Home Box Office, Inc.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Brendan Joseph Clark

Ling Tony Chen

Brandon C Furtwangler

Steven N Furtwangler

Patrick Finnigan

Ashraf A Michail

Leonardo Esteban Blanco

J Jordan C Parker

Bede Jordan

Jonhenry A Righter

Pawel Wiktor Olszta

Greg D Schechter

Michael John Hillberg

Blake Douglas Pelton

Silvana Patricia Moncayo

Nathan J E Furtwangler

Gerhard A Schneider

Tyler R Furtwangler

Joshua Warren Priestley

Terry A Adams

Hamid Mahmood

Aleksandar Antonijevic

Jesse Bishop

Ruurd Johan Boeke

Meng Yang

George Xin Gao

Vidhya Sriram

Leah M Keegan

J Jordan Parker

Adrian A Mascarenhas

Daniel C Rischar

Bede A Jordan

The described technology is directed towards a pre-child user interface element in a user interface tree that draws before the parent element draws, (and thus before any conventional child element of the parent draws). For example, based upon current state data such as whether the parent element has focus, the pre-child may draw a highlight or the like before (so as to be beneath) drawing the representation of the parent element, to indicate the focused state (or and/or other current state or states). The user interface tree maintains a property that it is composable because the parent user interface element code is independent of what any of its pre-child element or pre-children elements do when invoked.

Pre-children in a user interface tree

The described technology is directed towards data-driven navigation, in which a next navigation location depends on variable data associated with an interactive user interface element (rather than a fixed link). The data may be in a hierarchy of data models. A menu contains interactive navigation elements, each bound to a data model. A selected interactive navigation element results in locating a data model associated with the selected element. The data model is used to determine the next navigation location. Also described is hierarchical navigation to one item of a level as well as lateral and peer navigation.

Data-driven navigation and navigation routing

The described technology is directed towards having UI elements structured in a hierarchical configuration, in which parent and child UI elements communicate via a virtualization interface. A change to any parent UI element view propagates to each impacted descendant, e.g., each child, any children of that child and so on, whereby each child can manage virtualization and rendering based upon the change. Focus changes among the UI elements are also handled by propagating information via the virtualization interface.

View virtualization

Determining the rendering of user interface (UI) elements, referred to as views, based upon styleable transitions between possible states of a view. Transitions may include animation, such as to smoothly enter a view into or exit a view out of a scene over a number of rendering frames. Transitions also may be applied to view state changes related to a UI element, such as to indicate hovered over, focused, listening (for speech), selected and/or pressed. View state changes also may be animated.

Configurable stylized transitions between user interface element states

The described technology is directed towards determining the rendering of user interface (UI) elements, referred to as views, based upon styles, in which styles comprise property values such as color value data, font data, border data, position data, and/or animation-related data applied to a view. A view object instance is returned upon request based upon an identifier that is used to select an unstyled view object and a style applied to that view object. The styles may be maintained as a fixed set of styles for a runtime session.

Styling system

Techniques are provided for automatically generating a mock object from a description of a real object, such as for use in testing. Mock object generation logic parses the description to determine interface(s) of the real object, which are replicated in the mock object, and to determine method(s) of the real object, which are simulated in the mock object. The mock object generation logic may generate a description of the mock object that is then compiled into the mock object for execution. Data types may be validated so that the arguments and/or return values from the mock object meet the expectations of a calling object.

Mock object generation

The described technology is directed towards scrollable user interface containers, and allows mixing snap items and smooth items in the same container. Snap point ranges that correspond to container snap items are specified, such as by pixel values or per container item to be rendered. When because of a scroll operation a snap item of the container overlaps a boundary of a viewing port (e.g., if rendered), the scroll position is adjusted based upon a snap point range limit to snap the snap item for rendering based upon the viewing port boundary.

Snap points including ranges

The described technology is directed towards handling errors in an application program that allows for a taxonomy and precedence order of errors. Exception wrapping includes preserving relevant information with an exception, and consolidates a series of errors into a single dominant exception instance that is handled appropriately depending on the exception type. Also described is a centralized exception manager that outputs an interactive dialog based upon the exception type, and takes a recovery action based upon user interaction with the dialog.

Exception wrapping system

The described technology is directed towards an asynchronous dispatcher including control logic that manages a queue set, including to dequeue and execute work items from the queue on behalf of application code executing in a program. The dispatcher yields control to the program to allow the program and application code to be responsive with respect to user interface operations.

Asynchronous dispatcher for application framework

The described technology is directed towards generating related templated files based on a set of data associated with to another class registered with a document system. These files may be edited into a source code file, a document file and a test file for any derived class. At runtime, which may include the runtime execution of the object based upon the test file, an object based upon the source code file is instantiated. Part of the object (e.g., a function) may be validated during the runtime based upon validation information in the document file.

Generating related templated files

The described technology is directed towards a button repeat system that allows different repeat behaviors (e.g., interval times between repeats) to be customized for any view (user interface element) and for any button. A designer specifies an interval set comprising interval times to use in an associated view to repeat a button that is pressed and held. Using global information across views, a button that is pressed and held may continue to repeat as focus changes among views. The repeating may continue without needing to reset to the first interval time of the interval set of each view as focus changes, so that, for example, a rapidly repeating button does not appear to change its repetition rate as focus changes among views.

Styleable custom button repeat

Embodiments are directed to rendering animations in a multi-layered animation system and to rendering an element with an animation that uses multiple levels of animation properties. In one scenario, a computer system establishes an operating system (OS)-specified animation value for at least one property of a user interface (UI) element that is to be animated. The computer system receives a user-specified animation value for at least one property of the UI element that is to be animated and determines, based on the UI element property, how to combine the OS-specified animation value and the user-specified animation value. The computer system then combines the OS-specified animation value and the user-specified value for the UI element in the determined manner and renders the animation for the element using the combined animation values.

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Brendan Joseph Clark