SPECTRUM BAR CONTROL

• US 20090217181A1
• Filed: 02/22/2008
• Published: 08/27/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/22/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kumar, Jyoti
• Granted Patent: US 8,261,201 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/762
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for providing a graphical user interface control in a spectrum bar. The spectrum bar control is operable to switch between a statistical view of data and a discrete view of the data while maintaining a same size of the graphical user interface control. The spectrum bar control is operable to display data for multiple data elements, with different colors being used to represent different categories of the data elements. The spectrum bar control also enables three or more dimensions of data to be displayed in a small space.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components comprising:

a graphical user interface control operable to switch between a statistical view of data and a discrete view of the data while maintaining a same size of the graphical user interface control.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the switching between the statistical view and the discrete view are performed dynamically based upon a data set size of the data.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface control displays the data in a form of a spectrum bar.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 3, wherein the graphical user interface control is further operable to display each category of the data in a different color in the spectrum bar.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface control is further operable to display a multi-dimensional view of the data.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface control is further operable to allow a user to navigate through the statistical view of the data.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 6, wherein the graphical user interface control is further operable to allow the user to view additional details about the data while navigating through the statistical view of the data.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 7, wherein the additional details are displayed in the form of a tool tip.

9. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components comprising:

a graphical user interface control that is operable to display data in a spectrum bar for a plurality of data elements with different colors being used to represent different categories of the data elements.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the graphical user interface control is further operable to display multiple dimensions of the data in the spectrum bar.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein one dimension of the data is represented by the different colors.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein another dimension of the data is represented by position of the data within the spectrum bar.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the graphical user interface control is further operable to dynamically switch between a statistical view of the data in the spectrum bar and a discrete view of the data in the spectrum bar.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the graphical user interface control is operable to allow a user to expand the spectrum bar into a bar chart representation of the data.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the graphical user interface control is operable to allow one or more custom actions to be assigned to the data.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more custom actions can be specified by a developer at design time.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more custom actions can be specified by a user at run-time.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the data is database table compression data.

19. A method for providing a graphical user interface control that displays multiple dimensions of data in a small space comprising the steps of:

displaying a plurality of dimensions of data elements in a spectrum bar control, with a first dimension of the data elements being visually represented by different colors used for each category of the data elements, with a second dimension of the data elements being visually represented by a position of the data elements within the spectrum bar control, and with a third dimension of the data elements being visually represented by a physical size of the data elements as shown in the spectrum bar control.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the different colors used for each category of the data elements can be customized by a user.