Queueing events in an interactive media environment

• US 8,656,268 B2
• Filed: 02/09/2006
• Issued: 02/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Finger, James C., Yovin, John Andre, Mazhar, Khurshed, Colle, Olivier, Freeman, Arthur William James
• Primary Examiner(s): Paula, Cesar
• Assistant Examiner(s): Faber, David
• Application Number:
  US11/351,085
• Publication Number:
  US 20070006233A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,931 Days
• Field of Search: 715/200, 715/201, 715/202, 715/203, 715/204, 715/210, 718/100
• US Class Current: 715/210
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4843 by program, e.g. task dispatcher, supervisor, operating system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications

Abstract

An arrangement is provided where all applications in an interactive media environment run on a single application thread in a media player. Event queues are utilized to schedule the application thread'"'"'s processing of workitems corresponding to events that occur in the environment. Workitems include methods to be invoked when the workitem is processed and arguments for the method. Workitems further include a begin time and an end time and are ordered in the event queue first by begin time followed by the order in which they were inserted into the queue. The application thread marks workitems whose begin times corresponds to the current or previous time and then processes marked workitems from the queue in order. Such processing is committed so that once the application thread begins processing of a workitem it does not stop. Workitems are dropped from the event queue if their end times have been passed.

Claims

1. An electronic device hosting an application scheduler arranged to manage processing of workitems corresponding to events occurring in an interactive media environment where time is counted using a sequence of ticks, each of the workitems having a timestamp that includes a begin time and an end time, the application scheduler comprising:

a plurality of event queues for queuing the work items, each of the event queues having a head end and a tail end and arranged so that workitems are processed from the head end of the event queue, each of the event queues further being accessible by respective ones of a plurality of interactive media applications in order to insert the workitems into the event queues; and

an application thread coupled to the plurality of event queues at their head ends, the application thread being arranged for marking workitems whose begin time corresponds to a current tick or a previous tick, processing marked workitems, and inserting workitems associated with new events that occur during the processing at the tail end of an event queue so that they follow after marked workitems.

2. The electronic device of claim 1 wherein the inserting is performed irregardless of a timestamp for the new events.

3. The electronic device of claim 1 where each workitem includes a field for indicating a method to be invoked and arguments for the method.

4. The electronic device of claim 1 where each workitem includes a clock selector field that indicates whether the timestamp is measured in title time, page time or application time.

5. The electronic device of claim 1 where the application thread drops all workitems from the event queue when an interactive media application running in the interactive media environment reloads its page.

6. The electronic device of claim 1 where all interactive media applications in the interactive media environment run on the same thread of a playback engine.

7. The electronic device of claim 1 in which workitems represent one or more events fired by the interactive media application.

8. The electronic device of claim 7 in which the one or more events are fired by a markup in the interactive media application.

9. The electronic device of claim 1 in which the one or more events are fired by a script in the interactive media application.

10. The electronic device of claim 1 in which workitems represent one or more events generated by an interactive media player.

11. The electronic device of claim 1 in which workitems represent one or more events fired by user interaction in the interactive media environment.