TOUCH INPUT FOR HOSTED APPLICATIONS

• US 20110122070A1
• Filed: 11/23/2009
• Published: 05/26/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/23/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Smith, Joseph, Wick, Stefan, Bishop, Jesse, Torset, Todd A., George, Sam J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,633,902 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/173
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/038 Control and interface arrangements therefor, e.g. drivers or device-embedded control circuitry
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0488 using a touch-screen or digitiser, e.g. input of commands through traced gestures

Abstract

A multi-touch plug-in system is described herein that exposes multi-touch data for web application developers to consume in a platform independent way. The multi-touch plug-in system receives platform-specific touch data from an operating system or touch hardware, interprets the platform-specific touch data to convert the platform-specific touch data to generic touch data, and provides the generic touch data to a hosted application running within a plug-in sandbox. Often, sandboxed environments only allow identified, trusted plug-ins to execute. By managing multi-touch data within a trusted plug-in, the plug-in can ensure that hosted applications are properly restricted to well-defined behavior, while still allowing rich features such as multi-touch interaction. Thus, the multi-touch plug-in system brings rich multi-touch interaction to a web browsing environment.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for processing multi-touch data in hosted environment, the method comprising:

receiving platform-specific touch data provided to a hosted plug-in from a platform on which a sandboxed environment is running;

translating the received platform-specific touch data into a platform-neutral format common to multiple platforms on which the plug-in operates; and

providing the translated platform-neutral touch data to an application hosted by the plug-in,

wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving platform-specific touch data comprises receiving operating system provided touch data from an operating system that supports touch input.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein translating the received platform-specific touch data comprises formatting the platform-specific touch data into a plug-in defined data structure that is well-known to applications made to be hosted by the plug-in.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising promoting the received touch data into related non-touch input data.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the non-touch input data comprises mouse messages related to the touch data.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein providing the translated platform-neutral touch data comprises notifying an event handler of the hosted application.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the translated platform-neutral touch data comprises information that identifies a type of touch input received by touch hardware.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the translated platform-neutral touch data comprises virtual coordinates of one or more points that correspond to locations at which touch hardware identified touch input.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising repeating the receiving, translating, and providing steps for each unit of touch input while the hosted environment is running.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein providing the translated platform-neutral touch data comprises identifying a control to which the touch data is related.

11. A computer system for providing touch input to a hosted application, the system comprising:

a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions;

a touch receiving component configured to receive low-level touch data related to touch hardware;

a touch translation component configured to convert received low-level touch data into a uniform format for presentation to the hosted application; and

an application notification component configured to provide the uniform format touch data to the hosted application for handling by the application.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the touch receiving component is further configured to invoke an operating system application programming interface to receive touch data.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the touch receiving component is further configured to invoke a driver associated with touch hardware to receive touch data.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein the touch translation component is further configured to mask differences in touch data provided by multiple platforms by converting the differences into the uniform format.

15. The system of claim 11 wherein the touch translation component is further configured to allow hosted applications to run correctly using the system regardless of the platform on which the system is running.

16. The system of claim 11 wherein the application notification component is further configured to invoke an event handler provided by the hosted application for receiving touch data.

17. The system of claim 11 further comprising an input promotion component configured to promote touch input data into non-touch input data for backwards compatibility with hosted applications that do not handle touch data.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein the input promotion component is further configured to provide an application programming interface for enabling and disabling input promotion.

19. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to convert touch input data to non-touch input data, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:

receiving touch input data that describes touch input received by touch hardware;

determining whether touch promotion is currently enabled;

if touch promotion is currently enabled, determining non-touch data related to the received touch data; and

providing the determined non-touch data to an application that does not handle touch data can handle the related non-touch data.

20. The medium of claim 19 wherein determining whether touch promotion is currently enabled comprises determining whether a hosted application has invoked an application programming interface to disable touch promotion.