2. IKE MARYFRANCES 12/SMS02/048 EMS 303

3. THE ADVANCEMENT AND APPLICATIONS OF THE TOUCHSCREEN TECHNOLOGY A touch screen is an electronic visual display that the user can control through simple or multi-touch gestures by touching the screen with a special stylus/pen and or more fingers. Some touch screens use an ordinary or specially coated gloves to work while others use a special stylus/pen only. The user can use the touch screen to react to what is displayed. The touch screen enables the user to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than using a mouse, touchpad or any other intermediate device. Touch screens are common in devices such as game consoles, personal computers, tablet computers and smart phones. They can also be attached to computers. They also play a prominent role in the designs of digital appliances such as PDA.

4. One of the major advances of the touch screen technology is its application in smart phones, tablets that are used by everyday people. It is a driving demand and acceptance of common touch screens for portable and functional electronics. Touch screens are found in the medical field and in heavy industries as well as automated teller machine (ATM). Historically, the touch screen sensor and its accompanying controller-based firmware have been made available by a wide array of after-market system integrators, and not by display, chip, or motherboard manufacturers. Display manufacturers and chip. Manufacturers have acknowledged the trend toward acceptance of touch screens as a highly desirable user interface

5. The development of multipoint touch screens facilitated the tracking of more than one finger on the screen, thus, operations that require more than one finger on the screen, thus operations that require more than one finger are possible. These devices also allow multiple users to interact with the touch screen simultaneously’ Optical touch screens are a relatively modern development in touchscreen technology, in which two or more image sensors are placed around the edges of the screen, infrared back lights are placed in the camera’s field of view on the other side of the screen. This technology is popular due to its versatility, scalability and affordability especially for bigger units.

6. Multi touch technology began in 1982, when the university of Toronto’s input research group developed the first human input multi touch system, using a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass in 1985, the university of Toronto group including Bill Buxton developed a multi touch tablet that used capacitance rather than bulky camera- based optical sensing systems. There are a variety of touch screen technologies that have different methods of sensing touch.

7. Previously, the use of the optical image touch screen technology has been explained, but there are others one of which is the RESISTIVE touch screen. The touch screen panel comprises of several layers, the most important of which are two thin transparent electrically resistive layers separated by a thin space. These layers face each other with a thin space in between, the top screen has a coating on the underside surface of the screen. Resistive touch is used in restaurants and hospitals due to its high resistance to liquids and contaminants. A major benefit of the resistive touch is its low cost.

8. Another touch screen technology is the capacitive touch, the panel consists of an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor such as indium tin oxide. When touched different technologies are used to locate the point of the touch, the location is then sent to the controller for processing. Unlike the resistive touch screen, one cannot use this type of touch through other materials such as gloves, the largest capacitive display manufacturers continue to develop thinner and more accurate touch screens with touch screens for mobile devices now being produced with in cell technology that eliminates a layer.

9. To get touch screen accuracy, users should be able to accurately select targets on touchscreen and avoid accidental selection of adjacent targets, to effectively use a touch screen device, the design of touch screen interfaces must reflect both technical capabilities of the system. The touch screen is very convenient, so it can be held in a number of ways in order to suit the user of the device especially mobile touch screens. The touch screen should be handled with care and cleaned regularly with the appropriate material to maintain it and to ensure maximum usage.