IdentityMine Gesture Engine Announced
Wow. I can FINALLY talk about what I’ve been working on in secret, dark rooms for the last several months: a Gesture Engine for .NET!
Multitouch is all the rage, everyone knows that. Well, handling multiple, simultaneous input is much, much more complex than the single-point-of-contact mouse paradigm. After analyzing the space extensively, IdentityMine determined that a custom library of tools and behaviors is necessary to give developers (and ourselves) the flexibility we need to create multitouch applications that work the way they should. Now, I’ll acknowledge that the touch libraries in Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 are good; it’s just that ours are much, much more powerful.
Ever wondered how all these sophisticated, easy-to-use multitouch applications on this blog can be created in such a short amount of time? The answer is that they’re all built on the sturdy back of the IM Gesture Engine.
So, why did we need our own Gesture Engine above and beyond what Microsoft created for Surface? Well, there are a number of reasons:
The Microsoft gesturing system is single-level.
All contact in the native Surface and Windows 7 gesturing system is handled at the same priority. In contrast, the IdentityMine Gesture Engine implements a strategy where these gestures can be placed at any point of the user interface, and work seamlessly together to interpret the intended navigation or command. For example, say you have a resizable control with a sliding panel inside with tear-off items inside that. If you put your finger down on the control, how does the application know what you intend to do? With Microsoft’s gesture system, there is just no way to determine the user’s intent. The IdentityMine Gesture Engine uses context to tell.
The Microsoft gesturing system includes a fixed set of gestures.
The IdentityMine Gesture Engine supports all the standard gestures like Rotate, Resize, Pan, Click/Touch, Slide, Flick, Hold and Drag. It also supports purpose-built gestures like 3D Pan and 3D Orbit. however, the real strength is the fact that the IdentityMine Gesture Engine allows you as the developer to DEFINE YOUR OWN GESTURES! You can simply record a Gesture into an application, say, for example, a one-finger-curly-q for an Undo command, then connect your Gesture to any command, event or behaivior you want. This created unlimited gestural flexibility for the developer.
Surface gestures are incompatible with Windows 7 gestures.
Unless you’re a multitouch .NET developer, you probably aren’t aware that the Surface gesturing system and the Windows 7 gesturing system are built on completely different paradigms. The IdentityMine Gesture Engine bridges this gap, allowing the developer to write one set of code that could be deployed to BOTH Microsoft Surface and Windows 7.
There’s so much other coolness about the IdentityMine Gesture Engine I’d love to discuss but I don’t think those features of the library is public yet. I’ll keep you informed as the news filters out.
The official IdentityMine press release is here.
