multi-touch-dev team mailing list archive

[John Lea <john.lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mohamed,

Thanks for your email, my responses are below:

On 06/09/10 02:01, Mohamed Ikbel Boulabiar wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Thanks for the document John,
> I want to ask about the "Touchpoint menus" (6.1).
> These menus are raised after a one finger hold, are they special menus
> different from standard ones ?
>    

Yes there are differences between touchpoint and right-click menus.  
Specifically these differences are:

- Touchpoint menus will have a different visual appearance and layout.
- Initially touchpoint menus will only be one level deep, they will not 
support sub-menus. However we may add a single extra level of navigation 
in the future.
- The options in a touchpoint menus will normally be a subset of the 
right-click menu options at the same location.
- When selecting areas, touchpoint menus lock on to the select pegs and 
move when the pegs are moved.

> What about the direct implementation of right-mouse-click after the
> single-finger-hold to show usual right-mouse-click menus ?
>    

The right click menus are sub-optimal for touch interaction.  Touch 
point menus solve several of the problems with right click menuse in a 
finger touch environment including; items being obscured by the user's 
hand, insufficient spacing, difficulty navigating sub menus both in 
terms of precision and the finger covering menu items, touch targets 
being insufficiently visual defined etc...

In terms of layout touch menus really need to be either horizontal or 
pie (we have opted for horizontal).

Adding touchpoint menus is also a good opportunity to rationalize menu 
options and simplify the user interface.

> The same is also for pen devices hold. Pen devices are read as an
> independent device, but I think they also should have the standard
> right-menus-click after a hold.
>    

Ahhh...  ;-)  Pen input is quite different from finger input because 
pens have a much higher level of precision and because the pen obscures 
less of the screen.  But lucky the Wacom pens have a rocker button that 
is mapped to the left and right mouse button inputs.  However we do need 
to know when a input is coming from a pen as opposed to a finger because 
in some cases we will want different behaviors.

> If the reason behind touchpoint menus is to create big items finger
> can touch them with easy distinction, we may consider the solution of
> using the standard menus but adding a local zoom in a similar way like
> here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv4yrZT8-Dk
>    

Unfortunately when using finger touch input we do not have a mouseover 
state.  We don't know where a user's fingers are positioned relative to 
the screen until the finger(s) make contact with the screen surface.  
For example a user may perform a single finger hold-release to bring up 
a touchpoint menu, and then tap the item they wish to select.  We have 
no idea of the position of the users fingers between these two actions, 
and therefor have no means of expanding menu items underneath the raised 
location of the finger.

However there are lots of reasons right click menus don't really work in 
a finger touch environment and when we solve all the problems we end up 
with something that looks like the touchpoint menus.  Perhaps in the 
long term future we could look into replacing the right click menus with 
the touchpoint menus??  Although right click menus don't work well with 
finger touch, touchpoint menus do work with mouse interaction.

I hope that helps.

cheers,
John

--
John Lea | User Experience Architect
Canonical  www.canonical.com | Ubuntu  www.ubuntu.com
27th Floor, 21-24 Millbank Tower, London, SW1P 4QP
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7630 2415 | Email: john.lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx