While I have merely enabled ink in my own controls on my own web pages , Loren Heiny is working n something really cool!! A way to place inkable edit controls over existing text boxes on web pages. For example, in his Camtasia video demonstrating his tests, he opens up Google and can write directly in he google text box, then it will get recognized and converted to text. This is instead of using the TIP.

This is big U.I. problem that many tablet pc developers struggle with. We like the idea of users opening up forms and writing directly in them and having that get recognized. What we lose, though is the editing flexibility of the tip. So the conundrum is how to get these two things to merge!

Loren is using some magic to get his inkable edit boxes placed over the fields, which means that this needs to be predefined somehow for each page. But that doesn’t seem worriesome to me. It sounds like his tool might eventually enable anyone to create the definitions for any page and share them. Or the developers of those page could create the placement definitions for their own pages and let end users download them. Something like the how the context tagging works for tablet pcs. Or better yet, anyone could just hire Loren to create the mappings for their pages. 🙂

Anyway, check out Loren’s post and accompanying video demonstration. Neat stuff!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

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