Today at CES Microsoft officially unveiled the
latest round of software for UMPCs called Origami Experience. Originally released
the Touch Pack for the first UMPC devices running XP Tablet PC Edition
the team has been working feverishly on Origami Experience™. This
entirely new program is essentially a replacement for our Program
Launcher that we shipped in the Touch Pack. Here is what the opening
screen of Origami Experience™ looks like:
The purpose of Origami Experience™ is to
deliver a great device-like media interface on your UMPC. It also
allows you to quickly access other applications on your UMPC such as
Windows Switcher, Mobility Center, Wireless Connectivity and all your
installed programs.
You’ll notice the User Interface (UI) is arranged with Music, Videos, Pictures and Programs. Since the launch of the first UMPC devices we’ve learned that people love using their UMPCs for web browsing and media playback. Fortunately the web browsing experience is pretty good on these already, in part thanks to IE 7. We felt to really create a great media experience though we should write an interface that has been completely designed from the UMPC and touch displays. As you can see in the screenshot above, all of the buttons are easily targeted with your finger.
For our media experience, we rely heavily on the
Windows Media Player 11 APIs, so that provides us with support for all
of the same formats that WMP 11 supports. We’ve done some other really
neat things in Origami Experience™ as well. For example you can easily
create a new music or video playlist right from the UI. You can also
choose from 5 different photo transitions to turn your UMPC into an
awesome photo frame.
Read More: Origami Project
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