Touch Gestures (Compact 2013)

  • Article

3/28/2014

A touch gesture is a movement of a finger or stylus over a control or object on the screen. Windows Embedded Compact 2013 supports gestures that are single-touch, dual-touch symmetrical, and multi-touch with two contact points. Compact 2013 supports the following gestures:

  • Direct Manipulation
    The user manipulates an object on the screen, which reacts so that the same point on the object always remains under the same finger. Direct manipulation can be single-touch, dual-touch symmetrical, or multi-touch with two contact points.
  • Double Tap
    A double-tap represents the left double-click of a mouse.
  • Flick
    The user presses a finger on the screen, moves in any direction, and then lifts up the finger to initiate scrolling that continues for a short time.
  • Hold
    The user presses and holds a finger on the screen. This represents the right-click of a mouse.

  • Pan
    The user presses and holds a finger on the screen and then drags the finger in any direction. This represents a mouse move event.

    Panning can occur after a hold gesture.

  • Tap
    A tap represents the left click of a mouse.

For more information about the gestures described in the preceding table, see Gesture Commands.

You can use the physics engine to calculate a stream of animation points to animate the response of a window to a gesture. The physics engine API handles the following:

  • One-dimensional and two-dimensional scrolling in response to a gesture.
  • Boundary animations (including a rubber band style animation and a bounce animation).
  • Calculating animation stopping points so that window controls are displayed correctly when the animation is complete.

For more information about the physics engine, see Touch Gestures Physics Engine Reference.

You can enable automatic handling for flick gestures in standard scrollable Win32 windows by using Window AutoGesture. For more information, see Touch Gestures Window AutoGesture.

To add this feature to your OS, see Touch Gesture Catalog Items and Sysgen Variables.

For reference information, see Gesture Reference, Touch Gestures Physics Engine Reference, and Touch Gestures Window AutoGesture.

Multi-touch Gestures

Depending on your touch screen driver, Compact 2013 supports multi-touch gestures with two contact points, or dual-symmetrical gestures. If your touch screen driver supports dual-symmetrical gestures, the gesture engine will try to determine how the X and Y coordinates should be paired. For both dual-touch symmetrical and multi-touch gestures, the gesture recognizer designates one contact point as the primary contact and keeps track of the distance between the primary contact and the secondary contact.

You can use CETouchView, a standalone tool in the Windows Embedded Compact Test Kit (CTK), to verify the raw touch data and gesture messages generated by your device.

See Also

Reference

Gesture Reference
Touch Gestures Physics Engine Reference
Touch Gestures Window AutoGesture

Other Resources

Shell and UI