Fit N Finish for Qwerty Keyboards
This FitNFinish document describes a number of best practices for creating Windows Mobile devices with QWERTY keyboards. Although there are a lot of suggestions for placement of keys, my main purpose for writing this was to describe the best way to handle shift, shift lock, alt, and alt lock. This subject is surprisingly complex, and I’ve seen a number of QWERTY devices handle these functions incorrectly. See section 3 of the attached document for a detailed description of the correct operation of these keys.
The attachment contains the FitNFinish document, “QWERTY Suggestions” in both Word 2007 and PDF formats. The content is the same in both, so use whichever file works best for you. There is also a KeybdFnF.exe. This is a Windows Mobile application that will run on both touch screen (PocketPC) and non touch screen (Smartphone) devices. The application allows you to test that your shift and alt functionality work correctly. It asks you to type certain key combinations on your device, shows what your keyboard sent, and compares that to what it should have sent. The program will verify that your shift and alt keys match the suggestions in section 3 of the document.
The program was written with the Windows Mobile SDK. Please let me know if you have any trouble running it on your devices.
Mike Calligaro