Application launching via indexed data

• US 20060294063A1
• Filed: 06/23/2005
• Published: 12/28/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/23/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ali, Hyder, Dawson, David, Murarka, Neel I., Walters, David Anton, Gorecki, Marek, Glasgow, Dane Alexander
• Granted Patent: US 7,720,834 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/901 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures for retrieval from the web G06F16/951
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

Application launching on a computer via indexed data. Based on a search term entered by a user, the computer searches an index containing metadata representative of one or more applications installed on the computer. A user interface on the computer'"'"'s display has a window for displaying the results of searching the index. In addition, the user interface receives user input to select an application from the search results to be initiated. The computer is responsive to the user input via the user interface for initiating the selected application installed on the computer. A computer-readable medium including a persistent component, an index component, a query component, and an execution component embodies further aspects of the invention.

Claims

1. A computerized method of locating and initiating an application on a computer, said method comprising:

displaying a first user interface (UI) element to a user of the computer, said first UI element including a search field for receiving a user-entered search term, said search term comprising one or more characters representative of an application to be initiated on the computer;

searching, based on the search term, an index containing metadata representative of one or more applications installed on the computer to locate the application to be initiated; and

displaying a second UI element associated with the first UI element, said second UI element including a window for displaying results of searching the index and for receiving user input to select the application to be initiated from the search results, and wherein said computer is responsive to user input via the second UI element for initiating the selected application installed on the computer.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating the search results as the user enters additional characters of the search term.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying the second UI element comprises presenting a persistent UI on the desktop.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising defining metadata associated with files stored in a memory area of the computer and indexing the files based on metadata associated therewith.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said metadata for each of the files stored on the computer is representative of a file type thereof.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the second UI element comprises a window for summarizing the search results.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising organizing the search results in the window of the second UI element into groups according to the file type.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein searching comprises filtering the search results by the file type.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein the file type comprises one or more of the following:

application, document, browser favorite, contact, email.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein searching comprises modifying the search term by automatically appending a wildcard operator to the one or more characters received from the user.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising enabling the search results for one or more right-click operations.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising enabling the search results for launching directly from the second UI element.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more computer-readable media have computer-executable instructions for performing the method recited in claim 1.

14. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for locating and initiating an application on a computer, said computer-readable medium comprising:

a persistent component responsive to a query received from a user for processing the query, said query comprising one or more characters representative of a desired application on the computer to be initiated, said persistent component listing the one or more characters in a user interface element;

an index component called by the persistent component for creating a query object with the query received from the user and creating a connection to a search index to query for data as a function of the query;

a query component called by the index component for querying the index according to the query received from the user;

an execution component responsive to a user selection of an item from the query results for fetching metadata for the selected item, locating the selected item on the computer, and executing the selected item to launch the application to be initiated.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the index component includes instructions for specifying a filter associated with the query as a function of a specific type of data.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the query component queries the index for each additional character of the query received from the user.

17. In a computer system having a display, said display having rendered thereon a user interface, said user interface comprising:

a window for displaying results of a search of an index, said index containing metadata representative of one or more applications installed on the computer, said search of the index being responsive to user input identifying an application to be initiated; and

selection means for receiving user input to select the application to be initiated from the search results, and wherein said computer is responsive to the user input for initiating the selected application installed on the computer.

18. The user interface of claim 17, further comprising a persistent search field for receiving a user-entered search term, said search term comprising one or more characters representative of the application to be initiated on the computer.

19. The user interface of claim 17, wherein the window displays updated search results as the user enters additional characters of the search term.

20. The user interface of claim 17, wherein the window displaying the search results organizes the search results as a function of file type.