Natural User Interface (NUI)

One popular use of Silverlight is to build touch-based applications. I’ve been involved in several projects that take advantage of Silverlight to provide touch experiences on slates and tablets. These applications are typically OOB applications, which you will learn more about in Chapter 13, “Out of Browser Applications.”

Touch-based applications provide what is referred to as a natural user interface (NUI). An example of a natural interaction is to use your finger to drag an element across the screen. This is natural because when you place puzzle pieces on a table, you use a very similar manipulation to move the pieces around. This is much closer to your natural mode of interaction than using a device that you have to move independently of the target while knowing when and how to click buttons.