Information from the Windows 7 “New Efficiency” launch

Today I presented “Building Next Generation User-Interface with Multitouch and Ribbon on Windows 7” for the Windows7 launch event in Atlanta.  The slides and other materials should be posted to “www.thenewefficiency.com/” sometime soon.

In the meantime, I’ve posted my slides to my Office Live Workspace at bit.ly/4TT40.

It’s not every day I get a standing room only audience, most of whom got a few laughs out of my presentation.  I got to do multi-touch demos with an HP TouchSmart TX2-2700.  I’ll miss it—I had to send it to the next event.  Dell also has the XT2 Tablet PC.  Of course, some people asked about the Courier, but I haven’t touched one myself yet.

If I’m lucky, I can update this post with more Multi-Touch and Surface information.

For many people, the most valuable slide was the last one, which had resources for developers who want to create Windows7 compatible applications and take advantage of some of the new features.  I’ve reproduced that content below:

Technical Resources

• Windows Developer Center on MSDN msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd433113.aspx
• Windows Application Compatibility Developer Center www.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/aa904987.aspx
• Windows 7 Remediation Labs <www.readyset7.com/workshops>
• Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9681321
• “PhotoView” Reference Application (XP2Win7Project) code.msdn.microsoft.com/XP2Win7

Training Resources

• Training Offers—Exclusive for Launch Attendees www.microsoft.com/learning/careeroffers

Community Resources

• Windows 7 Blog for Developers www.windowsteamblog.com/blogs/developers.aspx
• Windows 7 on Channel 9 https://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Windows+7

Update 1:

Joe Healy presented similar information at the (Miami/Ft. Lauderdale) Florida launch.  You can download the code he used and see a video linked from his blog post at MultiTouch materials from FLL / MIA Launch Event.

Update 2:

It wasn’t part of the presentation, but I didn’t mention that there are multi-touch overlays that can be mounted on the face of flat panel TV’s and displays.  N-Trig provides the multi-touch screen technology on the HP and Dell computers. NextWindow has overlays that can be mounted on existing LCD and Plasma displays. Touch TV Networks also has multi-touch capable interfaces.

I only used two fingers during the demo, but N-Trig drivers for the HP and Dell support up to four fingers at a time.