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How Touchscreens Work
A plain-language overview of the main ways a screen senses touch: resistive, capacitive, infrared, optical and more, and what each method is good at.
Specialty and Future Displays
Touch and Interactive Displays
How screens sense fingers, pens and gestures.
Capacitive and Resistive Touch Compared
How capacitive touch (electrical sensing) and resistive touch (pressure sensing) differ in feel, durability, glove use and typical applications.
Haptic Feedback on Touch Surfaces
How vibration motors, actuators and other cues give flat glass a sense of click and response, and why designers use haptics on touch devices.
Infrared and Optical Touch Frames
How infrared beam grids and edge-mounted cameras find touches on large displays, and where they work well or run into trouble.
Interactive Whiteboards and Flat Panels
How interactive flat panels differ from projector-based interactive whiteboards in a classroom or meeting room, from touch and brightness to upkeep.
Multi-Touch Gestures and How Screens Detect Them
How a screen tracks several fingers at once and software turns the paths into pinches, swipes, rotations and other familiar gestures.
Self-Service Kiosks and Their Screens
What makes a screen suitable for a public self-service kiosk: touch choice, brightness, glare, cleaning, durability and designing for many different users.
Stylus and Pen Input on Displays
How screens detect pens, from simple passive styluses to active and electromagnetic pens, why palm rejection matters, and how drawing differs from tapping.
Touch Latency and Why Drawing Feels Laggy
What adds delay between a finger or pen and the response on screen, from sensor scanning to refresh rate, and why drawing exposes the lag more than tapping.
Touch With Gloves, Water and Dirty Hands
Why moisture, gloves and grime confuse touch sensors, and how designers cope with glove modes, water rejection, different sensor types and physical controls.
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