Touchscreen friendly UI

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upspace
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Touchscreen friendly UI

Post by *upspace »

hi

i am looking for a solution to replace windows explorer for file operation usage in a car pc environment. i am a user of total commander already on normal desktop pc and like it very much.

in car pc's you typically have a 7-8 inch touchscreens with specialized front ends for playing mp3, gps navigation, dvd, wheater reports etc. (ie. road runner)

but there is no satisfactionary solution when it comes to copying files and doing other os related tasks (zipping, synchronizing)

you can enlarge fonts in explorer though but the whole concept of explorer is not made for touchscreen usage.

that is where i see total commander jumping in. it has the basic for touchscreen usage already built in. i successfully enlarged fonts and icons but some things still remain small (menu) and are not optimal with a one-button mouse only (touch the screen), e.g. if you have to select multiple files. bear in mind there is no keyboard usage for ctrl key (okay you could use the on-screen keyboard or if i do longer work i attach an usb keyboard).

so my question:
- is there any config available for touchscreen usage
- tipps how to configure total commander to do that.

thanks for your help and i am sure that many users from mp3car dot com would be interested in such a solution.
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ghisler(Author)
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Post by *ghisler(Author) »

Total Commander isn't really suited for touchscreens, but perhaps you can use these hints to improve the situation:
1. The menu font is changed globally in the screen properties (control panel - display).
2. You can scale Total Commander itself as a whole by adding
OverrideDPI=120
to wincmd.ini section [Configuration]
3. For selecting files, you could perhaps write an AutoHotkey script to send Insert key presses when the user clicks on a button in the TC button bar
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white
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Re: Touchscreen friendly UI

Post by *white »

When using the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) in Windows 11 (Ctrl+Win+O), I can't access the main menu options, for example by pressing Alt+O or pressing F10, Down.

2ghisler(Author)
Any idea why? Can you make that work?
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Re: Touchscreen friendly UI

Post by *ghisler(Author) »

I don't know, I'm not handling the menu myself, it's a normal Windows main menu bar. It behaves strangely: When I press Alt on the virtual keyboard, the menu items get underlined, so it should work just fine. But it only works when I then press the physical character key, not the character button.

Other native Windows programs also seem to have troubles, for example the old control panel control.exe:
When using a real keyboard, I can press and release Alt to open the menu bar, and then an underlined letter to drop down the menu.
When using the virtual keyboard, pressing the alt button twice so it gets pressed and released also shows the menu bar. But when I then click on a letter, the menu bar just closes instead of dropping down the menu. When I press the real key instead, it opens the dropdown menu just fine.
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Re: Touchscreen friendly UI

Post by *white »

Confirmed. In Notepad it works OK, but that is not an old style menu.
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Re: Touchscreen friendly UI

Post by *ghisler(Author) »

Indeed notepad was replaced with a Windows store app in Windows 11.
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