Touchpad-ek új generációja?

Új funkciókkal bővülnek a touchpad-ek.

An Intel executive suggested it was abnormal to interact with a laptop using input devices like touchpads, but Synaptics is out to debunk that notion by making touchpads more user-friendly. The company is eliminating the click buttons to increase the size of touchpads, and is also looking to add new touchpad gestures to simplify routine PC tasks. Users will be able to design their own touchpad functions using custom gestures. For example, drawing A on a touchpad could take users directly to Amazon's Web site, said Mark Vena, vice president of Synaptics' PC business unit. The technology is just one way to boost the usability of touchpads and could be applied to multiple applications. "The whole notion of creating custom gestures and doing that in an intuitive way is something we are spending a lot of time on," Vena said. Bringing quicker shortcuts to launch applications through touchpads could bring the usability that tablet PCs couldn't achieve, said David Daoud, a research manager at IDC. "The tablet PC hasn't taken off as much as many wanted it to," Daoud said. Touch screens could ultimately take off, but versatile touchpads could fill the role until users get more comfortable interacting with laptop screens. There is also growing interest in making better use of touchpads for functionality like image manipulation. Gesture technology already offered on Synaptics touchpads includes using one or multiple fingers to jump between pages in an e-book, rotate images or zoom into documents. Synaptics is also looking to bring haptics to touchpads, in which a vibrating touchpad can notify users of certain events. For example, if a user receives an e-mail during a meeting, a buzzing sensation in the touchpad can notify the user of the event. That could be helpful if a user doesn't want a laptop chiming during a meeting. Synaptics is also looking at tiny touch-based LCD screens to replace touchpads, but that has limited usability and versatility. A graphical user interface and applications also need to be built around the LCD-based touchpad to make it usable, which could require a lot of work. Synaptics' immediate focus, though, is eliminating touchpad buttons with its Clickpad technology, functionality that Apple offers in some MacBook laptops today. The technology builds click functions inside the touchpad surface.

IT3 komment: A vezető touchpad gyártó, Synaptics új funkciókkal bővíti a eszközeit. Az elképzelés lényege az, hogy a touchpad fejlett ember-gép kommunikációs felületként legyen használható. A cég törekvése jól mutatja az egér és a billentyűzet jellegű interfészek gyengeségeit kompenzáló kommunikációs interfész eszközök iránti igényt. Persze könnyen lehet az is, hogy a nagyívű elképzelések mögött csupán az áll, hogy az érintőképernyős mobilokat gyártó konkurenciát szeretnék utolérni a touchpad gyártók.

Forrás: www.itworld.com