For years now, reviewers have knocked Windows PC’s for one thing or another. Their criticisms are far reaching and other times very specific. There have been complaints about restarts, malware, weight, design, battery life, etc., when it comes to reviewing a PC.
With Windows 10 and the future of the PC market seemingly resting once again on Microsoft’s shoulders, the software giant is attempting to tackle these issues one by one. Next on their list is the dreaded touchpad.
In a session led by Miron Vranjes, the Senior Program Manager of the Windows 10 User Experience Team, he outlines yet another piece of information for the upcoming release of Windows 10. Miron’s session titled, “Designing Great Hardware for the Windows 10 UI,” focuses on the marriage of hardware and software in relation to the user experience. More importantly his session covers the new gestures coming to precision touchpads in the future.
In a very detailed and lengthy session, Miron uncovers the relation that new gestures will have on precision touchpads when interacting with Windows 10. Windows 10 will host support for multi-finger gestures that will navigate OS features like the Notification Center, Cortana, Virtual desktops, and the Settings menu in some applications.
The gestures range in their abilities. For instance, three fingers can invoke Cortana, swipe through desktops, or bring up multitasking options depending on their placements. Other gestures include activating notification center with a four-finger tap or using two fingers to now scroll and pan throughout the OS.
The new focus on gestures was not limited to only precision touchpads. Those of us who are Windows tablet users will also be seeing Microsoft concentrate on improving the touch navigation of Windows 10 on tablets. Tablet users will now be able to use simplified edge gestures, (unlike the current push/pull actions to bring up running apps). A single swipe from the left will bring up most used apps, and now swiping from the right will bring up the notification center
It seems Microsoft is continuing to run down its checklist of most common Windows complaints and they are doing a fairly good job of addressing them. Whether or not the full implementation is anywhere near their proposals has yet to be seen. It is however encouraging that we are at least seeing documentation and early implementation of the future of Windows.
