Honeywell International Inc.

Daoping Zhang

John R Hajdukiewicz

Rui Zhang

Conrad Bruce Beaulieu

Michelle Raymond

Geoffrey Ho

Changbo Sun

Shi Qiang Wang

A method includes defining a placeholder widget having a property and defining a prototype graphical user interface (GUI) having an instance of the placeholder widget. The method also includes presenting the prototype GUI to a user, where an appearance of the instance of the placeholder widget is based on the property of the placeholder widget. The method further includes replacing the instance of the placeholder widget in the prototype GUI with an instance of another widget. In addition, the method includes updating the presentation of the prototype GUI using the instance of the other widget. Replacing the instance of the placeholder widget with the instance of the other widget could include transforming an instance of a lower fidelity placeholder widget into an instance of a higher fidelity widget. The property of the placeholder widget could include a textual property, an image property, and/or a graphics property.

Apparatus and method for designing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) having different fidelities

Methods and apparatus are provided for a scalable user interface system. A user interface is divided into general reusable user interface components and application specific user interface components. Next profiles are created for user interfaces based upon server capabilities and client side device capabilities and reusable user interface components are built for use in multiple profiles. Defined user interface scalability strategies are executed at runtime to build a user interface description using the user interface components. In this way, a user interface can be built from a user interface description by apportioning the building of the user interface description between a server and a client side device using the profiles. At the server, user interface components stored in memory are used to build a first portion of the user interface description while a second portion of the user interface description is built at the client side device and is combined with the first portion received from the server.

Scalable user interface system

Growing community of inventors

Beijing, China

Daoping Zhang