Method and apparatus for lightweight support on set top box

• US 7,219,331 B2
• Filed: 03/14/2001
• Issued: 05/15/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Pabla, Kuldipsingh
• Primary Examiner(s): An; Meng-Ai T.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Francis; Mark P
• Application Number:
  US09/809,392
• Publication Number:
  US 20020184608A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,253 Days
• Field of Search: 717102-148, 715763-764
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0481 based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04892 Arrangements for controlling cursor position based on codes indicative of cursor displacements from one discrete location to another, e.g. using cursor control keys associated to different directions or using the tab key arrangements for controlling cursor position based on coordinate signals G06F3/038

Abstract

A Lightweight component is made focus traversable by creating a pseudo native windowing system widget for each and every Lightweight component. This pseudo native widget has no geometry associated with it and does no rendering of the component since rendering of Lightweight components is done in Java. The pseudo native widget lives on the native windowing system'"'"'s list of widgets and occupies a real estate thereby causing the native windowing system to attach a native structure with each and every Lightweight component, thus giving the windowing system accessibility to the Lightweight components. Since the pseudo native widgets are on the list of regular widgets, focus navigation for Lightweights become consistent with regular windowing system widgets, making the Lightweight components visible to all focus navigation events.

Claims

1. In a computer system having one or more processors, a method for presenting focus events to Lightweight components by use of any available navigation method, comprising:

creating a pseudo native windowing system widget for a Lightweight component executing in a virtual machine, wherein said Lightweight component is a component without a native opaque window association, said Lightweight component visible to said virtual machine and transparent to a native windowing system of said computer system and

providing said pseudo native windowing system widget to said native windowing system such that said native windowing system attaches a native structure to said Lightweight component, said native structure enabling said Lightweight component to be visible to and focus navigable by said native windowing system,

wherein said native windowing system maintains a list of its native widgets and said pseudo native windowing widget is included in said native windowing system'"'"'s list of native widgets.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing focus events to said pseudo native windowing system widget.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein said pseudo native windowing system widget informs said Lightweight component to assume said focus events.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein said focus events are provided by cursor keys on a computer system keyboard.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein said focus events are provided by any combination of keys on a computer system keyboard.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said Lightweight component is device independent.

7. A computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium having computer program code embodied therein for presenting focus events to Lightweight components, said computer readable storage medium comprising computer program code configured to cause a computer to;

create a pseudo native windowing system widget for a Lightweight component, wherein said Lightweight component is a component without a native opaque window association, said Lightweight component visible to a virtual machine and transparent to a native windowing system of said computer; and

provide said pseudo native windowing system widget to said native windowing system such that said native windowing system attaches a native structure to said Lightweight component, said native structure enabling said Lightweight component to be visible to and focus navigable by said native windowing system,

wherein said native windowing system maintains a list of its native widgets and said pseudo native windowing system widget is included in said native windowing system'"'"'s list of native widgets.

8. The computer program product of claim 7, further comprising providing focus events to said pseudo native windowing system widget.

9. The computer program product of claim 8 wherein said pseudo native windowing system widget informs said Lightweight component to assume said focus events.

10. The computer program product of claim 8 wherein said focus events are provided by cursor keys on a computer system keyboard.

11. The computer program product of claim 8 wherein said focus events are provided by any combination of keys on a computer system keyboard.

12. The computer program product of claim 7 wherein said Lightweight component is device independent.

13. An apparatus for focus navigating Lightweight components comprising:

a client computer;

a virtual machine on said client computer;

a native windowing system on said client computer having Lightweight components, wherein each of said Lightweight components is a component without a native opaque window association and is transparent to the native windowing system on said client computer, each of said Lightweight components being visible to and executing on said virtual machine;

a mechanism for creating pseudo native windowing system widgets for said Lightweight components such that the native windowing system attaches a native structure to one or more of said Lightweight components, said native structure enabling said one or more Lightweight components to be visible and focus navigable by said native windowing system,

wherein said native windowing system maintains a list of its native widgets and said pseudo native windowing system widgets are included in said native windowing system'"'"'s list native of widgets.

14. The apparatus of claim 13, further comprising providing focus events to said pseudo native windowing system widget.

15. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein said pseudo native windowing system widget informs said Lightweight component to assume said focus events.

16. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein said focus events are provided by cursor keys on a computer system keyboard.

17. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein said focus events are provided by any combination of keys on a computer system keyboard.

18. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein said Lightweight component is device independent.