The smartphone has revolutionized the way we experience computing. Packed into this small device are a camera, GPS and accelerometers that serve as inputs for your mobile apps. But the touch screen has had the most impact in making the smartphone the nearly indispensable item that it is. Ironically, developers are stuck with using a keyboard to create all these mobile apps.
It may not seem like such a big deal, but for those of you interested in an alternative to the keyboard, Microsoft Research gives you Touch Studio. Released a few weeks ago by the the Research in Software Engineering team at Microsoft Research, Touch Studio allows you to develop mobile apps on your Windows Phone 7. And as the name implies, the primary input method is the touch screen. Touch Studio gives you a series of sample scripts, or templates, that correlate to a specific action. You can edit the various aspects of that action by tapping on the specific script twice, and then making the changes with an editor tool that looks much like a calculator. Channel 9 produced a video with a bit more detail.
Obviously, there are some limitations that are inescapable when you’re dealing with a small device, but these guys have clearly put a lot of thought into creating a tool that does as much of the heavy lifting as possible. Their efforts have even caught the attention of some people outside of Microsoft.
Touch Studio is still in beta and got an update this week. It’s available as a free download.
