Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Howard Wesley Cherry

Tjeerd Hoek

Justin Michael Maguire

Richard M Banks

Kent Rogers Lowry

Willard Bruce Jones

John A Tholen

Terrence T Huang

A method for using an indicator, known as &ldquo;See Through View,&rdquo; that allows a user to select a region on the display device and still see the visual attributes of the contents as they will appear when the region is deselected. When the user selects a region on the display device, the invention &ldquo;shades&rdquo; the background of the selected region. The contents within the selected region are left unchanged. Shading is accomplished by combining each original background base color with a selection shading color to produce a corresponding blended color, or colors. If the corresponding blended color is similar to the background base color, the blended color is either lightened or darkened, as needed to produce an adjusted blended color. Each blended color, or the adjusted blended color (as required) replaces the corresponding base background color within the selected region. The effect is that the selected region and background items appear &ldquo;shaded.&rdquo; This allows the user to see the visual attributes of the contents of the selected region, as they would actually appear.

Method for indicating a selected region on a computer display while allowing the user to see the formatting of the background and content items within the selected region

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Howard Wesley Cherry