Windows 7 Tablet PC Features: Multitouch Keyboards, Text Prediction and More

We’ve been yapping about on-screen touch keyboards of late, but let’s not forget our first love: ink! The Engineering Windows 7 Blog reminds us how easy it can be to ink in Windows by sharing all of the new and updated Tablet developments in Windows 7. I’ve already seen and made use of the new gesture “cheat sheet” animations, which come in handy when you’ve forgotten how to take action on some handwriting.
http://www.youtube.com/v/jUp-Jz0f-jI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1
Microsoft has also incorporated smart word prediction, much like they have in their Windows Mobile platform. This feature is not only usable with text creation, but also comes into play with word correction as well: By changing one letter in a misrecognized word, the Tablet Input Panel will try to predict the word you intended. This reduces the number of characters you might have to re-ink.

The on-screen keyboard gains some additional functionality as well, not the least of which being support for multitouch. Yes, you can finally hold the Shift key plus another letter, for example. Of course, this assumes that your hardware is multitouch capable, and with these and other touch enhancements, I suspect that 2010 will bring multitouch to more portable devices.

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Image Credit: Microsoft

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