Task Switching on Mobile Devices

• US 20120210266A1
• Filed: 06/16/2011
• Published: 08/16/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Jiang, Rachel, Donahue, Megan Galbraith, Varma, Ashwini, Manlapaz, Rhoniel Villano, Alberts, Amy Elizabeth, Karachale, Jan H., Vasu, Vijayendra Gopalrao, Bush, Alan Michael
• Granted Patent: US 10,631,246 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/772
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/546 Message passing systems or structures, e.g. queues
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/233 Processing of audio elementary streams monitoring, identification or recognition of audio in broadcast systems H04H60/58
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4126 The peripheral being portable, e.g. PDAs or mobile phones
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/439 Processing of audio elementary streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6175 involving transmission via Internet broadcast-related systems characterised by the transmission system being the Internet H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/50 Service provisioning or reconfiguring
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/60 Subscription-based services using application servers or record carriers, e.g. SIM application toolkits
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0264 by selectively disabling software applications
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

The subject disclosure is directed towards a task switching technology on a computing device such as a Smartphone. An application is comprised of one or more tasks. When a user requests that another task be executed, information about the previously executing task (e.g., including a screenshot) is preserved to a stack. If the user invokes a task switcher program, the user is presented with a view of the stack, e.g., containing the screenshots (and representative text) of the tasks that previously executed. The user may navigate among those presented task representations to arbitrarily select any one, with the selected task resumed upon selection.

Claims

1. In a computing environment, a system comprising, a task switcher configured to obtain information from a data structure, the data structure containing data associated with each task of a set of one or more tasks that previously executed on a computing device, the task switcher further configured to use the information to output a representation of each task to a user interface, the user interface configured to allow arbitrary user-selection of any task of the set for resuming that task.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising an interaction mechanism configured to detect user interaction directed towards invoking the task switcher, and when detected, to take action to invoke the task switcher.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the interaction mechanism comprises a hardware button, and wherein the interaction mechanism detects the user interaction by detecting a press-and-hold of the hardware button that occurs for at least a threshold duration.

4. The system of claim 2 wherein the interaction mechanism is incorporated into a back button.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein a plurality of the tasks are part of a single application program.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the data structure comprises a stack in which the task switcher is not considered to be a task.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the representation of each task comprises at least part of a screenshot corresponding to that task.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the representation of each task includes a textual label.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein each task of the set of one or more tasks that previously executed corresponds to a session comprising an instance of a program'"'"'s task.

10. In a computing environment, a method performed at least in part on at least one processor, comprising, maintaining information associated with a plurality of tasks, each task corresponding to an application program that previously executed as a foreground application, outputting a representation of each task to an interactive user interface, detecting user interaction to select one of the tasks as a selected task, and switching to the selected task by resuming the application in a state corresponding to the selected task.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein detecting user interaction to select one of the tasks as a selected task comprises detecting first interaction to navigate to a particular task, and detecting second interaction to select the selected task.

12. The method of claim 10 further comprising, capturing a screenshot corresponding to each task, and using at least part of the screenshot as the representation of each task.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising, using text data as part of the representation of each task.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein maintaining the information associated with a plurality of tasks comprises maintaining a stack, and further comprising, updating the stack to save information regarding an executing task before replacing the executing task with a task of another application.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein maintaining the stack comprises releasing data of another task from the stack to provide memory space to save the information regarding the executing task.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein maintaining the stack comprises filtering out data of a duplicate task.

17. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform steps, comprising:

presenting a view of a stack of task data corresponding to previously executing tasks of applications, in which the view includes visible representations of tasks having task data in the stack;

detecting interaction with the view to navigate to a particular task representation;

detecting interaction to select as a selected task the task corresponding to the particular task representation; and

resuming execution of the selected task.

18. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 17 having further computer-executable instructions comprising, detecting a request to invoke a task switching program, wherein presenting the view of the stack occurs in response to the request.

19. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 17 having further computer-executable instructions comprising updating the stack upon detecting an operation directed towards launching another task.

20. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 17 having further computer-executable instructions comprising, capturing screenshots and obtaining text data corresponding to the tasks, and using the screenshots and text data as the visible representations of the tasks.