Does anyone know if the pinch zoom work around will be available as an addon or something in the future? Extra?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNTsI...eature=related

This would be slightly handy for us to use the web browser and to zoom an image or something. I like the idea of drawing a straight line and measure the distance to zoom the screen.

This idea is great. Could any developer make this happen?

well, the rotate zoom used in the web browser seems more than fine
simply coz it looks original (coz it is different than the pinch apple gesture)

maybe it is easy to actually copy the command line and use it on pics

I like the zoom with the volume keys, it's quite rapid but not as easy if you have the keyboard slid out.

pinch won't work since it's multitouch (two fingers at the same time) and the N900 has a resistive screen. But there are possible workarounds in the future according to some of the threads on here, they won't be as natural as on a true capacitive screen though.

It's only natural because we are taught to behave that way.. I see no problem with keeping one finger in one place while moving the other to "pinch". I've tried that on the iphoe and that works as well.

I'm not arguing that it's not useful, I'm just saying that it's a different screen than that of the Iphone's and as such has different functionality.

edit: I just reread the OP's first post. looks like he IS talking about the workaround. nevermind....

well the rotation zoom works but take too much efforts to make a zoom. The workaround pinch zoom is best for zooming pictures and maps application. Where the rotate zoom won't work.

Though it is not the true multi-touch but this is not about multi-touch post. It's a work around pinch zoom. So there is nothing to do with multi-touch. We all know that N900 doesn't support multitouch but still a work around to achieve the same goal is handy in some part of the OS.

Don't you guy agree? Imagin Pinch Zoom in Ovi Map? and Gallery picture?

It's not "natural" in the sense that it's kind of a hack with a resistive screen. The N900's touch-panel can only technically detect one point of touch. I believe two fingers are essentially "averaged" (imprecise, but I can't remember exactly how it works off the top of my head). If I am remembering the demo you're mentioning correctly, I believe it uses the position of the first finger (known, since it's the only point at the beginning of the gesture), and then the "averaged"/whatever point during the gesture, to get an idea of the gesture's shape. What you end up getting is essentially an origin point, and a vector taken from it. It's doable, but it's kind of a hack, as I said.
Note: if I'm getting the technical details wrong, someone please correct me

Update: in regards to the previous post (which was posted while I was writing this), it would be neat, but I can't see Nokia officially pushing a workaround like this into the code of any of their big apps (browser, Ovi Maps), and for those that aren't Open Source, nobody else can, either, of course. I think it's doomed to stay as a tech demo, if only because it would cause mass confusion with newbies suddenly thinking it actually was multitouch, when in fact only a certain gesture performed a certain way "works".

EDIT: as per roger_27's post, I'm referring to the type of resistive panel found in the N900; I am aware that resistive touch technology in general is not incapable of multitouch.

well i still think it is a good business to get it working. I really do hope Nokia would take note of that workaround.

As it happened previously with the Auto Rotation function. It was not Nokia intention to make it official at the beginning but later on after there are a few hack to make the apps available and guess what? Nokia finally implemented it and add it into the OS itself as essential function

So nothing is impossible here. It is not out of the believable state yet! Nokia might change its mind.

resistive screens can support multi touch.

the only real difference from resistive and capacitive, is that capacitive does not require to be slightly PRESSED to register, but rather, touched.

capacitive is better for 'dull' touches (finger, sausage), resistive is better for exact touches (stylus)

resistve = 2 layers of clear stuff. when touched, they press against eachother, registering a touch.

capacitive = the whole screen is a capacitor, when you touch it, a change is registered in the voltage, where that change happens registers as a touch.