Multi-Touch

You can enable multi-touch gestures in project screens in order to provide your end users with additional interface options.

On an older touchscreen device that supports only a single touch point, the user's touch or tap is directly equivalent to a simple mouse click, so they cannot do anything that they could not otherwise do by connecting a mouse to the device.

On a newer touchscreen device that supports multiple touch points, however, the user can use two or more fingers at the same time in order to manipulate project screens and screen objects. The additional touch points provide context that is not available in a single touch point; two fingers working together can perform different gestures, and different gestures trigger different actions on-screen. For example:

• You can swipe two fingers together in the same direction to quickly pan through a window or scroll through a list;

• You can stretch and pinch with two fingers to resize a screen object or zoom in/out on a project screen; and

• You can "grip" a screen object with two fingers and then rotate it like a dial.

Moreover, if you are experienced with VBScript, you can use Touch Events to customize the behavior of multi-touch beyond the standard gestures described in this section. These Touch Events are actually VBScript sub-routines that receive the raw touch input data from the Windows API.

Requirements and considerations

Keep in mind that these system requirements do not apply to the computer that you are using to develop your project; if you can run the project development application and create a project, you can configure the necessary settings to include multi-touch in your project. Instead, these requirements apply to the project thin clients that your end users will use to access your project.

To support multi-touch gestures on a Windows computer or Windows Embedded device, the client device must have:

• A touchscreen display that is capable of reading two or more touch points;

• A version of Windows or Windows Embedded that includes support for touch input; and

• One of the following project viewers or thin clients:

  • Secure Viewer for Windows

  • Web Thin Client add-on for Internet Explorer

  • Embedded HMI for Windows Embedded

    For more information about installing each of these, see Installation Guide.

To confirm that a Windows computer or Windows Embedded device can support multi-touch gestures, open the System or About control panel and then look for Pen and Touch. It must say that touch input is available with at least two touch points.

To support multi-touch gestures on a mobile device (that is, smartphone or tablet) that accesses your project through Mobile Access, the client device must have:

• A touchscreen display that is capable of reading two or more touch points;

• An operating system that includes support for touch input; and

• An HTML5-compatible web browser.

We cannot give further instructions for confirming that a specific device can support multi-touch gestures, but generally speaking, all of the latest Android and iOS devices should be able to.

If you will be running your project in a mixed environment — that is, if your end users will be using different types of client devices, including some that do not support touch input — then you should be careful about how you include multi-touch gestures in your project. Always provide a second way to manipulate a screen or object, using a keyboard, a mouse, or a single-finger tap.

Limitations on support for Multi-Touch

At this time, multi-touch gestures are fully supported only on Windows computers and Windows Embedded devices. Support for specific gestures on other platforms is limited. The specific limitations are described in their respective sections, but the following table provides a summary: