METHODS OF MANIPULATING A SCREEN SPACE OF A DISPLAY DEVICE

• US 20100088635A1
• Filed: 09/28/2009
• Published: 04/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: John Louch
• Original Assignee: John Louch
• Inventors: LOUCH, JOHN
• Granted Patent: US 8,040,360 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/802
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

Methods to manipulate a screen space of a display device are disclosed. A plurality of application windows of a plurality of applications are displayed on a screen space. At least a first application and a second application are executing to display a plurality of windows. A user interface of system level applications may be displayed. A selection of a single application mode is received. In response to the receiving of the selection of the single application mode, all the windows are removed automatically from the screen space, except for a first application window. At least the first and second applications continue being executed. The user interface of the system level applications may continue to be displayed. Next, a request to display a second application window is received. The second application window is displayed while the first application window is removed from the screen space.

Claims

1. A machine-readable storage medium storing executable program instructions which when executed by a data processing system causes the system to perform operations, comprising:

displaying a plurality of windows on a screen space of a display device, wherein at least a first set of user applications and a second set of user applications are being executed to display the plurality of windows;

displaying a user interface including an icon for one or more system applications wherein the user interface includes a dock;

receiving a selection of a selected applications mode;

automatically removing, in response to the selection, all the windows from the screen space of the display device, except for one or more windows of the first set of the user applications;

continuing to display the user interface after the automatically removing the all the windows from the screen space of the display device, except for the one or more windows of the first set of the user applications, wherein the user interface displays user level applications that are being currently executed;

displaying in the user interface icons of the second set of the user applications which windows have been removed from the screen space at an edge of the screen space, wherein the user interface displays icons of the second set of the user applications that are currently being executed;

receiving a request to display one or more windows of the second set of user applications while in the selected applications mode; and

in response to the receiving the request, automatically replacing all the windows of the first set of user applications with the one or more windows of the second set of user applications on the screen space of the display device, wherein the first set of user applications which have had all the windows removed from the screen, continue to be executed, and wherein live representations of the first set of user applications that are being currently executed are displayed on the user interface located at the edge of the screen space.

2. A machine-readable medium as in claim 1, further comprising instructions that cause the system to perform operations comprising:

marking the first set of user applications to be displayed in the selected applications mode and marking the second set of user applications to be displayed in the selected applications mode.

3. A machine-readable medium as in claim 1, wherein the selected applications mode includes controlling a major portion of the screen space by one of the first set and the second set of user applications.

4. A machine-readable medium as in claim 3, wherein the automatically removing includes animating the removal of all the windows, except for the one or more windows of the first set of user applications.

5. A machine-readable medium as in claim 4, wherein the replacing all the windows of the first set of user applications includes animating the removing of all the windows of the first set of user applications.

6. A machine-readable medium as in claim 1, wherein after the removing, a content of the one or more windows of the first set of the user applications remains in the frame buffer while the contents of all the windows removed from the screen space are no longer in the frame buffer.