How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

nesher — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:32:33 GMT

"WPF is flexible enough to allow us to put Surface "contact" events into its event stream."

How do you make this? Can you give me example?

Surface Opening up

Sean's Idea Kitchen — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:22:08 GMT

Over at the Surface blog they're talking about what goes into creating an application for Surface. Two

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

KevinKennedy — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:45:37 GMT

nesher,

You can do this using RoutedEvents. If you have input that corresponds to positions on the screen you go through the following (very high level) steps:

1) Use the Win32 WindowFromPoint to determine if this input should be routed to your window.

2) On the WPF side, you then use UIElement.InputHitTest on your window’s root UIElement to determine which descendent element should receive the input

3) Then you send a RoutedEvent to that UIElement with whatever information is important.

4) The UIElement can then handle this however it wants. If it is a button UIElement and the RoutedEvent was about some contact with the screen over it, then the button can show itself in the pressed state.

There is a lot more that needs to go on if you want other people to be happy using this (Robert could cover that if there is interest.) but that is basically all I did when I first got WPF apps working on Surface.

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

nesher — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:59:25 GMT

I have found a class named InputManager. I looks like it responsible for all input in WPF. It has support for Mouse,Keyboard and Stylus. I wonder if it could be used to implement "touch" devices?

I understand that controls like ScatterView is a custom control. But how about a Button. Do I have to inherit from button and write my own code so that it response to contacts? Or it is possible to emulate mouse input and use standard wpf controls?

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

Robert Levy — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:33:58 GMT

that's a great question, nesher. i'll try to cover that in a more detailed post about our WPF layer in a few weeks.

-r

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

nesher — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:04:44 GMT

great news rlevy, I'm waiting for your post :)

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

Tanveer Badar — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:04:41 GMT

"Unfortunately, the conventional computing system is built to expect just one mouse pointer."

Unfortunately, the conventional computing system uses only one mouse pointer by default. Support for multiple mouse pointers or generally, multiple input devices is present in the form of low level raw-input in Win32.

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

adamhill — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:21:30 GMT

Microsoft does support multiple mice in Managed apps via the MultiPoint SDK - http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=266221

Download at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a137998b-e8d6-4fff-b805-2798d2c6e41d&DisplayLang=en

adam...

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

nesher — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:36:42 GMT

Adamhill, unfortunatly MultiPoint does not support touchpad and stylus on my Tablet PC (Toshiba Portege m400).

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

nesher — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:57:39 GMT

Wenn can we await Part 2?

Also I would like to read more about SDK.

How creating Surface apps is different, part 2

Tales from the Microsoft Surface team — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:25:56 GMT

How creating Surface apps is different, part 2 Continuing the list from my previous post Multiple simultaneous

re: How creating Surface apps is different, part 1

parthiban s — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:03:46 GMT

The information u provided was really helpfull,i am waiting for ur post part 2.