RENDERING A CUSTOMIZED LIST OF CONTROLS

• US 20100070924A1
• Filed: 09/18/2008
• Published: 03/18/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Cote, Antoine, Hart, John W. II, Dong, Yun Feng, Hu, Tao Shen, Zhu, Wenhui, Chen, John Z., Yuknewicz, Paul J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,078,992 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/829
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 715/968 interface for database querying and retrieval

Abstract

Form controls can be reused so that the control can be bound to large volumes of data without adverse performance issues because of a large number of controls. A maximum number of rows of data N that can appear in a form are calculated. A container in memory is created for N+2 rows. The additional two rows are used to store the row after the last displayed row and the row previous to the first displayed row. In response to a user scroll or tab operation, rows within the container are reused. Child controls are hosted by the control and are also reused when the data is scrolled out of view.

Claims

1. A system for displaying rows of data from a data source comprising:

a processor that displays a form on a display device, reuseable form controls, the re-useable form controls displaying rows of data from the data source without storing in memory a plurality of controls for every row of data in the data source; and

the reuseable form controls, wherein a maximum of N+2 reuseable form controls are stored in a scrollable container in memory, where N is a number of reuseable form controls visible on the form on the display device at a particular point in time and wherein at least one of the N+2 form controls is reused to display a next or previous row of data from the data source in response to a user input comprising a tab or scroll operation.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein a reusable form control of the reuseable form controls comprises a data repeater control, wherein the data repeater control hosts child controls that display fields of a row of data from the data source.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the child controls hosted by the data repeater control are reused in response to the user input comprising the tab or scroll operation.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein in response to a request to display a first row of the data source, the scrollable container is sized to store N+1 reuseable form controls.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein in response to a request to display a last row of the data source, the scrollable container is sized to store N+1 reuseable form controls.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein in response to receiving a scroll down or tab down request on a first display displaying N rows, the first display is replaced by a second display wherein a first displayed row of the N rows of the first display disappears from view on the second display and a last displayed row of the N rows of the first display is followed by a next displayed row on the second display, the next displayed row not displayed on the first display.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein in response to receiving a scroll up or tab up request on a first display displaying N rows, the first display is replaced by a second display, wherein a last displayed row of the N rows of the first display disappears from view on the second display and a first displayed row of the N rows of the first display is preceded by a previous displayed row on the second display, the previous displayed row not displayed on the first display.

8. A method of displaying data from a data source on a display device comprising:

receiving input identifying a row of data from the data source to be displayed in a display;

calculating a number of rows N of the data from the data source viewable within the display at a particular point in time;

creating a scrollable container in memory to store a number of rows of the data equal to a maximum of N+2 rows;

creating N+2 data repeater items, wherein each of the N+2 data repeater items hosts child controls for each field of the N+2 rows;

reusing the N+2 data repeater items and hosted child controls in response to user input comprising a scroll or tab operation.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

wherein in response to detecting a scroll down or tab down operation a data repeater item and its child controls are reused to store a next row.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

wherein in response to detecting a scroll up or tab up operation a data repeater item and its child controls are reused to store a previous row.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

displaying a first display comprising N data repeater items.

12. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions which when executed cause a computing environment to:

create a scrollable container in memory, the scrollable container of a size sufficient to store a maximum of N+2 rows of data from a data source, wherein N represents a number of rows of data that can be displayed at a particular point in time on a form on a display device, wherein the form displayed on the display device comprises at least one data repeater item and a plurality of child controls hosted by the at least one data repeater item, wherein data repeater items and their child controls are reused in response to a scrolling or tabbing operation.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

receive a request for a row of a data source to be displayed.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

in response to receiving the request for the row of the data source to be displayed, retrieving data from the data source, the retrieved data comprising the requested row and storing the retrieved data in the scrollable container in memory.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

calculate N.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

display N rows of data from the data source in a first display from the scrollable container in memory, wherein the N rows include the requested row.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

receive a second user input comprising a scroll or tab operation, and in response to the received second user input, provide a second display wherein a row not visible on the first display is visible on the second display and wherein a row visible on the first display is not visible on the second display.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

provide the second display, wherein the row not visible on the first display and visible on the second display comprises a row previous to the first row on the first display in response to a user scroll up operation.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

provide the second display, wherein the row not visible on the first display and visible on the second display comprises a next row to the last row on the first display.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

create the scrollable container in memory, the scrollable container of a size sufficient to store a maximum of N+1 rows of data from a data source, in response to receiving a request for a first row or a last row of the data source.