Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

John C Whytock

Ali M Vassigh

Chantal M Leonard

Holger Kuehnle

Sabrina Boler

Patrice Lynn Miner

Lee Dicks Clark

Rebecca J Deutsch

Albert Peter Yih

Parthasarathy Sundararajan

Roland Radtke

Michael Paul Erich Von Hippel

Hanna Mclaughlin

Fernando Evelio Alvarez

Sankalp Gupta

Nina Emi Rothenhaus

Yilin Song

Tomas Edward Morris

Gary De-Hong Liao

Michael John Novak

Jan-Kristian Markiewicz

Randall Richards Cook

Orry Wijanarko Soegiono

Brian R Meyers

Gerrit H Hofmeester

Anshul Rawat

Jon Gabriel Clapper

Prasanna Chromepet Padmanabhan

Poorva Singal

Sandeep Patnaik

Theresa B Pittappilly

Jennifer Marie Wolfe

Nathan P Pollock

Jinhua Fei

Valerie Louise Wang

Christiaan Brinkhoff

Andres Antonio Toussaint

Haley Mccolgan

Harnoor Singh

Elizabeth Todaro

Alexander Ryan Fromm

Gary Liao

Matthew Shadbolt

According to examples, an apparatus may include a processor that may, responsive to a determination that a secondary display is connected to the apparatus, cause a primary display of the apparatus to display a window including an option to be selected to proceed with a location detection operation of the secondary display. The processor may also cause an icon to be displayed on the secondary display, track a movement of a cursor from the primary display to the icon displayed on the secondary display, and determine a position of the secondary display with respect to the primary display based on the tracked movement of the cursor. The processor may further store the determined position of the secondary display with respect to the primary display.

Secondary display location determinations

Pen input received by a computing device may first be evaluated to determine an associated intent. For example, it may be determined whether it is intended to be handwriting input, in which case the pen input may be intercepted (e.g., rather than provided to an underlying application for further processing). Subsequently, a target determination is made, where the pen input is processed to determine which input field should receive the input. When the pen input is processed to generate handwriting input, context associated with a determined input field may be used to improve recognition accuracy. Finally, various techniques may be used to ultimately provide the handwriting input to the determined input field, for example according to the set of capabilities that is supported by an application associated with the input field. Similarly, aspects of the disclosed system may be disabled or adapted when the application does not support such functionality.

Intent and target determination for digital handwriting input

According to examples, an apparatus may include a processor that may, responsive to a secondary display being detected, cause a window including an option for a user to proceed with a location detection operation of the secondary display to be displayed on a primary display. The processor may also cause an icon to be displayed on the secondary display, track a movement of a cursor from the primary display to the icon displayed on the secondary display, and determine a position of the secondary display with respect to the primary display based on the tracked movement of the cursor. The processor may further store the determined position of the secondary display with respect to the primary display.

A desktop switcher provides equally convenient user interface navigational access to remote virtual desktops as to local virtual desktops for reliable and convenient human-computer interaction. Underlying mechanisms transparently confirm remote computer availability and compatibility, transfer thumbnails between computers, and support remoting sessions. Virtual desktops may share a clipboard, a geographic location setting, and application thumbnails, despite being based on computers that are remote from one another, e.g., when only one of a session's computers resides in a cloud. Virtual desktop context menus may be shown and utilized remotely. A visual separator in the desktop switcher may distinguish local virtual desktops from remote virtual desktops.

Virtual desktop switching and communications

Technologies are described for generating, acquiring, transferring, and manipulating sets of interaction representations, where an interaction representation represents user interaction with content on a computer device, typically using a software application. The set can be represented as an interaction representation. To facilitate set creation, including adding items to a set, a request can be sent to an application to provide an interaction representation, such as an interaction representation of a current state of user-content interaction associated with the software application. Sets can be associated with different types, where the set type can determine whether, and what types, of interaction representations can be added to a set. Sets can be associated with expiration events, where the interaction representation for the set, and in some cases the component interaction representations, can be deleted upon the occurrence of the expiration event. In some cases, a set can be designated not to expire.

Creation, management, and transfer of interaction representation sets

This document describes techniques and apparatuses for arranging tiles. These techniques and apparatuses enable users to quickly and easily arrange tiles within an interface, such as an application-launching interface. In some cases, users may arrange tiles in an interface with as little as one continuous gesture.

Arranging tiles

Least disruptive icon displacement techniques are described herein which enable rearrangement of icons by selectively applying multiple different displacement strategies for handling of displacement events (e.g., moving or adding icons). In one or more implementations, initiation of a displacement event to position an icon within an arrangement of icons is detected. Responsive to the detection, multiple available displacement strategies implemented by the computing platform are evaluated and a displacement strategy for rearrangement of the arrangement to position the icon is selected. Selection of the displacement strategy is based on an assessment of a level of disruption caused by the different displacement strategies to identify a least disruptive option. Then, rearrangement of the arrangement of icons is controlled using the displacement strategy that is selected.

Least disruptive icon displacement

Techniques to control addition of representations to an application launcher are described. In one or more implementations, an input is received by a computing device to add a representation of an application or content to the application launcher of the computing device. The application launcher has a plurality of representations of applications or content that are selectable to navigate to a user interface corresponding with a respective application or content and are assigned into respective ones of a plurality of groups that together compose a plurality of linear arrangements of the groups. A location is controlled by the computing device at which to include the added representation in the application launcher based at least in part a determination of whether one of the plurality of groups is associated with a positional tag.

Control of addition of representations to an application launcher

Text that is selected at a virtual keyboard is submitted to and displayed at an application data field another data field, such as a keyboard data field, that can be in closer proximity to the virtual keys used to select the text. Thus, a user does not have to alter their field of view to the application data field to determine what was submitted to the application data field.

Virtual keyboard text replication

Cross slide gestures for touch displays are described. In at least some embodiments, cross slide gestures can be used on content that pans or scrolls in one direction, to enable additional actions, such as content selection, drag and drop operations, and the like. In one or more embodiments, a cross slide gesture can be performed by dragging an item or object in a direction that is different from a scrolling direction. The different-direction drag can be mapped to additional actions or functionality. In one or more embodiments, one or more thresholds can be utilized, such as a distance threshold, in combination with the different-direction drag, to map to additional actions or functionality.

Cross-slide gesture to select and rearrange

Text that is selected at a virtual keyboard is submitted to and displayed at an application data field and is echoed at a keyboard data field that is in relatively close proximity to virtual keys used to select the text. Thus, a user does not have to alter their field of view to the application data field to determine what was submitted to the application data field.

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for replicating text at a virtual keyboard. Characters submitted to, displayed at, or accumulated for submission to an application data field are echoed at a keyboard data field that is in relatively close proximity to virtual keys used to enter the characters. Thus, a user does not have to alter their field of view to the application data field to determine what was submitted to the application data field, what was entered at the application data field, or what is to be submitted to the application data field. Accordingly, embodiments of the invention permit a user to much more easily see what they typed using a virtual keyboard. The need to alter a visual field of focus between an application data field and a virtual keyboard is significantly reduced, if not eliminated.

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Portland, OR, United States of America

John C Whytock