Filed under: OS Updates, Windows
Microsoft shows off Windows 7 touch features
by Brad Linder Mar 26th 2009 at 9:00AM
For example, the new Windows taskbar, which has already gotten a lot of attention is designed with large buttons that you can click or drag for thumbnail previews of running programs, which works great on touchscreen devices. The Aero Snap feature makes it easy to resize windows by dragging and dropping them, and the Aero Peek button in the taskbar will be a bit wider and easier to hit with your finger on computers with Touch features.
Microsoft has also retooled the on-screen keyboard so that keys glow when you press them to give users a better sense of feedback. Programs like Internet Explorer 8 have also been designed with touch in mind, with panning and zooming built into the UI.
In a blog post, the Windows 7 team also outlined a number of new touch gestures that can be used throughout the operating system. For instance, you can tap or double click on programs or drag them around just as if you were using a mouse. But you can also press and hold the screen to simulate a right click. Scroll in programs by dragging your finger up or down in the app itself, not on the scrollbar. Pinching your fingers together or pulling them apart zooms in and out of photos or documents. You can rotate images by touching the screen at two points and twisting your fingers.
[via jkkmobile]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ryaninc said 4:57PM on 3-26-2009
I have a computer with a very generic USB touchscreen glass which I installed the Win7 beta on. I can't get any touch features to work. It's pretty disappointing, but I'm hoping those features will arrive in future releases. :-(
Reply
hazard said 8:56AM on 3-27-2009
There's no such thing as generic hardware, but some devices do support generic [reference] drivers.
samuel said 8:29PM on 3-26-2009
This is just a complete and utter rip-off from the competition, namely Apple. But its Windows alright, did you see the rotation, how the image blinked into position and didn't rotate.. those same designer still work for MS, still doing a naff job.
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Mike Cerm said 12:54PM on 4-01-2009
@samuel
It's funny that you think Microsoft is ripping off Apple, because I wasn't aware that Apple made any tablet PCs ('cause they don't). Also, Microsoft has been working on Surface for a while now, and a lot of these ideas come from there.
Also, Microsoft is actually using several new gestures here that I haven't seen used. The secondary tap right-click is new. Also, pulling up jump-lists is a gesture that hasn't been used (though Palm does something similar in the Pre).
I'm not some crazy Microsoft fanboy, but if you think that Microsoft isn't innovating in the touch-friendly PC market, you haven't been paying attention. They're pretty much the only game in town! Good luck finding another operating system that better supports touch and gestures than Windows 7.
(Also, smooth rotation is supported in programs that support smooth rotation.)
samuel said 9:09PM on 4-01-2009
@Mike Cerm I feel sorry for your fingers already, I bet its going to shoot right up to the top of the RSI league table ..an OS with nothing but finger movements on BIG screen. Come on man, the iPhone had those methods of manipulation and made them popular, maybe not the first, but made them popular. That doesn't cancel out my argument.
MS are slowly loosing market share in so many areas and so they should. Their software and hardware are not going to trump the true innovators in the computing sector no matter who they buy or how much money they have.
I'll go my way and you can go yours but I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
ryzza007 said 8:29PM on 3-26-2009
""Press on an icon and tap with another finger"" for context menus...
Yay - someone listened to my idea (I suppose someone else in the world had the same idea, but 'yay' nonetheless).
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tim said 5:56PM on 4-04-2009
@samuel
I didn't realise a mobile phone counted as competition for a desktop operating system ;)
Want me to reel off the list of "features" Apple has borrowed of the years? (and let's not forget that OSX is actually Unix based. Highly innovative of Apple there!)
Anyway, touch has been in development for decades, long before Apple ever thought about it (or Microsoft for that matter).
Besides, what does Apple do with their "innovations"? They use them as more eye candy gloss with no substance. What's of interest here is what MS can do with touch that's actually of any use.
I've no idea if it's any use or just a gimmick. If it's the latter you can be sure customers will lose interest and it will be a feature MS will quickly stop selling Windows on, but meanwhile Apple will adopt it as a prime feature to sell their expensive hardware because it's a "cool" feature (even if their customers have no idea what to do with it).
p.s. where's that tablet touch netbook from Apple? ;)
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stm said 8:53PM on 4-06-2009
I'm not sure if this is innovation at all!
I'm not sure how many simultaneous touches Win7 supports? Only two? Why not more than 10? Does this mean that only one person can use Win 7 at a time? Why not 2, 3 or more persons at the same time?
Anyway, I said that this isn't new, because there are so many groups out there, that have developed the software (and hardware) which support multi touch. And when I say "multi" I mean much more than 10 persons (>> 100 touches). You can use their software on almost any OS. Just search the web for "multi touch".
MS Surface isn't MSs idea, in the first place. MS is selling their MS Surface for $5000-$10000. Wow! Talk about overprice! You can build your own for $300! So where does the other $9000 go? Developing? Innovations? I don't think so...
Nothing that MS or Apple "innovates" is really innovation at all. Usually, it's a rip-off from some poor guys, who have worked their a*s out, just so the big IT companies could rip them off.
This is everything but Innovation!
MacBook Pro line (since 2008) have some kind of multi touch, in a form of a trackpad. The latest revisions of Apple's Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro features a full glass multi-touch trackpad. So, this is a rip-off, once again. Although, I'm not sure who is riping-off who, here...
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