Check out the video:
https://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/Surface-Toolkit-for-Windows-Touch/
Download the SDK:
For those of you who don’t read the readme…
One of the samples uses XNA. The toolkit installer will not install XNA. You will need to do that yourself. Either install the tools or just the redist. Your call:
In case you missed it through the DevDinner tag on my team blog (official place for Developer Dinner posts), MSDN Flash, or http://communitymegaphone.com…
Timezone: Eastern Time
Start Time: 2/24/2010 6:00:00 PM
End Time: 2/24/2010 8:00:00 PM
Title: Microsoft Developer Dinner: Hands-on Natural User Interfaces: Multi-touch development with Silverlight and WPF 4
Description:
The Natural User Interface (NUI) is the next revolution of human-computer interaction. Microsoft Surface has shown the potential of multi-touch NUIs to uniquely engage users, and multi-touch tablets and displays are becoming more and more common. This talk is focused on how you can create multi-touch NUIs for these devices. You will learn the difference between manipulations and gestures, when to use each, and how to implement specific NUI design concepts with both Silverlight and the WPF 4 Touch API. The differences between the Silverlight and WPF 4 Touch APIs will be highlighted. You will hear about the roles of the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch and the Microsoft Surface Manipulations and Inertia Sample for Silverlight and how you can use them to jump-start your applications. The open-source multi-touch Bing Maps 3-D WPF control, InfoStrat.VE, will also be demonstrated. If you are interested in rich, engaging multi-touch interfaces for the web or client, then you need to attend this talk!
Website: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032440485&Culture=en-US
Event Type: Other (in-person)
Location:
12012 Sunset Hills Road
Reston, VA, 20190
Lat/Long: 38.954957, -77.358214
Audiences: Developer.
UPDATE: You can follow tanagram on twitter @tanagram https://twitter.com/tanagram.
One of the things I have been trying to do this year is encourage / kick start partners to create useful CodePlex projects. I’ve been digging into Windows 7 multi-touch since it was announced at PDC08. As the managed (.NET) APIs available for WPF 3.5 SP1, Silverlight, and WPF 4 started to materialize, it became clear that there were varying levels of developer productivity for building multi-touch solutions. The eventual release of the WPF 4 + the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch clearly sets the bar for developer productivity thanks to all the great SDK work that was born out of Microsoft Surface. So I started thinking, “What about Silverlight 3/4 & WPF 3.5 SP1 developers?” There are all sorts of reasons why people will end up choosing those platforms. So I thought “There has to be a way to make common touch scenarios easier for them so they don’t have to write the same plumbing code over and over again.” Enter CodePlex and Expression Blend Behaviors. I started talking to my buddy James Chittenden who is the User Experience Evangelist (UXE) on my team. I floated this idea of simplifying common touch scenarios when using WPF 3.5 SP1 or Silverlight 3/4. The general idea was to start a CodePlex project that used Expression Blend Behaviors to provide a consistent way to implement common touch scenarios across WPF & Silverlight. We both agreed we should try to make it happen. James suggested we contact Joseph Juhnke, President & CEO of Tanagram Partners, about the idea. Joseph loved the idea. We all put our heads together and decided to start small with two common multi-touch scenarios that were fairly laborious to implement from scratch in both WPF 3.5 SP1 and Silverlight 3/4. From there, Tanagram Partners cranked away at building them out. I’m excited to announce that their CodePlex project has gone live:
Go check it out! They’re looking for community feedback.
Have you seen the Microsoft Surface Globe application in the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7? There are plenty of videos of the app in action on YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/YouTubeSurfaceGlobe.
Would you like to build an app like this yourself? Thanks to InfoStrat.VE, you can! Josh Blake just announced the R2 release of InfoStrat.VE. Amongst other improvements, it includes support for the same touch interaction on Windows 7 you have available in the Microsoft Surface Globe app. Full details on Josh’s blog:
http://nui.joshland.org/2010/01/infostratve-release-2-is-now-up.html
Robert Levy from the Surface team and Anson Tsao from the WPF team gave a great session on:
Multi-Touch on Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 for .NET Developers
The session is definitely worth watching if you are interested in building multi-touch apps on Windows 7. In the session, they announced the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch which is a set of “Controls, samples, templates, and docs Coming shortly after the WPF4 launch.” Don’t let the Surface name fool you, the toolkit will work on any Windows 7 touch PC with the .NET Framework 4.0 installed.
This is exciting news that I have been keeping under wraps for quite some time. The toolkit will take Windows 7 multi-touch developer productivity for WPF4 developers to the next level. During the session, they shared that the toolkit will include:
Common controls optimized for Multi-Touch
Controls design primarily for Multi-Touch
Essential Multi-Touch UX Functionality
Hearing all of this is, of course, a bit of a tease since the controls won’t be available for a while, but exciting news nonetheless. The good news is that the Surface team also announced that the Surface SDK is no longer “by invitation only.” You can download it from http://surface.com/developer. Since the toolkit is a subset of existing Surface 1.0 SDK assets ported to WPF4, you can get a head start by evaluating the Surface 1.0 SDK. If your development cycle is far enough out, you might even want to consider building your app on the Surface 1.0 SDK and porting it to WPF4 / Windows 7 when the toolkit is available. Of course, you will have to stick to the subset that is being ported to WPF4, but your code will only need minimal changes (if any) to run on a Windows 7 PC once the toolkit is released.
I’ve been waiting for this to happen! The Surface team ported their Manipulation and Inertia APIs to Silverlight 3+. They’ve made them available for download at:
http://tinyurl.com/SurfaceManipSilverlight
This is a must have set of APIs if you are interested in building multi-touch solutions on Windows 7 with Silverlight 3+.
I just published a Channel 9 interview with Josh Wall and Josh Blake from InfoStrat about their Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Surface controls that make integrating Virtual Earth 3D a breeze. Check it out:
http://tinyurl.com/Ch9InfoStratVE
“Virtual Earth 3D has many applications, but until recently has only been practical on the web with a JavaScript interface. WPF applications could not use the full potential of Virtual Earth 3D without requiring a WPF wizard and some XAML magic due to Win32 interop limitations.
Information Strategies (InfoStrat) has the solution. They created a WPF / Surface control, InfoStrat.VE, and are sharing with the community on CodePlex. This control provides a WPF interface for the Virtual Earth 3D control, complete with data binding for camera control and WPF-based pushpins. All Win32 restrictions (air space control, no rotation or visual brush) are eliminated. Microsoft Surface is also supported.
Watch the interview to learn the history behind the control, see it in action, learn how to get started, and even contribute back to the community.”
UPDATE: Interested in learning about a pretty cool solution that uses InfoStrat.VE? Check out Sam Chenaur’s post:
John L Scott Real Estate Looks to WPF and Software + Services
I’ve been a Developer Evangelist for 3+ years now. For the first 3 years, I spent the majority of my time focusing on delivering public presentations at conferences, for webcasts/screencasts, onsite at customer facilities, and at local community events in DC area. This year, the focus of my role changed slightly. Although I still do my fair share of the previously mentioned activities, I am now on a team that focuses on Systems Integrators (SIs) and Partners who do work for the US Government. I’ve always been focused on US Government developers, but the scope of the people I interacted with was more broad. With my new role, I have had more of an opportunity to work with SIs and Partners on things like Proof of Concept (POC) applications.
Back in September/October, I had the pleasure of spending a few weeks with Northrop Grumman and the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia to build a POC application on Microsoft Surface. After the completion of the POC, we recorded an interview and demo with the team responsible for creating the application. I just published that video. Here’s the description:
“Northrop Grumman partnered with the Microsoft Technology Center and the Microsoft US Public Sector Developer and Platform Evangelism team to build a Proof Of Concept (POC) application that would demonstrate how Microsoft Surface could enhance mission planning, rehearsal, and post mission knowledge collection for military command and control decision making. Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.
Watch the interview to see a full demo of the POC. The interview highlights Northrop Grumman’s learning experiences on the POC especially with regard to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Surface SDK, the designer/developer workflow enabled by WPF and the new thinking behind Natural User Interfaces with an emphasis on User experience.”
The interview is available at:
One of the things I am trying to do in my new role is to start a “PARTNER SHOWCASE” series of posts to help highlight work like this that SIs and Partners are doing for US Government customers. Feel free to contact me if you fall into this category and you’re interested in showcasing your work on Channel 9!
I’ve been working with a number of partners lately on building Microsoft Surface apps. Infostrat is one of them. They have done some of the best Virtual Earth integration work I have seen so far. Have a look at this video that highlights their work:
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Want to learn what Surface development is all about? Check out the recording of the PDC session:
https://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC17/
You’ll also want to keep up with the Surface blog. If you
http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/
Finally, contact me if you are doing US Government focused work and are interested in getting into Surface development.
Gold Coast 