Digital Workshop

A client has hired me to build an interactive presentation for an upcoming trade show. We will have a touch screen for booth visitors to make selections. The actual screen won't arrive until the last moment, so I can't do any testing, and therefore need help from anyone who's used them in the past.

Can you have a Mouse Over Trigger with a touch screen? I've been making this like regular mouse driven projects, when it struck me -- "How will a Mouse Over work?" Is is a light "press" of the viewer's finger? Or, maybe not possible?

I'll need to quickly go to "Plan B" if you can't use Mouse Over Triggers on the Buttons I'm creating.

Don't count on "mouse overs". It depends on the touch screen driver, and the user only knows how to push the button anyway.
So, use actions - left mouse; down, up or pressed. Only use large buttons. No mouse cursor on the screen at any time (unless really required). Don't rely on sound to indicate anything (because it's location may be noisy). Find out the screen size and native resolution before you start. Avoid having a keyboard on display, but if you have to, lock the keyboard except for the keys you require (external prog required). May help for starters.

My client just gave me the touch screens we will use at the trade show next week. I installed them into my laptop, and calibrated each touch. It's very simple. We're using two 3M MicroTouch 17" touch screens.

In testing, I immediately found that rollovers DO WORK!!!! When you lightly place your finger on a button, the rollover feature works just like with a mouse.

I'm going to make the Button even larger than I originally planned, because, big fingers may not hit the target area as easily as I thought.

This is a wonderful feature, and I highly recommend this for professional multimedia builders. Your clients will LOVE this. The cost of touch screens has come down. This one was under $1000 USD (compared to $5,000 years ago).

Ya, touch screens are great for many things and I will bet with the cost of LCD and touch screens embeded into them coming down you will see more and more of them. I have played a little with touch screens and Opus (as well as other programs) and have a minor suggestion. Make the hit area, or touch area, larger than the square or image on the screen. That way if the user comes anywhere close it will pick up the hit, but the squares or images on the screen will not take up too much visual space. Just be sure not to put the hit spots too close together.

You can also get an overlay that goes onto a plasma screen to turn it into a touch screen - it's used for show calling on large events - I don't have a link as I'm off work at the moment - but when I go back mid month I can get info if you're interested

Despite Fred's success in this case, I would recommend against planning on rollovers unless you have an identical screen for development purposes, as not all touch screen surfaces react the same way. The screen surfaces can vary quite a bit, from glass plate to thin films (hey -- anyone remember AT&T's old "gel surface" screen? squishy! -- I still have some ancient video footage we recorded over a decade ago and those screens were strange & exotic beasts indeed).