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Windows 7 Touchscreen Details Emerging
nandemoari writes "Microsoft has revealed more about Windows 7 and its support for touch screen technology. The system sounds impressive, however, reports suggest it appears to have a high error rate. In an early version of the system, Microsoft found some problems. For example, both the zoom and rotate functions worked less than 75% of the time, often because the computer confused the two. To rectify this, engineers redesigned the system so that it only looks out for gestures specifically relevant to the program being used. This made a significant improvement: the zoom gesture was now recognized 90% of the time.
The problem is that even a 90% success rate may be too low. If you can imagine how frustrating it would be if one in ten keystrokes or mouse movements didn't do what you intended, you can see why touch screen technology will need to be even more reliable if it's to truly improve the user experience. PC Authority has a related story about statements from HP, who don't expect such technology to replace keyboards and mice any time soon."
You'd think that with that 'big ass table' they've been so proudly parading around they'd have this figured out.
I mean, letting everyone think it was a touch screen, when in reality it uses several cameras down below the glass to track motion - you'd hope they'd get it right when it came to something that actually utilized touch...why are we not surprised to learn they've stuffed this up.
...how much of a flop the iPhone would be if it had the same operational statistics?
Can we face facts now as to MS's rudimentary implementations in regards to touch tech will never be more than a high school science project? Huh...please?
Their efforts are nothing more than routine fluff to scam investors. C'mon...let's get real and let's all let MS know so they can get off the stage already.
I'm not convinced that the touch screens can replace a keyboard and mouse on a desktop, or even a laptop, for some time. Text is the big issue, and I can't see myself being able to achieve the same typing speed on a touch screen until there's some really good haptic feedback in place. While handwriting technology could come on leaps and bounds (and has done so), I already type faster than I can write, so this wouldn't be helpful to me. For the mouse there is definitely places where touch would work better, particularly for new users, but the precision of a mouse is better for certain applications (notably gaming) compared to stubby fingers and having them block your view of the screen. Even if Microsoft can get touch working nicely in Windows 7, it's still going to be quite some time until I'll be getting rid of my keyboard and mouse.
Mattb90
Editor, allaboutgames.co.uk
I don't think the keyboard+mouse combo needs replacing, for most applications. But I do see immense potential in touch screen tech.
My "dream desk"? A huge normal monitor, a keyboard+mouse combo, and a horisontal touch screen / tablet beside them.
Touch manipulation just makes more sense on a horisontal surface to me. Touch wouln't hurt on vertical monitors, but it's not for continuous work. So give me a solution where I can, say doodle a graphic on my touch screen / tablet, lying on my desk, but don't make me give up my keyboard and mouse or hover my arms in the air for that.
Also, a horisontal touch screen would be an ideal secondary controller for games and stuff... :)
.: Max Romantschuk
A story about touch screens that doesn't say they cure cancer and solve world hunger?
What is this site, and where is the real slashdot?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Imagine this is a Venn diagram.
Things that are ever going to need a touchscreen are here,
here there is a wrought-iron fence made of tigers,
and way the hell over here is things that are ever going to run Windows 7.
Seriously.
That unpossible!
1. The hand gesture for input is fine...as long as I am doing the gesture on where I typically place my hand and type, which is keyboard, not screen. If I can produce such a gesture on a keyboard for zoom/rotate, I think that's easier to press Ctrl -, Ctrl +...
2. Screen is for my eye, while Keyboard is for my hand...they just have to be in two different places because how our hands and eyes was grown. Moving the screen on the table - no good. Moving the keyboard to a vertical panel - no good.
3. I don't like my hand to cover on the thing that I am operating on. My hand is not transparent.
4. A big multi-touch touchpad as a keyboard is not a really good idea. I owned a Touchstream LP keyboard, which is the exact multitocuh technology that Apple acquires for their iPhone. It support many Gestures and such, but no touch feedback is really a show stopper.
5. If individual caps of the keyboard can be make to sense the finger position, hence allow multitocuh while still preserve the touch feeling of pushing a key - that will be a killer hardware.
Why waste developer time on this for a consumer OS? Fair enough if they were developing an OS for a kiosk or touch phone or something. But Windows & is supposed to be for regular PCs. The last thing I, or anyone I know, is for touchscreen capabilities. Not to mention that I've never seen a touchscreen in a retail store. I don't want fingerprints all over my monitor. I can interact with my OS just fine with my keyboard and mouse. Thanks.
At work, my Monitor is at the edge of my desk, my legs are up on the desk, and I'm leaned back as far as my chair goes. I could not reach the touch screen without leaning forward and up, and that would take effort. And I am a lazy-ass critter, why else would I work in that position in the first place?
At home, things are no different, I usually work with my legs up on the sofa, sitting up, but leaned back on the comfy cushions. Again, touch screen out of reach.
So this technology really doesn't interest me.
Well, maybe if the touch screen came will a big, long stylus or I could use a sawed-off cue stick. However, I might get in the habit of whacking the touch screen with the stylus, when I get angry about something on the screen.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
There is a distinction between gesture recognition and direct manipulation. With direct manipulation there is no recognition (using fancy algorithms like used in speech recognition). Succesfull multitouch applications use direct manipulation.
The basic mistake here is that MS is trying to make old programs to work with multitouch gestures. For multitouch the UI of the applicatios needs to be redesigned and reprogrammed. There is no way around that.
I think I'm with HP on this one, I can't see touch interfaces becoming popular on the desktop.
Having to reach up and touch the screen is physically more demanding than resting your hands on a keyboard or mouse. You also don't get the same tactile response as you do when pushing a key or clicking a mouse button.
Touch makes more sense for mobile devices where a full size keyboard or mouse is not available, and maybe on laptops where you could use the touchpad for gesture input. Even then, it's not always the best option as an on-screen keyboard means less space for viewing the content.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why should this be different from any other Microsoft product?
Fingerprinting is always a problem when you use touch screens.
Especially after a snack or a meal.
Aside from that - users also have different movement patterns, which causes every user to be recognized and to let the device learn the behavior of the user.
And don't forget that gestures have different meanings in different cultures.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
.o q q o ss uoo nq 'ooz o usno s1qod u buou ou , pu 'ou 7 sopu o q busn ,
are there any Linux alternatives yet?
Screen are for our eyes. And we use hands to input. Screens are setup vertically because that good for our eyes. Keyboard are placed on our table because that how our hands are grown. Moving the screen to the table or move my hand to interact a vertical panel is no good!
Gesture are actually good if it could be done on the keyboard. I owned a Touchstream LP keyboard (which is the exact multitouch technology that Apple acquired, google for its image), I enjoy doing gestures on it. However, the lack of touch feedback is a stopper.
If someone could make a keyboard such that each individual keycap is a simple touch pad, and hence can sense the movement of fingers and hence gesture, while all this still preserve the feeling of pressing a key, that would be a killer hardware!
Well hopefully we won't have to worry about typing in a few years if speech to text is improved upon.
The mouse though, don't never see that getting replaced, at least not in the near future.
Rush that baby to market, we'll fix it with service pack 1!!!
Sitting here at my desktop, monitor out of arms reach, I can't help but think that Touch is a useless feature. I'm not going to be swayed to Touch as a feature until I can make use of it. Perhaps if I was a notebook user I'd reconsider my enthusiasm. But that said, I think there's a way that they can attract desktop users...
Some company needs to completely replace the 10-key pad on a desktop keyboard with a touch screen. It should be the same size as the 10-key pad or larger, and feature a 10-key on/off switch. In the 'on' mode, you would use it as a normal 10-key. In the 'off' mode, it would give the user a touch device which could manipulate the images on the monitor. The user might see a selection box on-screen targeting the area of the pad that is available. Touch gestures would allow manipulation of the desktop. Of course a mouse would still be used for most point and click interactions. It probably should use OLED for high angle visibility and should have soft ridges for tactile feedback when you enable 10-key.
I've never used such a device but I can see where a computer may become confused. When we touch the screen and move our fingers, we would more than likely change the distance between our fingers unintentionally when rotating in a circle. Maybe the solution is simple.
When the computer detects that 2 fingers are on the screen, maybe simply displaying a circular template with which the user could follow when rotating, and downing the sensitivity would work. You could just create some kind of shadowing overlay or something. If the user wants to zoom, then just doing the usual 'fingers-closer' or 'fingers-further-apart' would work too.
I'd like to see touchscreen implemented correctly. There are so many areas where just 'grabbing' something on screen and moving it would be so much more user friendly. Particularly when it comes to people with disabilities.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
Windows 7's voice interpreter is already pretty good; imagine touch with voice. It would be awesome to bundle up my keyboard and mouse and put them away forever, but it seems a few years off still.
It may be all the rage, but I almost never use zoom and/or rotate. Normally I take some time to setup my application right, and after that I use it only if a document (e.g. a webpage) misbehaves. Once the character size is correct, I use the scroll bars. Now, the auto-rotate of camera's, PDA's, photo frames etc., that's something I find truly useful. I wish I had it for my LCD screen.
Am I the only one that thinks that rotate and zoom are both rather pointless things to optimize? I've got a MS 4000 keyboard at work, and while it is a brilliant keyboard, I've literally *never* used the zoom function on it and you cannot reprogram it to do scrolling.
But Microsoft can fix this easily.
When you touch the screen and it's not clear what you want, an animated character can pop up and say "Hi! It looks like you're trying to rotate the screen image!" and coach you on how to bend your fingers into the right position to meet the software's expectations.
To prevent errors, when you're done, a dialog box can pop up saying "Do you really want to rotate the screen image? Allow/deny." Then there will be no errors... or any errors that do occur can be blamed on the user.
And, of course, there can be a Screen Rotation Wizard to give you a simple six-screen walkthrough, and context-sensitive Help available simply by tapping your ring finger in the northeast quadrant of the screen while you're making your gesture.
The Microsoft Way is that the computer should control the user, not the other way around. Once the touchscreen programmers absorb this fundamental principal, all their problems can be easily solved.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
about 7 lately
Porn!!!
I'm a nerd. I have no muscles to hold-up my arm. Pushing a mouse across a pad is about all the effort I can muster.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Seem to be accepted fine with a 90% success rate. I've always noticed that whenever most people that don't use one every day pick up an iTouch/iPhone, for example, the error rate in typing and gestures can be even higher than 10% yet this does not deter people because the basic functionality like scrolling and "clicking" work fine. In my experience, people are willing to chalk up errors in slightly more involved gestures to "getting used" to the particular touchscreen's properties. I know several people running various 7 beta/RC builds on their tablets full-time and are absolutely in love with it. I'm considering getting a Lenovo X200 tablet later this year and I look forward to being able to try out 7 on it.
Description: A system of providing a consistent user interface to facilitate an improvement in ease of use.
I can't believe someone else has not thought of that before! Anyone can clearly see why Microsoft is famous for their innovations! (i.e. as long as they don't follow the link and read it)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Why is it that ALWAYS they just simply can't do it!!
Always there is a catch in this or that.. Why?
Not that I'm that fan of mac, but I've never heard error rates in their multitouch, for example.
Microsoft come on..
Yeah, that table was brilliant. Microsoft launches furniture that crashes.
I look forward to Microsoft's vision of the Digital Home. Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler, all running Windows Vista^W7. What could possibly go wrong?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
have submitted a story about W7 every day this week.
Imagine what the screen will look like with all that orange Cheetos stuff smeared all over it.
Lame!
And I won't get into what peanut butter and jelly will look like.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Smudging your screen and tiring your arm, all while accidentally choosing the wrong option because the developer made the button too small, or the sensor is mis-adjusted.
This industry has such a short memory. Some of you may remember the HP computer, the one with the butterfly on the screen? And the smiling actors touching the screen? HP blew about $85 million dollars advertising that computer and technology.
It turned out people did not like touching their screens, for many reasons:
(1) If the room temp is above 75F or your nervous about getting this paper done on time, you'll leave a smudge every time you touch the anti-reflective coating.
(2) A finger is not a very precise pointing tool.
(3) After 30 minutes of pointing you get the heavy-arm syndrome, or if you persist, the B-24 pilot arm. (B-24 had an extremely hard to turn and pull steering yoke-- B-24 pilots could be distinguished by their Schwartzernegger-sized biceps.).
(4) The third time your finger misses the "save" menu item and hits "exit", you swear and give up using the touchscreen.
Yes, I know, youngsters, you think touchscreen technology has improved over the last 15 years, but human fingers and arms and sweat glands have not.
All this pinging back and forth over gesture-based interfaces vs. keyboards and mice... is wasted on me. I just want a nice wireless subvocal interface between me and my devices. When I use it I can speak aloud and the device won't take action because it knows I am, well, vocal. I guess the only danger of subvocal would be found in meetings at work where I find myself muttering profanities under my breath after the idiotic comments people make ;p
As far as the actual subvocal transfer to my device... I am honestly hoping someone can come up with an implant that is fairly small which goes near the vocal chords or attach to a nerve which drives them (a little scary) that could be powered by my body and reliably transmit the information of a distance up to the length of my arm, where it could then interface with something more powerful to transmit over larger distances if needed (but generally not needed).
All of this of course just being a stop-gap solution to when we have true brain/nervous system level interfaces.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
I do stage lighting for a living, and we use the latest Road Hog console ( www.highend.com) to do it. It is essentially a computer with 2 touch screens and their mixture of buttons and faders that make it great. It does include a number pad and trackball. You can download the software for Windows to see it. You can either hook up a keyboard or use one on the screen as you need it (anything longer than a few words in a row gets tedious).
I've got to be able to use this computer fast. The touch screens allow really quick access to lots of stuff, particularly because each hand can be doing a different things. There's a whole menu bar that just changes around views of the touchscreens so you have 10 different layouts available with one push. You also get lots of nice combinations like hold a place on the touch screen and hit a shift key on the keyboard to activate different functions.
I think the keyboard is here to stay but the mouse may get left out by some people. Probably always used by niche groups but computers with a modified OS are totally usable without them.
To fix the arms tiring thing, we'll simply have to have monitors at a more natural angle. Like the ones on the lighting console.
touchscreen cleaning products
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Those looking forward to "gorilla arm" computing can rejoice. Unless multitouch gestures are supported on the trackpads of laptop mice, touchscreens on desktops is just a curiosity for kiosks and schoolkids.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
I mean, letting everyone think it was a touch screen, when in reality it uses several cameras down below the glass to track motion
The glass can be a sheet of plastic cut into any size or shape you want. The surface can probably be textured or molded - three dimensional.
It can be scratched, burnt or stained - and a DIY replacement purchased from Home Depot.
The cameras and rear projection optics are off-the-shelf.
Dump the 300 hr lamp and color wheels for LED or laser projection and you good to go for the next five to ten years.
These are things you want if you want to use touch surfaces architecturally or in extreme environments.
The camera can read bar codes.
The camera doesn't really need you to "touch" anything.
I agree with most of that but,
Touch manipulation just makes more sense on a horisontal surface to me.
Real-world experience has shown that an angled surface is better than both horizontal or vertical, which is why nearly anyone who draws for a living, like draftsmen, and animators, all use angled "drafting" tables. The fact that the images on the screen can't fall off, (unlike paper which has to be taped down) eliminates the only (minor) downside that an angled table normally has. It would also prevent you from setting coffee cups on it, which is probably a good idea :)
But I agree, I would love a big drafting-table like touch-screen.
Will Windows 7 Touch screen capability come with rubber gloves... I wouldn't want to catch a virus from interacting with Windows Directly.
The HP TouchSmart Computer has been around for quite some time now.
Apple has implemented touch technology on a specialized device with specialized hardware
You could describe any computer like that.
The fact is that while the device is specialized, the software and applications are not especially so - at least beyond the fact the development API has a lot of mechanisms to take touch into account. But they don't really lack for any of the other API's you'd get with a desktop, that 99% of application developers use today.
Even the touch API is generalized, to where you could use different hardware as long as you could get points where users were touching on screen.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This isn't new. I've been giving Microsoft products hand gestures for years.
-ted
... being able to close clippy with a punch!
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