Making Fingers Work With Touch Screens 111
An anonymous reader writes "A paper was recently published about Shift at the Computer Human Interaction Conference earlier this month. The authors (Daniel Vogel, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto and Patrick Baudisch, a research scientist at Microsoft Research) developed the technology to solve several problems with mobile-phone touch screens. Most such screens are designed to be operated with a stylus; when touched with a finger the UI doesn't work so well. They also created a short video with a demonstration of how Shift works. Shift builds on an existing technology known as Offset Cursor, which displays a cursor just above the spot a user touches on the screen. That allows a user to place their finger below the item they wish to choose so that they can see the item, rather than hiding it with their finger."
Not how it works (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Counterintuitive (Score:2, Informative)
Not exactly. You use your finger to browse on the screen. Just above your finger you will see the cursor. The article says that lifting your finger from the screen selects the item (even more counter-intuitive in my opinion). At least, it says that the cursor will be displayed only when necessary, i.e. if the item is big enough this function will not be activated.
Re:Counterintuitive (Score:3, Informative)
FTFS:
Am I the only one who read this and thought -- with a sigh -- that there was surely already an odious patent application filed for it?
"Method and Apparatus for Displaying a Cursor Below the Designated Location" -- with the following attached C++ code:
Re:Counterintuitive (Score:4, Informative)
Now if only they could solve the problem of screens getting smudged by fingers.
Re:Makes me wonder about the iPhone (Score:3, Informative)
I know because I created the first such system.
Re:Counterintuitive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Counterintuitive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Makes me wonder about the iPhone (Score:3, Informative)
Building touchscreen systems was not easy or cheap in those days. Today we don't even need computers to put touchscreens in front of users - just a display with a wireless network connection.