EKH Tutorial 1 - Getting started

This is the first of a number of tutorials for my app External Keyboard Helper. This tutorial will help you doing a basic setup to get you started.

But first a couple of things to keep in mind:

• There is a free demo version. Try that first if you have the slightest doubt that this is the app for you.
• If your keyboard isn't working att all with your device in the first place, then my app will not help you.

Assuming you have bought the app (or installed the free demo version) the first thing you likely do is to try start the app with the app icon. Input methods needs to be enabled and the app will detect that it is not enabled and launch the settings for you so that you can enable it.

Now you need to check the little checkbox to enable the new input method.

Android will throw up a warning about using user installed input methods, this is standard procedure to remind you that ANY input method is potentially a keylogger. You will get the same warning if you install and enable popular soft keyboards.

This is a legit warning and is the very reason why I warned about using pirated and resigned input methods.

That being done, let's enter the settings and see what we can find.

The first time you enter the settings it will read your language and locale settings and try to autodetect which layout you might want to use. Since I've configured my phone to English (United States) when making the screenshots it autodetected English (US) layout. However, since I live in Sweden and my keyboard has a Swedish layout I am not satisfied with the automatic detection and instead manually selects the Swedish layout.

Lastly for External Keyboard Helper to do anything it needs to be selected as the active input method. There are several ways to select the active input method and the method is different between Android 2.x and Android 3.x/4.x. However one way to do it is to start the app icon for External Keyboard Helper (again).

This time, when External Keyboard Helper has been enabled, it will ask you what you want the app icon to do.

For this example I choose Show Input Method selector (you can change this later if you want) and it will present the Input Method selection dialog.

I choose External Keyboard Helper Pro as the new active Input Method. Whenever I want the virtual keyboard back I can repeat this procedure and change it back. By default it will also show this dialog whenever a Bluetooth keyboard is connected or disconnected.

So now I have enabled the External Keyboard Helper input method and configured it to use the Swedish layout. Then I selected the External Keyboard Helper to be the active input method and now or setup is complete and I can start using my external keyboard.

This is the end of tutorial 1 and in the next tutorial we will remap a couple of keys that does not work right with the predefined layout on my Targus iPad keyboard.

Dear Spotify developers...

...why does Spotify still look like this on my Tablet?

When all it takes is a 2 minute hack with apktool to make it look like this:

At least the recent versions does not contain broken landscape layouts that needs removing like the ICS preview and the first releases did so now all it takes is a search and replace in the manifest, build new apk and the sign it. (This however does not feel right and I've seen there are already self-signed versions floating around on the net (no I did not make any of them). Modified and resigned apps are a security problem because unless you modified it yourself you cannot know what else has been changed.)

However, while missing landscape support was irritating but acceptable in the preview version you have pushed many new versions since then and landscape mode is still missing. Why?

If it looks stupid on my tablet, then imagine how it looks when I connect my Motorola Xoom to my 42 inch plasma.

So please, for me and for all the other Spotify premium users that runs Spotify on other devices than just phones, FIX THIS NOW!

Android 4.1.2 on the Galaxy Tab 8.9

CyanogenMod 10 (Android 4.1.2) running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Wifi (P7310)

Follow the progress here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1777398

External Keyboard Helper goes Hangul

Since version 4.8 External Keyboard Helper supports Korean/Hangul out-of-the-box. The app has also been fully translated to Korean language by the very helpful person who goes under the pseudonym Neoely. Neoely has also assisted with testing and given me excellent feedback and explanations on how a Hangul keyboard works.

Update 2012-09-23: Here's a blog post from Neoely in Korean language that describes how to setup and use External Keyboard Helper.

The Hangul text on the right was written by me and I used Google Translate to translate the string "External Keyboard Helper" and then use my bluetooth keyboard to type it. If it says something else, then blame Google Translate. ;)