Application of single and multi-touch gestures in a WebGL molecule viewer

textThe number of devices with touch input such as smart phones, computers, and tablets has grown extensively in recent years. Native applications on these devices have access to this touch and gesture information and can provide a rich, interactive experience. Web applications, however, lack a consistent and uniform way to retrieve touch and gesture input. With the quality and robustness of web applications continually growing and replacing native applications in many areas, a way to access and harness touch input is critical. This paper proposes two JavaScript libraries that provide a reliable and easy way for web applications to use touch efficiently and effectively. First, getTjs abstracts the gathering of touch events for most mobile and desktop touch devices. GenGesjs, the second library, receives this information and identifies gestures based on the touch input. Web applications can have this gesture information pushed to them as it is received or instead request the most recent gestures when desired. An example of interfacing with both libraries is provided in the form of WebMol. WebMol is a web application that allows for three dimensional viewing of molecules using WebGL. Gestures from GenGesjs are translated to interactions with the molecules, providing an intuitive interface for users. Using both of these libraries, web applications can easily tap into touch input resulting in an improved user experience regardless of the device.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Ambient Gestures

We present Ambient Gestures, a novel gesture-based system designed to support ubiquitous ‘in the environment’ interactions with everyday computing technology. Hand gestures and audio feedback allow users to control computer applications without reliance on a graphical user interface, and without having to switch from the context of a non-computer task to the context of the computer. The Ambient Gestures system is composed of a vision recognition software application, a set of gestures to be processed by a scripting application and a navigation and selection application that is controlled by the gestures. This system allows us to explore gestures as the primary means of interaction within a multimodal, multimedia environment. In this paper we describe the Ambient Gestures system, define the gestures and the interactions that can be achieved in this environment and present a formative study of the system. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and future applications of Ambient Gestures in ubiquitous computing

Challenges in Developing Applications for Aging Populations

Elderly individuals can greatly benefit from the use of computer applications, which can assist in monitoring health conditions, staying in contact with friends and family, and even learning new things. However, developing accessible applications for an elderly user can be a daunting task for developers. Since the advent of the personal computer, the benefits and challenges of developing applications for older adults have been a hot topic of discussion. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various challenges developers who wish to create applications for the elderly computer user face, including age-related impairments, generational differences in computer use, and the hardware constraints mobile devices pose for application developers. Although these challenges are concerning, each can be overcome after being properly identified

Event Transformation for Browser Based Web Devices

Today a smartphone or tablet supports seven to eight ways by which user can interact with it. These interaction methods are touch, mouse, keyboard, voice, gestures, hover & stylus. Future is going towards IoE (Internet of everything) but if we really want to realize this vision then we need someone who can deal with these various existing and upcoming device interaction methods. This paper talks about a custom JavaScript library, which is accountable for registering native events coming from different event sources and maps it with the user defined key map to form a proper gesture. It is not a plain mapping because it takes care of many parameters like event state, occurrence, time interval of key press etc. If the events are coming from touch screen device then complexity increases many folds because forming a touch gesture involves all mathematical steps related to identification of swipe direction. Also in order to support the acceleration, its required to know till how long key was pressed and when it was released else no gesture will be formed and all events will be discarded. Based on device capability supported events could be discarded to completely knock off a device interaction method. It could be touch, mouse or key anything. This paper investigates heterogeneity of device interaction method events to form uniform gestures so that application developer need not to write code for each and every device interaction method

The Design of B2B System User Interface for Mobile Systems

AbstractMobility is playing an ever-increasing role in the life of contemporary business, providing the mobile workforce with a new level of communications freedom. The mobile revolution happening right now affects almost every manager or employee. Business people use mobile devices like smartphones and tablets as complementary services to their computers that are equipped with business applications as a new and productive user interface to their desktop management systems. Users need to access key data wherever they are, enabling them to act on information through simple, easy-to-use authorizations and acknowledgments, and to provide input and updates in real time from remote locations. In this context, the user interface on a mobile device must be easy to use and easily accessible. This is vital for the advanced management B2B systems, which meet the demands of modern business solutions.The main objective of this article is to present the design of B2B system user interface for mobile systems based on technological and technical design recommendations that were developed based on the results of a study made on B2B user interface modelling to work on mobile devices. The study was conducted as part of research and development works for the development of a modern and advanced B2B systems based on Internet technologies

AudioFunctions.web: Multimodal Exploration of Mathematical Function Graphs

We present AudioFunctions.web, a web app that uses sonifcation, earcons and speech synthesis to enable blind people to explore mathematical function graphs. The system is designed for personalized access through different interfaces (touchscreen, keyboard, touchpad and mouse) on both mobile and traditional devices, in order to better adapt to different user abilities and preferences. It is also publicly available as a web service and can be directly accessed from the teaching material through a hypertext link. An experimental evaluation with 13 visually impaired participants highlights that, while the usability of all the presented interaction modalities is high, users with different abilities prefer different interfaces to interact with the system. It is also shown that users with higher level of mathematical education are capable of better adapting to interaction modalities considered more diffcult by others