Microsoft Talks Windows 8 Touch Experience on Windows 7 Tablets
by Andrew Cunningham on March 29, 2012 3:30 PM ESTMicrosoft's Jerry Koh and Jeff Piira gave some insight into the Windows 8 touch experience in yet another Building Windows 8 blog post yesterday. They talked specifically about the type of touch hardware that would be required for Windows 8-certified tablets - the touchscreens in Windows 8 and Windows on ARM tablets will need to recognize at least five simultaneous inputs, have good edge detection, and accurately register 95% of all touch input.
To ensure a decent experience on Windows 7 tablet hardware, the gestures needed for basic OS navigation require no more than two fingers, though tablets with limited multitouch capabilities may not be able to use apps or features that require more complex gestures. To compensate for tablet hardware with poor edge detection, Windows 8 can use a 20 pixel buffer around the screen to help register edge gestures, but the space used for the buffer cannot be used to register other touch input. Various sensitivity issues may also cause problems with individual taps, swipe to select, swipe and slide, and swipe from edge on Windows 7 tablets.
For more information, including specific Windows 7 tablets that Microsoft has used for internal testing, the full post is linked below.
Source: Building Windows 8 blog
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vision33r - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
MS better start going through the Win8 forums and read some real critical comments instead of asking mods to delete them and ignoring constructive criticism.Win8 will be such a huge flop that the first thing people will be looking to do is the registry hack to disable Metro UI and bring back the classic start menu.
That dream of having sub 2lb Win8 tablets will live on as the ARM based Win8 tablet will sell as poorly as Windows phone. When noobs found out that the ARM edition Microsoft Office cannot open all x86 Office formats.
I like Win8, fast and speedy but Metro blows.
B3an - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
You're a moron.Da W - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Nobody noticed it but this is the first Windows since the expiry of the antitrust srutiny from 10 years ago. Microsoft couldn't bundle things like zune, windows live mail, messenger, hotmail account and so on with its windows product. It had to offer to download them separatly, and knowing that 75%+ of computer users are computer illetrate, Microsoft fought at an unfair disadvantage against Apple or Google.Windows 8 is different. Music player/music market, messenger, e-mail, calendar, app store, microsoft (aka hotmail aka xboxlive aka live) account, BING of all things, it's all bundled in there! Dare we say... integrated Skype?
This Windows may not be hugely popular but this will mark a major milestone in how Microsoft sucks every new drop of money from its windows sales.
damianrobertjones - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
As far as the users here go the moment you add Microsoft office to the Taskbar they only ever use the Start menu to shutdown or log off. Same for me at home.Let it go.... It's gone
jabber - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
...still sliding to the bottom left for the Start button to shutdown.Thats nearly 20 years of muscle memory for you.
Makaveli - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
i'm all for Metro on a tablet i've tried it and liked the experience. But I don't care what any says I won't be using it on my desktop computer with a mouse and keyboard. I will hack/reg fix/disable to get a proper interface in which to use my pc the way I want to use it. Not the way ms thinks I should use it because they need to catch up to apple.IBM650 - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
Try ViStart, works well, say no to the offers of other software.androticus - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
I am HUGELY disappointed that the keyword "fluid" did not appear in this blog post even once!!!