Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Mark H Enomoto

Bryan T Starbuck

Michael A Schmidt

Sean L Flynn

Sankar Ramasubramanian

Christopher R Jones

Edward Jason Anderson

Gayna Williams

Chee Heng Chew

Christopher David Brown

Kathryn L Parker

Sarah E Zuberec

Jeffrey R Blum

Greg A Keyser

Elizabeth A Bastiaanse

William Hong Vong

Ido Miles Ben-Shachar

Kevin Timothy Shields

Christen E Coomer

Christopher Ralph Brown

In a graphical desktop environment displaying desktop components, a control is provided to track the position of a pointer on a screen, and when the pointer enters relevant regions with respect to a desktop component, a thin or thick border in displayed around the desktop component to enable a user to resize the desktop component, and/or a caption bar is displayed along an edge of the component to enable a user to move the desktop component on the desktop. The caption bar may additionally be provided with menu and close buttons, to enable the user to bring up a menu of properties and/or actions for the desktop component, and close the desktop component, respectively. When the pointer is outside any region relevant to a desktop component, no borders or caption bars are displayed, thereby resulting in a visually less cluttered appearance.

Managing position and size for a desktop component

The hand-held computing device user interface (UI) of the present invention displays information for an active application program in a middle portion of the screen, and displays a shell program controlled navigation bar at a top portion of the screen. The navigation bar includes a navigation icon which when tapped by the stylus aids the user in navigating to other application programs. The navigation bar also includes a title for the active application program, thus saving vertical real estate on the screen. The UI of the present invention also displays an application menu bar at a bottom portion of the screen so that the user of the hand-held device can manipulate data from the active application by tapping menu items with a stylus without blocking view of the middle portion of the display.

User interface for palm-sized computing devices and method and apparatus for displaying the same

The UI of the present invention increases the number of contacts initially shown to the user of a hand-held device to aid the user in finding information in a Contacts database. While displaying a list of Contacts database entries, the UI displays a column which contains single letters indicating the type of information displayed for the names represented in the list of entries. A tap on a letter in that column causes a sub-list of other most commonly needed information to be deployed for the corresponding entry, potentially eliminating the need for the user to open the entire record for that entry.

Smart column for contact information on palm-sized computing devices and method and apparatus for displaying the same

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Mark H Enomoto