RENDER TRANSFORM BASED SCROLLING AND PANNING FOR SMOOTH EFFECTS

• US 20120144333A1
• Filed: 12/02/2010
• Published: 06/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Shah, Gunjan A., Oster, Shawn T., Sheller, Jonathan D., Michail, Ashraf A., Kaza, Akhilesh, Liu, Alan C.T., Shatalin, Mikhail
• Granted Patent: US 8,595,640 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/771
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0485 Scrolling or panning
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

An information display system is described herein that separates rendering of information from receiving that information so that the rendering portion can be quickly displayed to the user and the data can arrive as it is available to provide further detail. The rendering portion creates a hardware surface measured to fill the area to be consumed by the list box or other control. Independently, the information retrieval portion queries information from a server or other source and processes the information as it is received. The system can then perform a transformation on the previously created hardware surface to insert the information in the rendered control without re-laying out the entire control or recreating user interface elements. Moving a surface is a cheaper operation for a CPU and can easily be accelerated using a GPU.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for rendering a user interface control, the method comprising:

receiving layout information for displaying a control on a computing device;

determining a layout based on the received layout information;

creating a graphical surface for displaying the control;

creating one or more user interface items associated with the graphical surface that display individual information items;

displaying the created graphical surface and user interface items without waiting for retrieval of the information items that the user interface items represent;

upon receiving user input, transforming the displayed surface in response to the received user input,

wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving layout information comprises receiving information describing the size of information to be displayed.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving layout information comprises receiving information describing a visible area determined by a device screen size.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein determining a layout comprises determining screen coordinates in which to display the control, a size of the control, and a visible area of the control.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein determining a layout comprises determining a precaching area of the control that includes an area larger than a visible area for preparing items for display.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein creating a graphical surface comprises creating a type of surface manageable by a graphics processing unit (GPU) associated with the device.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein creating a graphical surface comprises creating a surface that includes a visible area and a precached area of the control.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein creating user interface items comprises creating a fixed number of user interface items to display a variable number of information items, and further comprising reusing the fixed number of user interface items to display information items as the information items are scrolled into a visible area of the control.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying user interface items comprises, as user interface items become visible, moving those items onto the graphical surface for display.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving user input comprises receiving information about a user action that includes swiping a touch-based user interface to scroll the displayed control.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein transforming the displayed surface comprises updating the information displayed by the control without determining a second layout.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein transforming the displayed surface comprises, upon items coming into view that are in a precached area, translating the graphical surface by moving the surface a value of coordinates determined by the received input.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein transforming the displayed surface comprises, submitting a request to retrieve new information items that fall into a precached area as a result of moving the displayed surface.

14. A computer system for rendering transform based scrolling and panning of a user interface for smooth effects, the system comprising:

a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions embodied within the following components;

a layout component that determines a layout for a user interface control and creates one or more user interface elements that populate the control;

a surface creation component that creates a graphical surface that represents an area associated with the user interface control;

a user input component that receives user input that modifies the user interface control;

a surface translation component that modifies the created graphical surface in response to received user input;

an information retrieval component that retrieves one or more information items for display in the user interface control from one or more information sources in parallel with displaying the control; and

a surface update component that updates the created graphical surface to display information items arriving in response to retrieving the items from the information sources.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the layout component is further configured to determine a layout area that is larger than a screen size of the computing system, such that a user can view part of the area at any one time and scroll the display to view other parts of the area.

16. The system of claim 14 wherein the surface creation component is further configured to create the surface one time for the duration of the control and swap information onto and off of the previously created graphical surface without creating and destroying user interface elements.

17. The system of claim 14 wherein the user input control receives scrolling requests to scroll the control and communicates the user'"'"'s actions to other components of the system that update the control'"'"'s appearance.

18. The system of claim 14 wherein the surface translation component moves the surface to center a visible area of the user interface control on a difference location of the surface.

19. The system of claim 14 wherein the information retrieval component accesses a network to retrieve the items from the information sources independently of the display of the user interface control so that delays in retrieving items do not delay displaying or updating the control.

20. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to retrieve information items for display in a user interface control independently from rendering the control, wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:

sending one or more information retrieval requests to request one or more information items from one or more information sources;

while waiting for the information items, displaying the control;

receiving at least one information item from an information source;

determining a displayed user interface element related to each received information item;

binding at least one received information item to a previously created user interface element; and

updating the displayed control with the received information for the bound information item, wherein the control is displayed before the first update is received, and may change multiple times as new information items arrives from the information sources.