Make your own keyboard for free

I’ve been using the new Arc Keyboard for a few weeks now and I’m very pleased with it, I like it especially for typing. But (there is always a “but” ?)… Unfortunately I have to say this keyboard is not very practical when working with Windbg or Visual Studio (at least with the Italian layout) where you have to type special characters such as tilde (~) or braches ( { } ). Well, it is possible to get braches with the key combination ATL GR+SHIFT+è for the open one and ALT GR+SHIFT++ or ALT+123 and ALT+125 on the numpad if available and despite the weird key combination I got used to press it with only one hand and my typing flow was acceptable, even on a laptop where the numpad cannot be used. Anyway I’ve not been able to find how to get the tilde sign on an Italian keyboard without using the numpad combination (ALT+126), this means I cannot use neither my laptop nor the Arc Keyboard for coding… Should I use two different keyboards, then? No way ? Bing came to the rescue and pointed me to the Keyboard Layout Creator that, among other things, allows to modify…

This is a trick I learnt a few years ago in Office (don’t remember exactly if was 97 or 2000 ?) since I like to customize my working environment “in my way” (like everyone else, I guess ?), but I don’t like to waste time digging into menus, config files etc if possible… It’s easy: hold the ALT key and simply…: Drag the button to move it in the position you like, also in a different toolbar Slightly drag the button to the right to insert a vertical separator on the left of the icon you are touching Slightly drag the button on the left to insert a vertical separator on the right of the icon you are touching Drag the button down (outside the toolbar) to remove it Of course this works only for icons and button you already have on the toolbar, if you need to add a new one you must do it the usual way (right click on the toolbar and chose the “Customize” command). Oh, this does not work with the Ribbon in Office 2007. Carlo