Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Google Inc.

Mark E Pearson

Erez Kikin Gil

Christopher D Edwards

Matthew Jay Kotler

Simon Tong

Jason Xiaobo Zhao

Jonathan D Esterly

Jason F Morrill

Andrew T Hockman

Vignesh Sachidanandam

Sergey Brin

Christopher Michael Maloney

Maya Rodrig

Robin Winter Troy

Jiang Zhang

Travis M Spomer

Krishna Asur Bharat

John Ogden Lamping

Jonathan Seth Kaufthal

Anand Shukla

Runzhen Huang

Peter Tuchen Lai

Greg L Chan

Stefan Buettcher

Ned Bearer Friend

Tyler Robert Adams

Mirko Mandic

Marina Dukhon

Ryan Charles Hill

Doreen Nelson Grieb

Marcos David Marin Amador

Julie Ann Guinn

Clay Satterfield

Erez Kikin-Gil

Patrick Malatack

Craig Nevill-Manning

Abhinay Sharma

Barn-Wan Li

Kyle Matthew Von Haden

Ryan Heaney

Josh Leong

Jeffrey Chao-Nan Chen

Sandy Yu

Allen Pin-Shiu Huang

Jason Zhao

Navigation of multiple information item hierarchies within a same application display pane or view is provided. Information items may be displayed in a customized collection of information items, for example, a 'favorites' collection, that may be assembled from a variety of content sources and that may be persisted across a variety of information item views.

Navigating content hierarchies and persisting content item collections

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for generating or using augmentation queries. In one aspect, a first query stored in a query log is identified and a quality signal related to the performance of the first query is compared to a performance threshold. The first query is stored in an augmentation query data store if the quality signal indicates that the first query exceeds a performance threshold.

Query augmentation

A computing system provides a graphical user interface having hierarchically-organized control galleries. The computing system displays the graphical user interface on a display device. The graphical user interface contains a document area and a control ribbon. The document area contains at least a portion of a document that a user is editing. The control ribbon includes a class control gallery. The class control gallery includes a plurality of class controls associated with different classes of related commands. The computing system displays a variation control gallery containing variation controls in a class associated with a selected one of the class controls. In response to a selection of a variation control in the variation control gallery, the computing system applies a command associated with the variation control to a document in the document area.

Hierarchically-organized control galleries

A segment ring menu is provided that is used to easily access menu items. The segment ring menu includes a number of menus that are located equidistant from an initial mouse position from where the segment ring menu is evoked. Hovering over any of the sections of the segment ring menu displays the menu items hosted in that section. The segment ring menu layout is directed at making it easy for the user to reach any of the menu items with a small amount of mouse movement.

Segment ring menu

A launching mechanism for context based menus is provided. A launcher indicator may be provided at a fixed or dynamic location on a user interface enabling a user to activate a context based menu through a variety of touch or gesture actions, as well as keyboard, mouse, or similar device inputs, directly related to the indicator or through inference from an action on the displayed content such as selection of a portion of the content. The launcher indicator may provide contextual information such as a type of available context based menu and appear/disappear in an animated fashion. Location of the indicator may also be dynamically adjusted based on selected content, user action location (i.e., location of a touch), available display area, and so on. Upon activation of the menu, the launcher indicator may disappear or be displayed at a center of the context based menu.

Launcher for context based menus

Context based menus that can be dynamically positioned, laid out, and activated are provided for tap, swipe, and press-and-hold type interactions. Presenting a plurality of executable commands and/or links to submenus, a context based menu may be displayed in various shapes and forms in relation to selected content displayed on a user interface and/or other factors such as available display space, user attributes, and similar ones. Submenus presenting commands within a category may be displayed in place of, adjacent to, or overlapping with a parent context based menu. Menu position, contents, and/or shape may be adjusted in response to changes in selected content, user contact location, changes in user interface, and the like.

Dynamic context based menus

Architecture that enhances the visual experience of a slide presentation by animating slide content as 'actors' in the same background 'scene'. This is provided by multi-layered transitions between slides, where a slide is first separated into &#x201c;layers&#x201d; (e.g., with a level of transparency). Each layer can then be transitioned independently. All layers are composited together to accomplish the end effect. The layers can comprise one or more content layers, and a background layer. The background layer can further be separated into a background graphics layer and a background fill layer. The transition phase can include a transition effect such as a fade, a wipe, a dissolve effect, and other desired effects. To provide the continuity and uniformity of presentation the content on the same background scene, a transition effect is not applied to the background layer.

Multi-layered slide transitions

A system analyzes one or more search streams to detect one or more associations between a document and one or more queries in the one or more search streams. The system further derives a value for the document based on the detected associations and uses the derived value in evaluating a quality of the document with respect to one or more subsequent queries.

Deriving and using document and site quality signals from search query streams

Tooltips associated with a context based menu are presented for providing information about executable commands on the context based menu. Tooltips may provide information about how to interact with the context based menu including what graphical icons on the context based menu represent and what actions a user can take to execute commands from the context based menu. The tooltips may be brief labels of the commands on the context based menu and may also expand to descriptive tooltips providing more information about the commands. The tooltips may be automatically presented in response to a detected period of inactivity by a user and may additionally be presented in response to detection of a user action such as a press and hold action in association with one or more commands on the context based menu, and may be displayed in a variety of positions around the context based menu.

Labels and tooltips for context based menus

Methods and systems for improved searching are described. In one of the described methods, a user enters a search query, and in response, a search engine receives a substantially complete initial search result set having a plurality of ranked article identifiers. The search engine automatically selects at least one of the article identifiers and provides a final result set in which the selected article identifier is ranked higher than in the initial search result set.

Systems and methods for improved searching

Display screen with animated graphical user interface

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Renton, WA, United States of America

Mark E Pearson