Ciplex Builds World's First Multi-Touch Website Using Silverlight

There’s no question multi-touch enabled hardware is going to be invading many homes and offices in the years to come, and it’s exciting to see how some software makers are already building applications that take full advantage of the multi-touch experience, aided by support baked into modern operating systems and increasingly powerful graphics processors.

But until today, I had’t really seen anyone boast a full-fledged multi-touch website yet.

Well, say hello to the future by visiting the new SilverPAC website, built by LA-based Ciplex in collaboration with Microsoft using Silverlight on Windows 7.

I just got off the phone with executives from the 10-year old interactive agency, and they told me they were actually commissioned by consumer electronics developer SilverPAC to build a new website with the usual technology. Instead, Ciplex saw an opportunity to take a stab at building a multi-touch web experience for the company using Silverlight tech, supported by the fact that its customer already had a working relationship with Microsoft. This gave Ciplex the early access to the Windows 7 beta and the set of Silverlight APIs needed to accomplish the feat.

The multi-touch website was launched a couple of weeks ago with little fanfare and met with only a handful of reviews. I don’t own multi-touch enabled hardware myself, but friends who do tell me the website is at times rather slow even using brand new gear, and the set of gestures is fairly limited: you can’t rotate items, for instance. If you have a multi-touch ready device, don’t hesitate to share your opinion in comments below.

For what it’s worth, the demo video (embedded below) makes it look really cool and promising. If you so desire, you can get a half-baked experience by simply visiting the website and using your mouse for the navigational gestures, but evidently this doesn’t allow you to try out pinching or two-finder swipe actions.

On a sidenote: the introduction video on the SilverPAC multi-touch website was amusingly made in Flash.

It’s worth noting that Adobe’s recently launched Flash Player 10.1 Beta also has what it takes for these types of websites to be built and interacted with, but we have yet to see any live showcases.

Looking very forward to future launches of this type of web experience, regardless of the underlying technology, and particularly on mobile devices.