If you’re particularly fond of the kinetic scrolling functionality that is implemented on the iPhone and Zune 3.0, then you have to get your hands dirty on Windows 7 since kinetic scrolling is now operating-system wide. The feature, officially implemented as “Panning”, was one of the many secrets unearthed by Rafael Rivera and can only be used if touch capability is detected.
The above demo was recorded on a Toshiba Portege M750 Tablet PC which is a tablet/touch convertible. A more in-depth review on that soon.
What this feature does (in build 6801) is allow you to use your fingers to “pan” or scroll any element with a scrollbar. The obvious examples include the start menu, Notepad and the help files. At the time of writing, browser windows including both IE and Firefox are not compatible which I assume is because the browsers implement their own scrolling behavior (ie. smoothscroll). And just like most other kinetic scrolling implementations, if you reach the barriers abruptly it’ll move the entire window as if you were pulling on it. There is also some inertia so content keeps scrolling if you swipe your finger.
If you’re looking to buy a notebook in the not too distant future to support Windows 7, bear in mind some of the cool touch and tablet functionality that will be enabled and decide if you want to touch your trackpad or your screen.
Update: Yes, I did use Aero Shake in the demo, very cool indeed.
26 Comments
Fowl
What are those netbook tablets called again? netblets? Urgh.
The idea of a good (cheap) ‘netblet’ really appeals. I suppose we already have umpc’s and things like the iPhone though.
Maybe the general purpose OS has finally “grown-down” to fit properly on a UMPC?
Levi Freeman
I think everyone has to be aware that due to the constraints on the flash video it isnt possible to show how smooth the movement and animation is. It is definately more smoother than what the video is able to portray.
Windows 7 will be multitouch, like surface and iphone right? so exsisting tablet PC’s wont take full advantage of windows 7, am i right?
Long Zheng
@Levi: Yep, absolutely. It’s due to the constraint of the full-screen screen capture actually, very processor intensive. The PIP video is probably more accurate in representing the animation.
tino
But if I see this right, panning didn’t worked in the Start Menu. You first used the scroll bar and after that you only moved the selection up and down.
Just one question: do you have to move the finger quickly to pan? As it does with the scrolling gesture on Tablet PCs?
Loren Heiny
@tino The scrolling is done in real-time as you drag your finger(s) up and down or left and right. The scrolling also supports inertia so if you slide your finger across the window fast, the contents will scroll farther. You do appear to give up the ability to select let’s say a paragraph by sliding your finger over it–the previous default behaviour for touch was just mouse events. With this feature enabled, the default behaviour is to move the scrollbar when sliding your finger on the screen.
milan
Looks like it needs a little bit more finalizing… it took you how many tries to scrool the text? and + it isn’t as smooth as in the iPhone.
milan
I’ve just taken a look at Levi’s coment. I’m sorry.
dj_cityboy
the first few seconds of the video showing the scrolling on the start menu is odd, the start menu appears to “bounce” a bit….very interesting video though, thanx Long!
@milan – dont forget this is beta software, um sure it will all be tweaked in some way/shape/form or fashion…
peas
cityboy
albertpkmn
The UI must be redisigned for touch-operating，this is just ridiculous……..
spike
dj_cityboy : It’s still not Beta.
It is a not fully baked functionnality hidden from what could be called Alpha Version of windows
RC
How do you use jumplists with touch? I see a mouse icon, do you use that for rightclicking, or will jumplists have a special way of opening with touch?
_||_
@RC: you push-drag over icon on the taskbar to open a jump-list. as if you were scrubbing upward against a frictional surface.
@Long Zheng: are there any enhancements to the tablet functions (i.e. stylus-driven handwriting, navigation etc.) that we might have missed in the barrage of multi-touch etc. similarly, anything about speech recognition (my favorite Vista improvement)
derausgewanderte
cool video, thanks. in vista I get some tablet pc functions by attaching a wacom pen tablet. will some of the functions you show also work with the pen in seven then? curious…
Long Zheng
Panning does not work with a pen stylus.
Ben
I hope that MS lets these sort of touch enhancements work with a wacom pen. Afterall, the pen is basically similar to 1 finger. Come on MS, please!
Also, allow us to tag ANY file type, not just media and office docs!
RC
Is this the kind of thing that can constantly updated, improved even after Win7 is out? I don’t mean just service pack stuff. The only reason I ask, is I imagine that it will be released with a fair amount of room for improvement and I’d hate for it to remain stagnant for a long time between updates.
Frank
The only thing that puts me off is the translucent mouse icon hovering over everything.
I don’t care so much about not being able to select text by dragging your finger over it… fingers are way too chubby to accurately select the right line and letters anyway.
Long Zheng
@Frank: The transparent mouse can be disabled.
Willem
Great!
Now if Windows would also spend some time improving a touch friendly interface (i.e. bigger standard scroll windows, bigger buttons to compensate for the bigger surface area of the finger and increase one touch success) Windows 7 would be even a nicer product.
Brad
Windows is becoming more and more modern everytime I see your blog! That is a seriously cool feature.
redfish
How would you switch between touch scrolling and touch-based selection of text?
bradey
as cool as that looks,
) great.
i would change just a few things.
i think i would have at big mouse picture that comes up be smaller,
and perhaps make the window move less when scrolling over.
otherwise, windows 7 looks and sounds (as in hearing new featured LOL
even better then the amazing windows vista.
beauty!
Ben
I agree with Willem and the few others who mentioned it. Touch (and to a slightly lesser extent, pen) input needs a UI designed with larger targets for the fingers. That said, a lot of UI components might be touchable it people ran windows with the correct DPI settings. I noticed that Win 7 automatically set my DPI to 120 when I first ran it. That’s good (though my screen’s actual DPI is 144…) However, when I set my DPI to 144, various things, notably Firefox’s toolbars, seemed to break and get ridiculously huge. Furthermore, applications are still not using bitmaps correctly (they should change to vector graphics, i think), so lots of icons get pixelated.
joe
Why not just copy the Microsoft Surface UI? If Microsoft could work with its partners to have the Surface UI pop up when the computer is folded into a tablet, the funcionality would be greatly enhanced. Does anyone know if it would be possible to do this, or is this simply too complex?
Ralph
Hi! how did you activated this feature?
Thanks, Ralph
Ju
Hi,
I bought one 7″ touchscreen and I can’t test panning with this touchscreen for the moment.
Can you help me ? Does anyone try this ?
Thanks. Ju
Leave a Reply
Touch panning (Kinetic scrolling) feature in Windows 7
[...] this demo video that uses Aero [...]
Windows 7 Touch Panning | Windows 7 News
[...] Touch Panning is one of those locked features that have become recently available thanks to a system hack. Long mentioned that the current Touch Panning feature has a few minor quirks to sort out which seems to support the faction that believes that the locked features have been locked because of being incomplete. Long has a video up demonstrating the Touch Panning of the current Windows 7 build. Subscribe To RSS Feed Updates (What is RSS??) [...]
Touch panning (a.k.a. kinetic scrolling) in Windows 7 - istartedsomething | WinSe7en
[...] screen, you can use a flick of your finger to scroll through a document. See the original post at: Touch panning (a.k.a. kinetic scrolling) in Windows 7 – istartedsomething Tags: Features, [...]
Toqueteando Windows 7
[...] de Multi Touch. Algunos como nuestro conocido Long Zheng de Istartedsomething se han entretenido jugando con el interfaz táctil y han descubierto algunas cosas. Dentro del control de la pantalla táctil del nuevo Windows, se ha [...]
Windows 7 - discussione ufficiale - Pagina 8 - Forum di Tom's Hardware Italia
[...] Kinetic Scroll in WIndows 7 Testato su toshiba portege m750 Tablet PC di Long Z. [...]
Windows 7 Touch Panning Demo | Windows 7 Center
[...] can check out his video demo here. Keep in mind that the main video is a bit choppy due to video recording related reasons and is a [...]
links for 2008-11-14 | The Computer Vet Weblog
[...] Touch panning (a.k.a. kinetic scrolling) in Windows 7 – istartedsomething [...]
Accede a las funciones ocultas de Windows 7 | Materia Geek
[...] habilitar algunas de ellas como por ejemplo la nueva barra de tareas, los gestos multitouch, el touch panning y el fondo de escritorio dinámico. Pero éso no es todo, ya que también liberó una herramienta [...]
WrapUp: SkyDrive Jumping to 25GB, the Microsoft Store, and More
[...] Windows 7 Getting iPhone-Style Scrolling By now you probably know that Windows 7 will be focusing on making touch-screen devices as useful as possible. One of the ways it will do that is by letting a user scroll around an application in a manner similar to the iPhone. [our Windows 7 review] [...]