Microsoft surprised attendees to November’s Professional
Developers Conference with free touch-screen laptops. It wasn't largesse, for
the company had an ulterior motive: to get developers to write applications
that utilize touch interfaces.
Uptake in the enterprise will take time, as developers are trying to figure out
how to apply it, said Patrick Hynds, president of consulting firm CriticalSites
and a Microsoft regional director (an individual recognized by Microsoft’s
Developer Platform evangelism group for technical expertise).
Hynds believes that touch-screen technology could be very useful in network
operations centers. Business users, he added, will not be touching the screen
much, but that there will be some touch-screen applications in every business
over time. "It's just a matter of when they realize it," he said.
Chris Menegay, a principal consultant for Notion Solutions and a Microsoft
regional director, feels that the technology will remain niche, but that it
could be very successful where it is applied. Mobile workers in the field, as
well as for kiosks, interactive whiteboards in meeting rooms, and medical
imaging devices would be useful cases for its adoption, he added.
However, developers will need to learn new skills in Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF) and UI design techniques before those scenarios can be
supported, said author and Microsoft regional director Billy Hollis.
"Developers are notoriously slow to adapt their UI design skills."
Hynds said that Silverlight could simplify the programming portion of
touch-screen UI design. Microsoft will introduce touch-screen support in Silverlight 4.
"Microsoft's advantage is building in touch at the OS and developer tools
level," Hollis said. "With Windows 7, it's just there if you have the
hardware.
"I expect laptops to be one of the first segments to have a lot of touch
support, because direct touch for the screen is a nice complement to a
touchpad. While the touchpad can emulate the sensitivity of a mouse, directly
touching the screen is faster and more intuitive for things like program
navigation."
Microsoft's drive to mainstream touch-screens began with Windows 7, and Microsoft's Surface team's
contributions to WPF and Silverlight provided crucial technology that backed up
that effort. The Surface team made its SDK public, and the team writes WPF
controls for Windows.
Of course, touch-screens were on track toward becoming more commonplace before
Microsoft's adoption of the technology. Most recently, Apple's iPhone
demonstrated that touch has "real potential," and is "sowing the
seeds for high demand through the industry," Hollis said.
Menegay's outlook for the technology wasn't as positive. "Touch-screens
have been around for years, and they've found their use at kiosks, which people
can walk up and use them, and they don't need to type text. I think multi-touch
will make that [keyboard-less] experience much nicer," he said.
"But I don't think we're going to all start pointing our screens like in
‘Minority Report.’ Most of today's work is still text input, and touch isn't
compelling for that yet. And who really wants to keep moving from keyboard to
touching their screen? I can't even reach my monitor easily from where I'm
sitting."
On SDTimes Microsoft
reaches out with 'Touch' By David Worthington December
18, 2009
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