About using Multi-Touch in your project

You can enable multi-touch gestures in project screens to provide the end user with additional interface options.

On a traditional touchscreen device that supports only a single touch point, the user’s touch or tap is directly equivalent to a simple mouse click, and the end user 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 end user may manipulate project screens and screen objects with two or more fingers at the same time. 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 may swipe two fingers together in the same direction to quickly pan through a window or scroll through a list;
  • You may stretch and pinch with two fingers to resize a screen object or zoom in/out on a project screen; or
  • You may “grip” a screen object with two fingers and then rotate it like a dial.

Moreover, if you are experienced with VBScript, then you may 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

These requirements do not apply to the computer that you are using to develop your InduSoft Web Studio project; if you can run the development application and create a project, then you can configure the necessary settings to include multi-touch in your project.

Instead, these requirements apply to the client devices that your end users will use to access your project. To support multi-touch gestures, a client device must have:
  • Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 8, or Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact 7;
  • A touchscreen display capable of reading two or more touch points; and
  • Either Web Thin Client or Secure Viewer installed for Windows, EmbeddedView installed for Windows Embedded Standard, or CEView installed for Windows Embedded Compact.

To confirm that the client device supports multi-touch gestures, open the System control panel (Start > Control Panel > System and Security > System) and then look for Pen and Touch. It must say that touch input is available with at least two touch points.

Figure 1. Pen and Touch in the System control panel
Web Studio Help illus windows touchpoints Multi Touch

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.

Support for Windows Embedded Compact

Support for multi-touch gestures on Windows Embedded Compact devices is limited. The specific limitations are described in the respective sections, but the table below provides a summary.

Table 1. Support for multi-touch gestures by operating system
Feature Windows 7 / Windows 8 Windows Embedded Compact
Zoom and Pan gestures on project screens Supported Not supported
Gestures with Alarm/Event Control object Supported “Slide to scroll” supported, “Swipe to select” not supported
Gestures with Trend Control object Supported Supported
Gestures with Grid object Supported “Slide to scroll/pan” supported, “Swipe to select” not supported
Gestures with Position animation Supported Supported
Gestures with Resize animation Supported Supported
Gestures with Rotation animation Supported Not supported
Touch Events for up to 10 touch points Supported Not supported

Multi-Touch