We’ve got some great news for Windows Touch developers. Today we’ve launched a toolkit for Windows Touch that allows developers to use some of the same controls that are used by developers on Microsoft Surface hardware today, but for PCs using Windows Touch.

Before you can use the toolkit, you must have Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express Edition, as well as Microsoft .NET 4.0 installed on your computer. The .NET 4.0 Framework and the Surface Toolkit support input devices such as mouse, stylus, and touch. With the Surface Toolkit, you can develop an application that supports various types of input.

To create great natural user interfaces, a focus on user experience design as well as testing on multi-touch hardware are essential. To test your application in a touch-enabled environment, your computer must have a touch-screen digitizer.

Download: Microsoft Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch Beta Video:Introduction to the toolkit on Channel 9

You can also visit Surface.com Technical Resources to learn more about developing on Microsoft Surface hardware