you circle again, you'll return to scrolling. For me, this works great since I don't need to zoom that often, but when I do, it's great to have a convenient and habitual place to reach for it.

I find zooming this way to be a lot of fun. Now I can drill down into my tablet screen whenever I need to with just a few turns of the pen. No safety glasses required!

Posts in the Tool Ring Shenanigans series:

• Kick Start that Tool Ring!
• Flick that Tool Ring!
• Zoom that Tool Ring!