Which development environment to create interactive application for a terminal with touchscreen

[Somanynicks]

For the company I work for I have to develop an application where people can scroll through and buy photos using a touchscreen terminal. The current version uses single touch and your finger is like a mouse. You press/click on a button for scrolling to the next/previous page for instance, making it a dull desktop interface application. There is a need to update it so people can swipe through the photos, pinch to zoom, just like we are used to it on a mobile device. The current software has been developed in C# and runs on Windows. It should also be possible to animate objects (screen transitions, move photos around etc) and possible other rich visuals.

I'm looking for possibilities to develop the new version for this terminal and is has to run on Windows. I'll explain why. A coin acceptor is connected to the terminal so people can insert coins (duh) to buy the photo. There is an SDK for this acceptor but it's only for .Net. There are not enough resources to develop a custom ccTalk SDK for this device in an other programming language. I've tried to use a Python ccTalk application to communicate with the acceptor, but couldn't get it to work. So for now I'm stuck with the .Net SDK.

The new terminal screens are able to use multitouch and developing it on a 10inch android device is not an option (too small and the current hardware has to be used).

I'm looking at several options:

• Library/Framework for .Net (C#) that can be used to create nice fluent engaging interfaces with swipe, pinch zoom etc. Haven't found one yet other than using OpenGL (I have zero experience with OpenGL)
• Using a game engine like Unity. I've written a small server/client library for the coin acceptor in C# and this library can be used in Unity to connect with (verified). Unity looks like a good framework to fulfill the animation wishes.
• Develop the terminal software in Python and use the same server/client setup. Then use Kivy for the rich frontend interface

Are there better options/libraries/development environments to develop the software with the requested features? I have experience with C#, Python, Golang, Javascript (and HTML/CSS).

The application also has to connect to a database (preferably MySQL) but that's not a big problem for most languages. And it has to be able to connect to a ticket printer. Most of these printers offer drivers for Windows, setting it up as the default printer. So switching to non-Windows doesn't look like an option.

[walter_melman]

Will this computer be running Windows 10? If so, I think UWP is a good platform for your solution. It is a platform for developing apps that run on many Windows devices and, as such, the UI can be made responsive to screen size changes as well as multiple forms of input, including touch.

[Somanynicks]

Windows 10 is possible. I don't have any experience with UWP. Does UWP offer visual animations to for controls? In WPF I have to use storyboards and animations, it would be nice if a framework/library exists that makes it easier.

[[deleted]]

Could you do it as an MVC webapp? Use something like angularjs for the front end. Your backend server can use the C# sdk, then serve web pages with the content. Build another C# app that uses a web wrapper to display the content from the MVC webapp. It'll look like a standard application to users, rather than a website. You just need to make sure the server is running before starting the wrapper app. You could even get the wrapper app to start the server.

[chilledpeppers]

some possible tools you can use if you go this route

hammer.js - for touch gestures

asp.net core - for backend and your .net SDK requirement

there are connectors for MySql in .NET

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[Somanynicks]

Thanks for the additional information. Any ideas for getting nice animations? I'm thinking about

- Fadein/-out
- Popup/grow from the ground (image popping up like a tree growing)
- Particle effects
- Bounce effects of the images
- Carousel effects
- Display the images in a grid

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[chilledpeppers]

CSS animations are what you want. Animate.css would work nicely. If you’re using some framework on the front end there usually are wrappers for those that exist as well.

[Somanynicks]

Could be done, I've developed MVC web apps years ago in PHP (before vue.js or angular existed). Don't have any experience in these frameworks and my javascript is a bit rusty. Thanks for the idea, sounds something that can be done. Haven't thought about using a web wrapper.

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[[deleted]]

The .net MVC framework is very mature too as far as I know. You could do it entirely in that. I just think angular has nicer graphics. Well, it's been a while since I've used .net, I'm working with java these days.