DISPLAYING APPLICATION INFORMATION IN AN APPLICATION-SWITCHING USER INTERFACE

• US 20100077347A1
• Filed: 09/25/2008
• Published: 03/25/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Sareen, Chaitanya D., Anderson, Bret P., Kirtane, Latika
• Granted Patent: US 8,694,920 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/803
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04817 using icons graphical or visual programming using iconic symbols G06F8/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

An application status system is described herein that informs the user about application-specific status updates and notifications through a changing status icon associated with an application-switching user interface displayed by an operating system when the application is running. When an application has focus, there is typically no way for another application to display status to the user without displaying a dialog box or a notification balloon that interrupts the user. The application status system takes advantage of the existing application-switching user interface to display a lightweight status icon overlay on the application-switching user interface itself. Thus, the application status system allows applications to provide application-specific status updates without interrupting a user'"'"'s activity in another application and without adding additional UI for a user to process.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for receiving a status icon from an application, the method comprising:

receiving an API call from an application, wherein the API call includes a window handle and a handle to the status icon that indicates the application'"'"'s status;

providing the status icon to an application-switching user interface window;

storing a copy of the status icon in association with the application-switching user interface window; and

displaying the status icon when the application-switching user interface window draws a user interface element associated with the application.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising verifying that the window handle received in the API call belongs to a process associated with the application.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising, if the received icon handle is NULL, clearing a currently stored status icon.

4. The method of claim 1 storing a timestamp of a current time when the API call was received and using the timestamp to determine which of multiple status icons to display for the application.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining that the application is no longer running and clearing the stored copy of the status icon.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein storing a copy comprises adding the status icon to a queue of status icons associated with the application.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying the status icon comprises throttling a number of updates to the status icon to manage system performance.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying the status icon comprises determining whether the application had a previously associated status icon, and if the application did not have a previously associated status icon fading in the received status icon.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving a notification that a user clicked on the status icon and displaying additional information about the application in response to the click.

10. A computer system for displaying application status in an application-switching user interface, the system comprising:

a receive icon component configured to provide an API that applications call to set and clear status icons associated with the applications;

a user interface configured to provide an interface for a user to switch between applications and view information about applications that are currently running, wherein the user interface displays an item for each application to which the user can switch;

an item manager component configured to manage each item displayed by the user interface; and

a display item component configured to manage data associated with each item and display each item, wherein the display item component overlays a status icon for each item over a static icon displayed for each application.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the item manager component is further configured to store a timestamp of a current time when an API call was received and use the timestamp to determine which of multiple status icons to display for an application.

12. The system of claim 10 further comprising, a group manager configured to keep track of each application window the system can display in a group, wherein a group comprises a single user interface element displayed by the user interface for multiple application windows;

and a display group component configured to determine which of several application status icons to display for grouped application windows that have multiple status icons.

13. The system of claim 10 a configuration component configured to manage configuration of the system.

14. The system of claim 10 a notify application component configured to notify applications of relevant events to which the applications may want to respond.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the notify application component notifies applications when the user interface is created.

16. The system of claim 10 wherein the display item component displays a 16×

16 icon over a corner of a main icon associated with the application.

17. A computer-readable storage medium encoded with instructions for controlling a computer system to display a taskbar that includes application status information, by a method comprising:

receiving an indication to redraw at least a portion of the taskbar;

enumerating one or more taskbar items associated with one or more running applications;

for each enumerated taskbar item,

retrieving a status icon associated with the taskbar item;

displaying the retrieved status icon as an overlay on the taskbar item.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 further comprising, determining whether a user has configured the taskbar to group items from the same application;

and, if the user has configured the taskbar to group items from the same application, selecting an icon to display from each of the items associated with the application.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the indication to redraw is received in response to an application updating its associated status icon.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the taskbar includes a button for each of the applications and displaying the retrieved status icon comprises displaying the icon over at least a portion of the button.