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> How wonderful it is to flip open the Surface and quickly type a 4 paragraph email response when I need to ... And switching between the two modes of interacti

• MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  The Surface keyboard has a trackpad. That just moves the problem from hardware to software though. How do you make a single UI that is equally fit for touch and mouse? I doubt that you can. But it probably doesn't matter, touch is going to win and we're going to be stuck with mice being a second class input.
  • kijin 14y ago
    > How do you make a single UI that is equally fit for touch and mouse? Yep, that's the question I was trying to raise. Having a mouse in addition to a touchscreen not only looks redundant to those who don't need precision clicking, it also causes a potential conflict between different UI paradigms. When touch is the primary input, every UI element needs to become big enough to touch with fat fingers, so you usually end up with UIs that look like they were designed for kindergarteners. You simplify and hide features until you upset every "power user". When the mouse is the primary input, on the other hand, the added precision allows you to cram more clickable elements into small spaces, possibly freeing up more screen real estate for other things.
    • contextfree 14y ago
      Do most functions of most software require precision clicking? Why not just have mouse-specific UI for the particular tasks that benefit from it, and common UI for the rest? This would be similar to how some advanced programs that are basically mouse-driven still have keyboard shortcuts and sometimes even command line consoles, etc., for more advanced usage. I don't think you need an entirely separate UI to achieve this, you can just have certain special widgets, views, "power tools" etc. that act as "mouse shortcuts".
      • marshray 14y ago
        I find most software involves highlighting text. I use the ability to click the space between individual characters quite often. Finger touch plus adjustments with arrow keys gets the job done, but nothing beats the mouse at this for me. When Windows 95 came out we all had fun trying all the crazy pointer themes it supported (hands, etc.), but I suspect we've all now settled on the fine-tip pointer arrow and I-beam.
• dsirijus 14y ago
  I usually get ridiculed for saying this, but I see Leap [1] (I'm not an affiliate, bastards [2] still didn't send me a developer kit) as complete replacement for the interaction. Your hands don't even need to move from homerow to point around, precision is (supposedly) awesome, potential for interaction is in much greater space than any other input method, and your keyboard can be completely dummy (and let Leap capture where your fingers are, even adding pressure sensitivity check there), replace touch screen in the same way etc. I just wait for a day where they'll just replace touchpad with it (it's even in similar hardware format) and OS' to provide a boundless desktop experience. [1] https://leapmotion.com/ https://leapmotion.com/ [2] I still love the guys
  • gregsq 14y ago
    Well after my comment above about scaling resolution by moving back through the z plane, thank you for the link. It's really helpful.
• dagw 14y ago
  First of all does anybody seriously believe that anybody will be using the Surface to do the sort of work where shifting a layer one pixel to the right is critical? The mouse isn't going to disappear, and I have yet to meet anybody who seriously thinks it is. As to styluses, it seems to be a fairly solved problem. Most designers I know use a Wacom tablet of some description. And those with a big enough budget use a Wacom cintiq (which is basically a huge touch screen). As for things like selecting text and other in between tasks, I agree that current solutions aren't great. However I suspect people are working on it. My initial guess after having thought about the problem for 3 seconds is that some sort of clever context aware zooming and input scaling might be a good place to start.
  • kijin 14y ago
    > does anybody seriously believe that anybody will be using the Surface to do the sort of work where shifting a layer one pixel to the right is critical? No, but the article gave me the impression that touchscreen + keyboard = the future of computing. I'm just trying to point out that the future of computing might involve one or two additional devices. Of course the mouse isn't going to disappear. Many people buy mice with laptops nowadays, even though every laptop comes with a trackpad. The question is, will this trend continue with Surface-like devices, or is mouse sales going to plummet?
    • MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      That's a good point, you wouldn have expected mouse-using-holdovers to eventually give up, but if that's happening it's happening slowly. Still see people using mice with laptops all of the time. Could expect the same to hold true with the transition to tablets.
    • sp332 14y ago
      It's been a while since I've bought a laptop with a usable trackpad. For example I just got a Dell, a $1,500 Studio 15 not a crappy low-end one, and the trackpad is broken. I've even had it replaced but it still refuses to move the cursor about 50% of the time. Mice are preferable to every trackpad I've used, even Apple ones. Of course this doesn't address things trackpads can do that mice can't, like multitouch gestures. But for pointing quickly and accurately, I always have a mouse paired to my laptop.
• barbs 14y ago
  I think you dismiss styluses too quickly here. You can be much more precise with a stylus than with a mouse. Just because the tip of the stylus isn't one pixel in diameter, it's probably the most accurate form of input you can get. That's why Wacom tablets are so popular. Also: > Even a conventional touchpad on a cheap laptop has better precision than your finger does. A conventional touchpad...that you use with your finger...? Am I missing something here? How is a touchpad more accurate than touching a screen?
  • kijin 14y ago
    With most touchpads/trackpads, you can tilt your finger by a few degrees in any direction to fine-tune your aim before you click. This enables pixel-perfect clicking when you need it. (Use the physical button when you do this, because tapping will ruin your aim.) With touchscreens, you can't fine-tune your aim before you tap. You just tap, and hope that you hit the correct coordinates.
    • roc 14y ago
      And with most touch-screens you can (un)pinch to zoom in and get as accurate as you want/need. The entire desire for 'pixel-perfect' clicking on a static UI is a symptom of trying to shoe-horn touch into interfaces not explicitly designed for it. Has that ever worked?
  • brazzy 14y ago
    > I think you dismiss styluses too quickly here. No, he doesn't. > You can be much more precise with a stylus than with a mouse. Not with a touchscreen stylus, you can't. Touchscreens actually have a considerably lower hardware resolution than the screen itself. > That's why Wacom tablets are so popular. Completely different technology. > Am I missing something here? How is a touchpad more accurate than touching a screen? By having it input movement (at a configurable granularity) rather than position. That makes it a completely different input method.
• joshuacc 14y ago
  The Surface keyboard cove also includes a touchpad, so this particular problem may be solved already.
• KiwiCoder 14y ago
  I'm not sure this is a problem. Android supports precise text-selection via automatic zooming and start and end block markers, like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/grmlsgqgqc5qqs6/Screenshot_2012-11-01-12-37-47.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/grmlsgqgqc5qqs6/Screenshot_2012-11...
  • dsirijus 14y ago
    It still isn't precise enough (well, not unless you're selecting monospace font type), and even ignoring that, it's a level of abstraction extra, because you don't just click and get where you want in just one step.
    • KiwiCoder 14y ago
      Stabbing at the screen with my sausage finger works fine for me, in fact it works so well that I hadn't thought about it until now. Of course, I don't code or write on my touch devices and when I do code/write I use a different machine (a laptop or desktop) and have no impulse to touch the screen. Different modes. I don't understand your comment about monospace font type.
      • dsirijus 14y ago
        I personally have troubles with either iOS or Android around small width characters in variable width fonts (like ',il.;:). Fixed width font would help me greatly around those.
  • fudged71 14y ago
    While I agree that it is possible, I don't think this method (or Apple's) is anywhere near as efficient as a mouse. It will always be 20 times slower to select a part of a word, compared to a mouse, because you have to hide the word with your finger, see a popup of what's underneath, and then somehow select the letters.
  • Evbn 14y ago
    It is also extremely failure prone, bordering useless due sensitivity bugs. But that is fixable in theory.
• 7952 14y ago
  Manuel pixel level adjustments have always been difficult, even with a mouse. Place elements roughly by eye, and then have nudge buttons to position exactly. Have good support for snapping and alignment in a UI that people actually understand.
  • oscilloscope 14y ago
    Detecting the eye's focus would be faster and more accurate.
    • 7952 14y ago
      Four buttons that nudge an element by one pixel is perfectly accurate. For most of us aligning things on screen is not an exact science. Drawing is a process of minor adjustments, not a single operation. There is scope for software trying to guess the intent, and ignoring the exact placement. This is difficult as snapping can be very annoying when it is not done right.
• gregsq 14y ago
  I agree very much on this. There are some precision tasks that I do, such as audio waveform editing, circuit boards, photoshop image masking and so on that can't be done efficiently without a pointing device, or a surrogate. When using the MBP I use an MX performance mouse with the MBP to get some control over some of these processes. The trackpad, while useful for some tasks, simply isn't accurate enough. I do hear many comments claiming that touchscreens can supersede mice, and even keyboards, but I don't think this is right at all. The form factor of a mouse can be made to very closely align ergonomically with the time proven accuracy of the artisans dexterous hand. Angular displacement at the wrist traverses a relatively larger sweeping arc than with a track pad, effectively increasing resolution at something like the square of the distance. Wacom styluses are also precision devices, and yet I would still suggest that they aren't as conformant with watch maker like skills as the ordinary extended hand. Compared with high resolution devices, big finger tips and small area track pads are clumsy and add difficulty. I wouldn't want to design fine watch mechanisms with either. It's essentially an issue of resolution over area. I can reduce the resolution of a trackpad to attain some accuracy, but in doing so reduce the effective area. In respect of how to have both accuracy and the simplicity of touch, I'm inclined to think that making a gesture and moving the hand backwards through the z plane to regain resolution space would be one approach. We already have protected virtual keyboards. I would be happy with moving into a projected motion detection area to regain accuracy. Until then, I have no option but to use a high resolution location device, like a mouse.
• optymizer 14y ago
  how about this? 1. touch layer with finger 2. hold 3. the UI zooms in at the point of touch. pixels are now 1cm wide. 4. move to desired pixel (or row/column) If you move outside of zoomed area, UI zooms back, allowing you to drag the element anywhere on the screen, then zooms back when you stop dragging. Looks doable, right?
  • BCM43 14y ago
    That would work. However, it now takes five seconds to do something that previously took half a second. What I'm wondering is, if you can connect a keyboard to a tablet, why not a small mouse or touchpad too?
    • gagege 14y ago
      I have an Asus Transformer Infinity. I can connect a mouse to it. I get an actual pointer, right-click and everything.
• fauigerzigerk 14y ago
  I totally agree. I think the future of pointing is something Kinect-like with accurate on-screen feedback.
• roc 14y ago
  > "How do we address this issue?" The way people have already done so in touch software to date? You program 'un-pinch to zoom' to zoom the desired elements allowing increasing levels of accuracy as needed. And in the cases that you need 'pixel perfect' accuracy [1] you simply include "bump" UI controls or expose explicit pixel coordinates that can themselves be altered to affect the desired movement of the layer or selection or what-have-you (something even keyboard/mouse UI usually offers). Precision is a largely solved issue in touch software. The real problem that will keep mice around in a largely-touch-driven world, is the simple ergonomics of spending eight hours at a desk. (i.e. Gorilla-arm.) [2] [1] 'Pixel perfect' is a concept that makes increasingly less sense as displays reach and exceed 300dpi. Pretty soon we'll all be dealing with vectors and things will be better for it. 'Pixel perfect' accuracy is of mere transitory usefulness until then. [2] Barring the development of a drafting-table-style variant of the original surface and either some sort of flawless arm/palm/accidental-touch rejection or a switch from 'any' touch to 'explicit-object' touch. e.g. the desk ignores all contacts except from a pre-ordained 'pen', 'thimble' or 'glove'.
  • digikata 14y ago
    I would love a drafting table size touch interface. I think there's still a lot of space left to explore to find a way to reject "resting" touches. Beyond sensor / algorithm based approaches which might look at surface area or pressures, one could also go with some pretty simplistic solutions. Something as dumb as a foot bar connected to a switch letting active touches through might be fine for at-desk operation.
    • roc 14y ago
      Thinking on this more, kinect-style cameras looking down the plane of the desk could probably do 'posture' analysis to sort out (un)intentional touches pretty easily. That might be easier than even trying to develop pressure sensors and heuristics.
  • gregsq 14y ago
    I'm afraid this doesn't work in all cases. When working in a reduced physical area, irrespective of pixel count, zooming in and snapping to boundaries is counter productive. Audio wave editing for example is an operation on cyclic ( obviously ) information, and when zooming in as a means of rationalising location, important context is lost. Imagine a time line with a periodic wave, interrupted only by a one or two cycle click. Zooming in to normalise the ratio of object to finger leads to very easily losing context. That is, relative positioning left or right is lost. So it becomes frustrating zooming in and out in order to get your bearings again. Even attempting this on a trackpad is quite difficult, when compared to high resolution mice. There are many cases where it's much better to have a large display area, combined with a high resolution mapping to that area. I could edit waves on a postage stamp sized display with my finger if I put my mind to it. I don't think I would be as productive as on a tablet sized display though. In other cases I need to increase yet above that ratio. I'm afraid stubby fingers on compensating scaled objects is not adequate always.
• Andrex 14y ago
  I had the idea to make a floating panel that essentially acts as a touchpad for tablets. However, current tablet APIs make this pretty difficult so it isn't possible just yet.
• rsl7 14y ago
  It won't. Most of my work doesn't require precision pointing, but when it does, it really does. I often think that the need for precision pointing in everyday basic tasks is a problem that will be overcome by the constraints of tablet design. The rest of the precision pointing can stay in their specific domains. I would very much like a traditional drawing table that is a high res touch screen, with a mouse and keyboard, and a super accurate variety of stylus-like tools, with unlimited modeless multitouch. Without menus or gestures, I could use my eyes or just my sense of place and touch to find the tool I want from my own organizational method. Like the good old days. But even with that, I still would like a virtual cursor with a mouse-like pointer - it's just too useful.
• jsolson 14y ago
  > OK, let's assume that the Surface's keyboard completely solves the problem of not being able to write properly. That still leaves us with the problem of not being able to point properly. The touch cover also has an embedded touchpad which you can use if you want to. I don't, generally, but it's there if you want it.
• ekianjo 14y ago
  It's been years people say that mice are going to disappear. Nothing recent really, even through the 80s a number of innovative solutions were designed and everytime someone was claiming it was the "future" of the interface. Well, now we have computers which can be controlled reliably with fingers: tablets and phones. But don't expect to do text selection in a proper way with fingers. Of course, solutions exist in software but there are all inferior to using a good old mouse with 2 buttons. And even if "touch" was as good as a mouse, it's just not physically speaking very effective. There's a lot of energy wasted to move your whole arm in several directions while a mouse only keep your wrist in movement. It is way more relaxing to use a mouse for long operations than touching your screen even if it seems more intuitive. Tablets, phones, they work well because we use them casually, for short intervals. If you were to use them for a whole day to do work on them, you would switch back to a laptop/desktop with a mouse in no time. There's no replacement coming for the mouse for those who work long hours with their computers, despite what the hipsters say.