Method and system for displaying transient notifications

• US 7,155,729 B1
• Filed: 11/03/2000
• Issued: 12/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Juanarena, Cecil J., Goossen, J. Andrew, Andrew, Felix G. T. I., Sobeski, David A., Matthews, Joseph H., Ellison-Taylor, Ian M., Andrew, Suzan M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Thomson, William
• Assistant Examiner(s): ZHEN, LI B
• Application Number:
  US09/705,858
• Time in Patent Office: 2,244 Days
• Field of Search: 709/318, 719/318, 715/700, 715/768
• US Class Current: 719/318
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages

Abstract

A notification component that is shared between all applications that provides notifications to users without interrupting the task that the user is working and allows users to manage the notifications from one location. The user can globally set preferences as to how the notifications should be rendered. These preferences include enabling or disabling notification classifications, which rendering type they want to use for each notification classification, and priority of notifications within each notification classification. The notification component allows the user to indicate what notifications the user want to sees and how the notifications are rendered. Rendering types include audio, visual, and pager styles. An application uses an application programming interface to send notification using schema based or text based notifications. The system parses the notification and provides the user the notification through notification classifications in accordance with the user preferences.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium which stores a set of instructions which when executed performs a method for displaying a notification, the method executed by the set of instructions comprising:

receiving a notification at a notification component to provide to a user, the notification component adapted to receive notifications from a plurality of objects and adapted to receive notifications of different notification types;

determining a priority to assign the notification based on a user specified priority;

deciding a notification type, wherein deciding the notification type comprises selecting one of a display notification and an audio notification, wherein selecting the display notification comprises selecting one of an alpha-blended display, a transient display, a transient alpha-blended display, an animated display, and a normal display; and

rendering the notification in accordance with the priority and the notification type.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 having further computer-executable instructions for performing the step of determining a notification medium to render the notification.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 having further computer-executable instructions for performing the step of determining an area on a display to render the notification.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving the notification comprises the steps of:

receiving a property of the notification; and

receiving a notification to be sent to the user.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving the notification comprises the step of receiving an XML-cased notification, the XML-based notification comprising a notification classification tag and a notification type tag.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the step of selecting the display notification comprises selecting one of an alpha-blended display and a transient display.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the step of selecting the one of a display notification and an audio notification comprises the step of selecting one of one of a display notification and an audio notification and a pager notification.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 having further computer-executable instructions for performing the step of queuing the notification.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the step of queuing the notification comprises the step of queuing the notification in a queue, the queue arranged according to the priority of the notification.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the step of queuing the notification further comprises the step of flushing a queue of prior notifications.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the step of determining the priority to assign the notification comprises the step of determining a number of times the user is provided notification.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 having further computer-executable instructions for performing the steps of:

determining a notification classification of the notification;

checking a user preference list to see if the notification classification is listed in a list of selected classifications selected by the user to indicate which notification classifications the user wants to receive; and

wherein the step of rendering the notification comprises the step of rendering the notification if the notification classification is listed in the list of selected classifications.

13. A method of displaying a notification received from one of a plurality of objects at a notification component adapted to receive notifications from the plurality of objects and adapted to receive notifications of different notification classifications, the method comprising the steps of:

determining, by the notification component, a notification classification;

rendering, by the notification component, the notification in accordance with the notification classification and a user specified priority; and

selecting a rendering type and wherein rendering the notification in accordance with the notification classification further comprises rendering the notification using the rendering type wherein selecting the rendering type comprises selecting one of an alpha-blended display, a transient display, a transient alpha-blended display, an animated display, and a normal display.

14. The method of claim 13 further comprising the step of determining a notification medium and wherein the step of rendering the notification in accordance with the notification classification comprises the step of rendering the notification in the notification medium in accordance with the notification classification.

15. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of rendering the notification in accordance with the notification classification further comprises the step of rendering the notification in accordance with a user preference.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the user preference comprises a classification enable, a positional location, and a classification size, the positional location being a location on a display where the notification is to be displayed, the classification size being an area in a display area where the notification is to be displayed, the step of rendering the notification in accordance with a user preference comprises the steps of:

determining if the classification enable is enabled for the notification classification; and

if the classification enable is enabled for the notification classification, rendering the notification at the positional location and at a size equal to the classification size.

17. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of determining a notification classification comprises the step of selecting one of a contact classification and an audio classification.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the step of selecting one of a contact classification and an audio classification comprises the step of selecting one of a contact classification, a financial classification, and an audio classification.

19. The method of claim 17 wherein if the step of selecting one of the contact classification and the audio classification comprises the step of selecting the audio classification, the step of rendering the notification further comprises the step of sending a pre-notification notification to a user prior to performing the step of rendering the notification.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein the notification comprises a text message and if the step of selecting one of the contact classification and the audio classification comprises selecting the audio classification, the step of rendering the notification further comprises the step of converting the text message into an audio message prior to performing the step of rendering the notification.

21. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of selecting the rendering type comprises selecting one of an alpha blending display and a transparent display.

22. The method of claim 13 furthering comprising the step of updating a history of notifications.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the step of updating a history comprises the steps of:

flushing read items from the history that have been read by a user; and

flushing old items from the history, the old items determined from the user preference.

24. The method of claim 23 further comprising the step of displaying items in the history in accordance with the user preference.

25. The method of claim 22 further comprising the steps of:

displaying the history; and

performing at least one action if a notification in the history is selected by a user selection device.

26. The method of claim 13 further comprising the step of performing at least one action if the notification is selected by a user selection device.

27. The method of claim 13 further comprising the step of:

if the notification classification is an audio notification classification, performing at least one action if one of a keyword and a key-phrase is spoken by a user.

28. The method of claim 13 wherein the step of rendering the notification further comprises the step of rendering the notification in one of a long version and a short version, the short version being an abbreviated version of the long version.

29. A method of displaying a notification received from one of a plurality of objects at a notification component adapted to receive notifications from the plurality of objects and adapted to receive notifications of different notification classifications, the method comprising:

determining, by the notification component, a notification classification; and

rendering, by the notification component, the notification in accordance with the notification classification and a user specified priority, wherein rendering the notification in accordance with the notification classification further comprises rendering the notification in accordance with a user preference, wherein the user preference comprises a classification enable, a positional location, and a classification size, the positional location being a location on a display where the notification is to be displayed, the classification size being an area in a display area where the notification is to be displayed, rendering the notification in accordance with a user preference comprises,

determining if the classification enable is enabled for the notification classification, and

if the classification enable is enabled for the notification classification, rendering the notification at the positional location and at a size equal to the classification size.