Surface – Tales from the Crypto

Auto convert inked shapes in PowerPoint–coming to OneNote

I happened upon a blog post by the Office team yesterday which surprised me, because it talked about a feature in PowerPoint that I’ve wanted ever since I first got my Surface 2.

Shape recognition

Here’s a link to documentation on how to use this feature in PowerPoint.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-a-pen-to-draw-write-or-highlight-text-on-a-windows-tablet-6d76c674-7f4b-414d-b67f-b3ffef6ccf53

It seems like the obvious feature a tablet should have.

Here’s a video of me using it to draw a few random shapes:

But not just in PowerPoint – this should be in Word, in OneNote, in Paint, and pretty much any app that accepts ink.

And at last, OneNote

So here’s the blog post from Office noting that this feature will finally be available for OneNote in November.

https://blogs.office.com/2015/10/20/onenote-partners-with-fiftythree-to-support-pencil-and-paper-plus-shape-recognition-coming-soon/

On iPad, iPhone and Windows 10. Which I presume means it’ll only be on the Windows Store / Metro / Modern / Immersive version of OneNote.

That’s disappointing, because it should really be in every Office app. Hell, I’d update from Office 2013 tomorrow if this was a feature in Office 2016!

Let’s not stop there

Please, Microsoft, don’t stop at the Windows Store version of OneNote.

Shape recognition, along with handwriting recognition (which is apparently also hard), should be a natural part of my use of the Surface Pen. It should work the same across multiple apps.

That’s only going to happen if it’s present in multiple apps, and is a documented API which developers – of desktop apps as well as Store apps – can call into.

Well, desktop apps can definitely get that.

How can I put it into my own app?

I’ll admit that I haven’t had the time yet to build my own sample, but I’m hoping that this still works – there’s an API called “Ink Analysis”, which is exactly how you would achieve this in your app:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms704040.aspx

It allows you to analyse ink you’ve captured, and decide if it’s text or a drawing, and if it’s a drawing, what kind of drawing it might be.

[I’ve marked this with the tag “Alun’s Code” because I want to write a sample eventually that demonstrates this function.]

Surface 2 –VPN bug disables Metro Internet Explorer

Update 2 – NOT FIXED

Yeah, so, I was apparently deluded, the problem is still here. It appears to be a bona-fide bug in Windows 8, with a Hotfix at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797356 – but that’s only for x86 versions of Windows, and not for the Surface 2.

Update – FIXED

Since I wrote this article, another issue caused me to reset my WMI database, by deleting everything under C:\Windows\System32\wbem\Repository and rebooting. After that, the VPN issues documented in this article have gone away.

Original article

I have a home VPN – everyone should, because it makes for securable access to your home systems when you are out and about, whether it’s at the Starbucks down the street, or half way across the world, like I was on my trip to China last week.

Useful as my home VPN is, and hard as it is to get working (see my last post on Windows 8 VPN problems), it’s only useful if I can get my entire computer to talk through the VPN.

Sidebar – VPN split tunneling

Note that I am not disputing the value of split tunneling in a VPN, which is where you might set up your client to use the VPN only for a range of addresses, so that (for example) a computer might connect to the VPN for connections to a work intranet, but use the regular connectivity for the major part of the public web. For this article, assume I want everything but my link-local traffic to be forwarded to my VPN.

So, in my last VPN post, we talked about setting up the client end of a VPN, and now I want to use it.

Connecting is the easy part, and once connected, most of my apps on the Surface 2 work quite happily, connecting to the Internet through my VPN.

All of the Desktop apps seem to work without restriction, but there are some odd gaps when it comes to using “Windows Store” apps, also known as “Metro” or “Modern UI” apps. Microsoft can’t call this “Metro” any more, even though that’s the most commonly used term for it, so I’ll follow their lead and call this the “Modern UI” [where UI stands for User Interface].

Most glaring of all is the Modern UI Internet Explorer, which doesn’t seem to allow any connections at all, simply displaying “This page can’t be displayed”. The exception to this is if I connect to a web server that is link-local to the VPN server.

I’d think this was a problem with the way I had set up my VPN server, or my client connection, if it weren’t for the fact that my Windows 8.1 laptop connects correctly to this same VPN with no issues on Modern or Desktop versions of Internet Explorer, and of course the undeniable feature that Internet Explorer for the Desktop on my Surface 2 also works correctly.

I’d like to troubleshoot and debug this issue, but of course, the only troubleshooting tools for networking in the Surface 2 run on the Desktop, and therefore work quite happily, as if nothing is wrong with the network. And from their perspective, this is true.

When Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his little friends go to sleep, too.

Of course, Internet Explorer has always been claimed by Microsoft to be a “part of the operating system”, and in Windows 8.1 RT, there is no difference in this respect.

Every Modern UI application which includes a web control, web view, or in some way asks the operating system or development framework to host a web page, also fails to reach its intended target through the VPN.

Technical Support – what’s their take?

Technical support had me try a number of things, including resetting the system, but none of their suggestions had any effect. Eventually I found a tech support rep who told me this is a bug, not that that is really what you’d call a resolution of my problem. These are the sort of things that make it clear that the Surface is still in its early days, and while impressive, has a number of niggling issues that need “fit and finish” work before significant other features get added.

Deploying on the road…

Now that I have a Surface 2, I’m going to leave my laptop at home when I travel.

This leaves me with a concern – obviously, I’m going to play with some of my hobby software development while I have “down time”, but the devices for which I’m building are traveling with me, while the dev machine stays at home.

That’s OK where I’m building for the laptop, because it’s available by Remote Desktop through a Remote Desktop Gateway.

Deploying to my other devices – the Windows Phone and the Surface 2 running Windows RT – is something that I typically do by direct connection, or on the local network.

Windows Phone

For the Windows Phone, there’s a Store called “Beta” as opposed to “Public”, into which you can deploy your app, make it available to specific listed users, and this will allow you to quickly distribute an app remotely to your device.

Details on how to do this are here.

Windows Store

The story on Windows Store apps appears, at first blush, to be far more dismal, with numerous questions online asking “is there a beta store for Windows like there is for the phone?”

The answer comes back “no, but that’s a great idea for future development”.

But it is completely possible to distribute app packages to your Windows RT and other Windows 8.1 devices, using Powershell.

The instructions at MSDN, here, will tell you quite clearly how you can do this.

Error 860 in Windows 8.1 / Surface VPN

It should be easy enough to set up a VPN in Windows, and everything should work well, because Microsoft has been doing these sorts of things for some years.

Sure enough, if you open up the Charms bar, choose Settings, Change PC Settings, and finally Network, you’re brought to this screen, with a nice big friendly button to add a VPN connection. Tapping on it leads me to the following screen:

No problems, I’ve already got these settings ready to go.

Probably not the best to name my VPN settings “New VPN”, but then I’m not telling you my VPN endpoint. So, let’s connect to this new connection.

So far, so good. Now it’s verifying my credentials…

And then we should see a successful connection message.

Not quite. For the search engines, here’s the text:

Error 860: The remote access connection completed, but authentication failed because of an error in the certificate that the client uses to authenticate the server.

This is upsetting, because of course I’ve spent some time setting the certificate correctly (more on that in a later post), and I know other machines are connecting just fine.

I’m sure that, at this point, many of you are calling your IT support team, and they’re reminding you that they don’t support Windows 8 yet, because some lame excuse about ‘not yet stable, official, standard, or Linux”.

Don’t take any of that. Simply open the Desktop.

What? Yes, Windows 8 has a Desktop. And a Command Prompt, and PowerShell. Even in the RT version.

Oh, uh, yeah, back to the instructions.

Forget navigating the desktop, just do Windows-X, and then W, to open the Network Connections group, like this:

Select the VPN network you’ve created, and select the option to “Change settings of this connection”:

In the Properties window that pops up, you need to select the Security tab:

OK, so that’s weird. The Authentication Group Box has two radio buttons – but neither one is selected. My Grandma had a radio like that, you couldn’t tell what station you were going to get when you turn it on – and the same is generally true for software. So, we should choose one:

It probably matters which one you choose, so check with your IT team (tell them you’re connecting from Windows 7, if you have to).

Then we can connect again:

……

And… we’re connected.

Now for another surprise, when you find that the Desktop Internet Explorer works just fine, but the “Modern UI” (formerly known as “Metro”) version of IE decides it will only talk to sites inside your LAN, and won’t talk to external sites. Oh, and that behavior is extended to any Metro app that embeds web content.

I’m still working on that one. News as I have it!

For Surfaces rendered

I often thought I’d like to have a career in 3D animation, solely so I could send out invoices with the title of this blog post as their content.

It seems a little late for me to choose that career, so I’ll have to use that title for a blog posting about my Surface, now that I am three weeks in to using it.

There’s no secret (or if there is, it’s poorly hidden) to the fact that MVPs visiting Redmond for the MVP Summit this year received a pretty sweet deal on a 32GB Surface 2 and Touch Cover. Along with hundreds of my brethren, I lined up at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue yelling “shut up and take my money!”

As an actual purchase, rather than a complete giveaway, I did have to pass the purchasing decision through my boss. Fortunately, she agreed that it was a good buy, as long as I treated it as a purchase of a toy for me, and stopped trying to persuade her it was a bona fide business investment for the company. Canny woman, my wife, and skilled at reducing arguments to their simplest and most incisive points.

So, a toy it was pitched as, a replacement for my iPad, which I also got for very little money – I won it in a hacking competition. As a toy, I couldn’t expect to get the Surface Pro, which is convenient, because one wasn’t offered.

What’s it like as a toy?

Does it have the Angry Birds,then? Space and Star Wars versions, yes – Rovio hasn’t been paid to get around to porting the others to Windows 8 yet.

It’s also got Minesweeper and Solitaire, with the added thrill of daily challenges, and an Adventure Mode for Minesweeper that looks a little ripped off from Repton. Mahjong, Jetpack Joyride, Cut the Rope, there’s enough games that while you might find a few individual names here and there that are missing, you’ll be able to replace them with something in the same genre.

The front and back camera make for good Skype use, whether you’re having a face-to-face chat, or showing someone the view out the window.

I can read comics, whether through the dozen or so manga readers, or through the Comics app from Comixology. Books come, of course, courtesy of the Kindle app, and of course there’s a native Amazon app as well, although as usual, it’s hard to get a better shopping experience in an app than Amazon has built into the web version.

That’s right, you actually have a version of Internet Explorer 11 built specially for the touch-screen “Modern UI”, which Microsoft used to call Metro, and which thoroughly needs a new name. This version of Internet Explorer is fairly basic, but fully functional for what most people are going to want it for. For most of what I do on the web, it’s certainly sufficient.

On the fringe of toydom

Social media makes its presence felt nicely in the People hub, like on my Windows Phone, where in one place I can keep up with my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn friends/followers/minions. I can also post there, although I miss my phone’s ability to post to multiple outlets at once.

If you’ve been paying attention to my gripes about podcast support on my Windows Phone, I have to say that, out of the box, I have the same – or worse –issues with the Surface 2. The native audio player does allow you to create playlists, but infallibly returns you to the start of an MP3 file almost every time you play it anew, apparently whether you played another MP3 file, skipped to a different app, or received a notification. I await the development of a good podcast / audiobook application with support for local MP3s.

On the video front, things are somewhat improved, with the Xbox Video app being the natively supported method to play my MP4s. Sadly, there’s still no subtitle support, as is the case across every single one of Microsoft’s video playing tools – if the file isn’t streaming across the web, with the closed captions in a separate stream, there’s no way to get captions to display. This is a shame, as there is good support for standard subtitles in MP4s on the Apple competition, whether it’s iPad, iPod or iPhone. Microsoft, this can’t be that hard – support accessibility on all your video players, please! [I’m not deaf, but the bus can get a little loud]

Working up to proper use

The Touch Cover is barely usable as a keyboard – but I’ve added a Bluetooth keyboard to my Christmas wishlist, for the serious typing moments, and the Touch Cover is certainly sufficient for those occasional bon mots on the bus or airplane.

Sadly, Live Writer isn’t available for Windows RT, so I’m not likely to use this for many blogs – although to keep myself honest, I am typing this on the Surface using the Touch Cover keyboard.

To write the blog entry, I’m actually using Word with its blogging template.

Woah, did you say Word? On RT?

Why yes, yes I did – but since the presence of Office 2013 on the Surface was advertised (at least, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Word and Outlook), this was hardly a surprise to me – but it seems like a surprise to many of my Apple-owning friends who are just starting to get excited that Apple have deigned to let them have iWorks on their iPads now.

But the inclusion of Office isn’t the only thing that makes this device veer further into the territory of a non-toy.

Surprisingly functional

I wasn’t really expecting that Windows RT would have a desktop mode. I pretty much thought it would be Modern UI apps and nothing else. That seemed like it would suck, because I can’t then copy files across the network for playing MP3s and MP4s on the bus to and from work.

So a friend of mine set my fears at rest before I bought the Surface, and let me know that there was indeed a desktop, and a Windows Explorer. That was the tipping point to realizing I could get along with my Surface.

Then came the surprises.

There’s a Desktop version of Internet Explorer – and this one is fully functional! It even has “View Source” and the F12 Developer Tools, Microsoft’s best-kept secret in IE for some time now. [On your Touch Cover, you get F12 by holding down the “Fn” key as you press “PgDn”] This means I can carry on my Cross-Site Scripting endeavours on my Surface – which I couldn’t do from my iPad at all.

Also not on the iPad, but present on the Surface, a full version of the Command Prompt – I can run all my old batch scripts. Notepad, too (but no WordPad, sadly). Even, and I can’t imagine using the power of this too much, PowerShell!

Flash Player, as well, which isn’t available on the iPad. Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop, so I can connect to a real computer, something that wasn’t a good experience on the iPad.

Bitlocker.

Woah, BitLocker? Wow, my hard drive is already encrypted. So too could be the 64GB MicroSD card I’ve attached for extra video and audio storage, again something I can’t do on my iPad.

PerfMon, ResMon, Event Viewer, RegEdit, Windows Scripting Host, all sorts of serious tooling works in the desktop environment. Not Visual Studio, yet, but let’s remember… this is a toy, not a real laptop.

The upshot of which is…

I use my Surface 2 far more than I ever used my iPad.

Despite a few niggling sharp corners that need to be addressed, it irritates me far less than any Apple device I’ve ever owned. This just cements in my mind that, while there are many people who love their Apples, I’m just not their target consumer. I’m not sure that I’m exactly the target consumer of the Surface, but it’s inspired me and continues to grow on me. I’m even starting to write code for it. We’ll see if that becomes anything in due course.

Java not yet available for Surface – one more advantage.