Dialing an Etch-a-Sketch

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Channel 9.

Last year, Peter Foot, posted a Surface Dial project and tip that I've been wanted to share with you for a while now...

First, a tip and trick.

Simulate the Surface Dial

"The Surface Dial, and the RadialController API provide an interesting new input metaphor. You may have some ideas of how you could use it but don’t actually have the hardware. Since I tried creating an Etch-a-Sketch app using the dial I was thinking about how to implement a second dial.

Most of us already have a mouse with a central wheel. I decided that for the purposes of prototyping apps for the dial, or to implement a second dial-like device I could create an API around that wheel. There are a few limitations but the basic functionality is the same. The SimulatedRadialController class was born and after a few tweaks to adjust for the fact the mouse wheel reports movement in large steps (30 degrees in my testing) so I reduced this down to perform smaller movements.

..." [Click through for the code, download and more]

The next is simulating a toy we all loved at one point in time....

Building an Etch-a-Sketch with Surface Dial

"Microsoft have demonstrated how the Surface Dial can be used in conjunction with Pen input for drawing, but what about drawing with the Dial itself?

For those of us with warm memories of the Etch-a-Sketch I thought it would be fun to replicate the experience with the Surface Dial. Now of course there is a big caveat – you only have a single Dial to use at a time. This can be worked around by using the Click functionality of the Dial – Tapping the top of the dial switches between horizontal and vertical drawing.

....

image

..." [Click through for the source and the rest]