Multi-touch

Touch.Codeplex.Com – Multi-Touch for everyone, now.

is proud to announce the launch of Touch.Codeplex.com. Our exploration into the state of the Natural User Interface (NUI) connected us with folks at Microsoft and together we identified an adoption issue. While the technology to build Touch applications exists, it is currently cumbersome to implement. Marc Schweigert and James Chittenden had an idea to use Expression Behaviors (literally drag-and-drop onto any object) to act as a bridge. Together we launch this humble beginning with a bold vision. We hope you join us as we expand this library in the months to come.

Writeboard Panorama of calculation debugging.

Writeboard Panorama of calculation debugging.

Project Overview
The APIs in WPF4 plus the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch make building common touch scenarios easy. However, implementing many of the same touch scenarios using WPF3.5SP1 or Silverlight 3/4 involves writing a fair bit more code. Furthermore, the touch APIs across WPF4, WPF3.5SP1, and Silverlight are different.

Project Goals
The goal of this project is to simplify building common touch scenarios when using WPF 3.5 SP1 or Silverlight 3/4 by using Expression Blend Behaviors to provide a consistent way to implement these scenarios across WPF & Silverlight. Expression Blend Behaviors can be used within Visual Studio without a dependency on Expression Blend by downloading the Expression Blend 3 SDK. You can also find more Expression Blend Behaviors at http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/ and http://tinyurl.com/ExpressionGalleryBehaviors.

Project Roadmap

  • Beta Release of core Scroll and TranslateRotateScale behaviors to developer community. <– You are here
  • Revised Scroll and TranslateRotateScale behaviors
  • Gesture Behavior (repurpose awesome code from here)
    • Erase (Back and Forth Gesture)
    • Create (Single Finger Draw ‘+’)
    • Delete (Single Finger ‘X’ Drawn Over )
    • Select Lasso (Single Finger Draw Lasso)
    • Split (Single Finger Diagonal Line)
  • Hold Menu (Single Finger Touch & Hold Context Menu)
  • Draw (Three Finger Pen Grasp)
  • Clone (Two Finger Double Tap)
  • Open / Edit (Single Finger Double Tap)
  • Select (Single Finger Tap)
  • Global Rotate (Five Finger Grab and Rotate of Application)
  • Global Perspective Rotate (Five Finger Pressure to Rotate Application Perspective)

See the whole deal here. 

Posted by Joseph Juhnke on February 15, 2010

Flexible eInk Technology Available Soon

It was only a matter of time before someone miniaturized eInk technology to become the paper all of us Sci-Fi fans (read nerds) have been dreaming of. 

Plastic Logic has just announced the release of a new eReader technology that looks very exciting. Not to seem skeptical but we are hoping that their “environmentally friendly” marketing campaign also includes the retraining of the millions of workers currently employed by the paper industry. We love trees more than the next guy but bored, unemployed, angry loggers scare us to death. 

Posted by Joseph Juhnke on October 27, 2008

A step towards immersive experiences


Today the edges between and real were blurred a little further (thanks Brad) as man and data interact in real time and real space. This slight-of-hand was created using a compelling combination of Musion Eyeliner and some clever motion cameras. We want to see it from the point-of-view of the guy on stage!

Posted by Joseph Juhnke on August 5, 2008

Microsoft Surface goes spherical

The folks at Microsoft Surface have begun to play further with their advanced multi-touch display. We are THIS CLOSE to getting one of these coolies to play with but now our desire has been captured by this new globe version. I think we were all amused by some of the “creative” demonstration apps they built for it, but the virtual tour demo left us wanting it purely because it looks like a crystal ball and who doesn’t want one of those???

Posted by Joseph Juhnke on August 5, 2008

Digital Blurring

I’m not sure if it was the Zoomii Books (thank you Stephanie) hyper-real representation of a bookstore browsing experience mashup created by Chris Thiessen, or the stylish video explorations of Robert Hodgin, but is beginning to fuzz the edges of reality for me. We can now create “natural” (beyond multi-touch) interaction metaphors that leverage all of the history and nostalgia of an analog object and then extend the value of that object significantly with technology. We create objects that look like they exist but only exist as bits on the plane. As we explore this reality or rather as it augments ours what happens to traditional constraints. Time? Space?

I need to lay off the sugar cookies after 10.

Posted by Joseph Juhnke on July 22, 2008