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Microsoft reaches out with 'Touch'

By David Worthington

December 18, 2009 — (Page 1 of 2)
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.

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