Fee Alternative to Pen Flicks: StrokeIt
I was watching the excellent GottabeMobile.com InkShow on Vista’s PenFlicks. In it, Rob shows how in Vista dragging on the Tablet PC-screen allows you to:
Scroll Up
Scroll Down
Copy
Paste
Delete
(and many more - watch the InkShow)
StrokeIt does much the same thing. Like Flicks, it supports keystrokes and key combinations. So, just like in Flicks if I am In a browser, I can drag left/right to go backward/forward, and drag up or down to scroll the page in that direction. StrokeIt will leave an on-screen trail showing showing your gesture (Flicks uses icons). It comes loaded with lots of “global” strokes that work no matter what program you are in: draw an O to open a file, draw N for a new document - but you can bypass those (or turn them off alltogether).
What I like about StrokeIt is that it has the ability to know what program you are using (if you set it up using the Program Identifier) and can store custom strokes just to be used in that program. There is a lot of value to being able to change the strokes depending on the program you are in. For example, in my web browser dragging left will take me backwards. But in Photoshop, I can assign that same stroke to mean “Apply Filter.”
A nice touch is that you can tell StrokeIt to ignore strokes in a specific program. For example, you would not want StrokeIt to activate when writing in OneNote. I’d say there is a steeper learning curve, but with that comes greater flexibility and control.
I don’t think PenFlicks has the level conditional functionality found in StrokeIt. But I would think it wouldn’t be long before that function is added.
I like PenFlicks, I think it has a much slicker interface and the on-screen icons are a nice touch. But for those of us without a clear path to Vista (me!), StrokeIt is a very nice, powerful, and free, alternative.
Download StrokeIt here.
If I get the guts up, I will post a video show about this cool program.