UNIFYING APPLICATION LAUNCHERS AND SWITCHERS

• US 20090235200A1
• Filed: 03/13/2008
• Published: 09/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/13/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Betz, Ben, Hoefnagels, Stephan, Jarrett, Rob, Anderson, Bret, Sareen, Chaitanya, Deutsch, Rebecca
• Granted Patent: US 8,327,286 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/783
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention provide a method, system, and media for intelligently presenting buttons that correspond to running windows as well as a set of application launchers that launch instances of software applications. One version of the method includes receiving an indication that an instance of a software application has been invoked by a launching mechanism, which leads to creating a windowed process in which to present the instance of the software application; determining that at least one of the application launchers was the launching mechanism; automatically removing the launcher(s) from view; and presenting a button that corresponds to the windowed process.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable media have computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of intelligently presenting (1) buttons that correspond to one or more running windows and (2) a set of application launchers that launch instances of software applications, the method comprising:

receiving an indication that an instance of a software application has been invoked by a launching mechanism, which leads to creating a windowed process in which to present the instance of the software application;

determining that at least one of the application launchers was the launching mechanism;

automatically removing the at least one of the launchers from view irrespective of a state of said windowed process, wherein said state includes at least one of maximized, minimized, and in between; and

presenting a button that corresponds to the windowed process, the button being operable to present the windowed process.

2. The media of claim 1, wherein determining that the at least one of the launchers was the launching mechanism comprises:

identifying the launching mechanism by inspecting attributes associated with the windowed process; and

comparing attributes of the launching mechanism with attributes of the launchers to determine whether any of the launchers are the same as the launching mechanism.

3. The media of claim 1, wherein determining that at least one of the launchers was the launching mechanism comprises:

referencing the launching mechanism to determine a first application identifier associated with the launching mechanism, wherein the first application identifier identifies a corresponding windowed process that is launched by the launching mechanism; and

comparing the application identifier against a pool of application identifiers that are respectively associated with the launchers in the set of application launchers; and

identifying at least one application identifier of the pool that matches the first application identifier.

4. The media of claim 3, wherein referencing the launching mechanism to determine the first application identifier includes occurring in one or more of the following ways:

inspecting properties of a window that is presenting the windowed process to identify the launching mechanism, which window includes as one of its properties an identification of the launching mechanism which can be used to identify and locate the launching mechanism; and

referencing a process that gave rise to the windowed process, and utilizing the process to source a query to retrieve an identification of the launching mechanism.

5. The media of claim 2, further comprising:

receiving an indication the windowed process has been closed; and

automatically returning the at least one of the launchers to view, and hiding the button previously presented.

6. The media of claim 2, wherein a plurality of buttons are presented in a portion of a user interface, each of the plurality of buttons respectively corresponding to a windowed process.

7. The media of claim 6, further comprising enabling the plurality of buttons to be rearranged in the portion of the user interface according to an order defined by a user.

8. The media of claim 7, wherein the enabling includes enabling a preview of button placement by performing a process comprising:

determining when a first button crosses a threshold portion of a second button, and

moving the second button to accommodate a proposed placement of the first button, thereby enabling a user to preview how a proposed rearrangement on the first button would appear.

9. A computer-implemented method of intelligently presenting (1) buttons that correspond to one or more running windows and (2) application launchers that launch instances of software applications, wherein the presenting occurs in an environment where a certain single process can host multiple instances of an application, the method comprising:

receiving a request to present in a window an instance of a hosted application, the hosted application being an application running within a first host process that is capable of hosting multiple applications, including multiple instances of a same application, such that the instances cannot be distinguished by inspecting only an executable file that spawned the process;

associating a first application identifier with the window;

receiving a request to present on a graphical user interface a button that is operable to select the window;

inspecting a set of application launchers to determine whether any of them led to creating the window;

identifying at least one application launcher of the set of application launchers that led to creating the window;

hiding the at least one launcher; and

presenting a button that is operable to present the window.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein associating the window with a first application identifier is accomplished as the process is spawned, such that the process is aware of which specific launching mechanism was used to launch it, and that identifying information useable to locate the specific launching mechanism can be determined by inspecting attributes of the process.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein inspecting the set of application launchers includes determining respective application identifiers that respectively correspond to the application launchers, the respective application identifiers being specific enough to identify the application running within the first host process even though the application may be:

one of multiple instances of itself;

or

one of multiple applications being hosted by the first host process.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein identifying at least one application launcher is accomplished by a process that includes matching the first application identifier to at least one application identifier that is respectively associated with at least one of the application launchers.

13. One or more computer-readable media have computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of providing for managing visual indications of items running on a computing device, the method comprising:

providing a first launching mechanism that is operable to launch an application, wherein the first launching mechanism is associated with a plurality of properties;

populating at least one of the plurality of properties of the first launching mechanism with a first application identifier such that a windowed process, which was launched by the first launching mechanism, can be unambiguously identified by way of the first application identifier; and

storing the first application identifier,

(1) wherein the first application identifier can serve as a reference to determine whether a second launching mechanism is the same as the first launching mechanism by inspecting a second application identifier that is associated with the second launching mechanism, and

(2) wherein a matching of the first and second application identifiers indicates that the first launching mechanism is the same as the second launching mechanism,

such that visual indications of items running on a computing device can be grouped together based, at least in part, on the first application identifier.

14. The media of claim 13, further comprising:

receiving indications of desired icons that are to form a designated set of icons that are useable to launch one or more of the following,

(1) an application;

(2) one or more instances of an application; and

(3) one or more portions of an application;

associating each of the desired icons in the designated set with a corresponding icon identifier.

15. The media of claim 14, further comprising providing a visual indication of the running windowed process, the windowed process being launched by a certain launching mechanism.

16. The media of claim 15, wherein the visual indication includes a button that is operable to be selected, and when selected, presents the windowed process.

17. The media of claim 15, further comprising determining whether any of the designated set of icons is the same as the certain launching mechanism, and, if so, then removing any identified matching icons from the designated set of icons while maintaining visibility of the visual indication.

18. The media of claim 17, wherein the determining is accomplished by comparing an application identifier of the certain launching mechanism with the application identifiers of the desired icons in the designated set.

19. The media of claim 17, further comprising:

receiving an indication that the windowed process is no longer running;

removing from visibility the visual indication; and

returning the identified matching icon(s) to the designated set.

20. The media of claim 14, further comprising:

identifying multiple processes that are running in separate windows, wherein each of the processes form part of a common software application, and wherein the multiple processes were spawned by different files;

identifying buttons that respectively correspond to the identified multiple processes; and

grouping the buttons into a grouping that is represented by a grouping indication on a graphical user interface.