Human Interface Technology Supports Multi-Finger Gestures

Jan. 20, 2009
Synaptics Inc.’s new suite of multi-finger gestures and larger TouchPads, announced at CES 2009, provide users with an intuitive way to interact with their notebook systems. The Gesture Suite 2009 (SGS) was developed by analyzing common workflows, such as

Synaptics Inc.’s new suite of multi-finger gestures and larger TouchPads, announced at CES 2009, provide users with an intuitive way to interact with their notebook systems. The Gesture Suite 2009 (SGS) was developed by analyzing common workflows, such as viewing photos, listening to music, and accessing emails and presentations. SGS represents a growing portfolio of gestures available on Synaptics human-interface products. These new gestures are compatible with hundreds of Microsoft Windows applications and enhance the productivity of notebook PCs and peripheral devices that use Synaptics TouchPads.

The new gestures in SGS 2009 include two-finger scroll for easy window scrolling in both horizontal and vertical directions; two-finger rotate for quickly rotating photos or pages in common photo and document applications; and two-finger pinch zoom now enhanced with PointZoom for intelligent and contextual zoom control. Synaptics initially introduced pinch and expand to zoom in/out, which is now optimized for Web 2.0 applications. Users surfing the Web can pinch over a site’s text enlarging the font, pinch over a map, and zoom in on the map—all in the same browser window.

Also new is Three-Finger Flick, which represents a more intuitive and reliable way to provide application control for rapidly paging through documents, photos, presentations, and other files. A simple use model to flick right for next, flick left for previous, flick up to start or play, and flick down to stop or end while improving ergonomics by reducing keyboard to touchpad fatigue. In addition, Synaptics’ large TouchPad technology incorporates a new hardware pattern design that extends previous size limitations, resulting in a larger “active area” of the TouchPad (up to 5.8 in. diagonal). Synaptics anticipates that large TouchPads and SGS 2009 will appear in top tier OEM notebook PC models in 2009.

Synaptics
www.synaptics.com

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