GestTrack® Content Design Rules

Creating websites that are GestTrack compatible is very similar to creating websites for touchscreens. The following rules from touchscreen content design apply:

1) Buttons should be large, and spaced well apart
2) There should be no pulldown menus
3) There should be no scrollbars
4) "Back" and "Home" buttons should be clearly visible since the standard Internet Explorer buttons will not be available
5) No right click behavior will be accessible to the user
6) To enable data entry by the user, use the built-in GestBrowser "pop-up" keyboard.
7) Similarly, if numbers need to be entered, provide a large on-screen numeric keypad

The GestTrack tracker has been enhanced to allow for special behaviors to be invoked when the user is inside of specialized types of web content. For instance, when inside a traditional HTML link, you might want the behavior to be for the mouse to "click down and up", while you may want a "click and drag" behavior when you are over an IPIX java applet. The following object types are directly supported in Point of View.

1) Java Applets
2) Embedded Objects
3) Internet Explorer HTML Links

Note that Flash Objects do not expose their button positions to monitoring programs. As a result, there is no direct support for clicking within a Flash object. This means that the standard "Default Behavior" will be invoked when the user hovers over a flash object. This behavior is user settable. The advantage to using non-Flash objects is that the user can hover anywhere within a large button in order to initiate a click, while the hover range over a flash button will be the typically smaller region specified by the overall hover settings.

The GestTrack system is screen resolution independent. It is important to create content that is fitted for the target display system so that it makes the best use of available screen space and does not get scrollbars added when displayed on a lower resolution screen. Some plasma screens have unusual resolutions like 848x480. Projection screens can be 800x600 native or 1024x768 and higher. The ideal design would be scalable from a 640x480 Pioneer plasma screen up to a 1024x768 projector. This is not always easily achievable. Note that in all cases, the content will be run on a custom version of Internet Explorer that will prevent the user from accessing the IE user interface. This means that the resolution that you are designing for is truly the screen resolution since you don't have to account for a menu bar or other IE interface elements.

In addition, the GestTrack Browser adds a "timeout" feature so that your display can jump to an "attract loop" html page at your discretion. It is also possible to have the Browser detect when someone walks in front of the screen so that you can trigger to yet another page. Finally, there is a way to set up the Point of View Browser to simply randomly select html pages from a specific directory as a part of the attract loop. This is particularly powerful if all of your listings pages are in one directory.