Icetips Blog

I have been trying to figure out how one could work with a touch screen doing the work I, and I presume most of us, do.

I'm having a rather difficult time seeing how it will be done. I don't see myself and most other fast typists go to on-screen keyboards. I have one on my phone and I would not like to have to use it in real life. So if we are still going to use a keyboard, the most logical way for me to position the screen would be at an angle in front of me. But that would mean I'd have to travel quite a distance with my arm from the keyboard to the screen. Much more than the short distance to the mouse. If the screen was flat on the desk, it would require me to bend over to see it properly, causing neck strain.

I use sensitive wireless optical mice on all my computers. In fact, I use the same type of mouse on all my computers, the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 4000. It has worked extremely well for me. I set the movement as fast as I can so I'm only moving the mouse about 1" to move the cursor across the monitor. This reduces strain on my wrists and since I started using those mice, I have had no problem with my wrists at all. I am concerned that using a touch screen, often at inconvenient angles, would cause strain on my wrists. I'd really hate to have to move my arm across my 25 and 26" monitors every time I wanted to move the cursor.

I like what I see about Windows 8 so far, but I don't think touch is practical for my work. I also don't think it's economical (it will slow me down) or ergonomic. I can see great use for touch in pads and phones, but I'm not seeing the practicality of it in desktop work. We will definitely see more and more pads in the very near future, but I think we will still be working with desktop computers for quite a while to come.

I recently saw a HP touch screen at Office Depot. One of the sales people showed it to me, and it looked great and was very cool. However, we were standing in front of it and the monitor was on a shelf, about 4.5 feet off the ground, so it was easy to access it. I don't see that position as being comfortable work position. It would not work for me at all because I have back problems that make standing for any extended periods of time quite painful.

I have used tablets for photography work and if the touch screens came with a good stylus and a decent resolution, that would definitely be an added bonus. But that would require that you could turn the touch off and only use the stylus as otherwise you would mess things up badly if you touched the screen, which would not work very well! I don't think I would feel comfortable with it flat on a desk and then having to bend over with my neck strained.

There are certainly times when I would like to have a touch monitor, but I think what I would do is I would have a small, 12-15" touch monitor flat on the desk and use it for stuff where I liked to use touch and then use a 2-3 large monitor setup for the rest of my work. Or - even preferably - have a pad that could double as an extra monitor. Now that would be COOL!

The verdict is far in the future. For now I'm just speculating and thinking out loud

Arnor Baldvinsson

I have just uploaded a demo program for Icetips Outlookbar.

The install is about 1.7MB in size and contains a local compiled version of the Outlookbar Demo app as well as the help file (Outlookbar.chm) and the Outlookbar manual (Outlookbar.pdf)

Outlookbar is easy to use with a single global extension template and a control template you add to your window. It is compatible with Clarion 5.5 to 8.0 in both ABC and Legacy. It comes with a 56 page PDF manual and also includes help files in .hlp and .chm formats for easy look up.

Outlookbar is all Clarion code, no external dll or Active-x controls involved, just pure old Clarion code It is included in our Gold Subscription and now you can also buy it separately using the Solo subscription. For more information please check out out the Outlookbar product page and the Solo Subscription page.

I'm sure you have heard that Windows 8 is in town. I have downloaded the full 64 bit Windows Developer Preview with Developer tools as well as the 32bit Windows Developer Preview without the developer tools to be able to check out both 64 and 32 bit as well as the developer tools.
The Developer tools edition includes Visual Studio 11 Express, Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview and 28 Metro style apps, including the apps from the BUILD conference.

You should stop by and watch the videos posted from the BUILD conference in Anaheim, California, where Windows 8 is being presented. This one shows nicely how the Metro interface works in a 93 minute presentation

You can download Windows 8 from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516 The downloads are ISO DVD images and the one for the full install with the Developer Tools requires a DVD-9 format, i.e. dual-layer DVD. So if you want to burn it to a DVD you need software and burner that can handle burning a dual-layer DVD.

In order to run Windows 8 it would be advisable to install it on a virtual machine rather than mess with creating separate partitions to install it on. VMWare users need to upgrade to VMWare Workstation version 8 in order to be able to install Windows 8. However, there is an alternative, an open source project called Virtual Box from Oracle. You can download it from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads I have been using VMWare 6.5 for almost 3 years now and not had much complain about it, but VirtualBox has got some nice reviews, particularly about being noticeably faster than VMWare - I welcome any speed increase I can get! I plan to do some testing of VirtualBox and see how it holds up - expect a review or some posts about it soon.

PCWorld has put together a short tutorial on how to install Windows 8 Developer Preview on Virtual Box I plan to play with this a little bit over the weekend and get a feel for both VirtualBox and Windows 8. Can't wait to see how Windows 8 holds up.

Arnor Baldvinsson