Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael I Borysenko

Leonardo Esteban Blanco

Ned Bearer Friend

Tyler Robert Adams

Silvana Patricia Moncayo

Max Alan McMullen

Scott M Stiles

Daniel Wood

Brian T Klamik

Allison Klein

Keith D Melmon

Michael P Crider

Jesse Clay Satterfield

Matthew Jay Kotler

Erez Kikin-Gil

Charles W Parker

Barry Christopher Allyn

Igor Y Zaika

Vignesh Sachidanandam

Peter Loren Engrav

Matthias Baer

Stephen Thomas Wells

Benjamin Franklin Carter

Trevor Neil Lacey

Warren Leung

Andrew M Himberger

Benjamin J Bunker

Peter Frem

Nicholas S Smith

John Gossman

Anthony Joseph Beeman

Josh Meisels

Dawid Kozlowski

Amit Kumar Sinha

Eric Wyld Lieberman

Daniel Perkins

Matt Wood

Kavitha Balasubramanian

Andrew Michael Himberger

Systems, methods, and software are described herein to support view-based storage. A service application that provides a user interface to a service receives data communicated by the service and identifies at least a service item to present in at least one of various views rendered in the user interface. The service application then identifies with which of the views to associate the service item and stores the service item in association with an identified view or views.

Storing service items in association with views

Technologies are generally described for providing a system to facilitate efficient management and prioritization of conversations, such as emails, in a communication application. Conversations may be prioritized according to user preferences, and an inbox may be rearranged to display important conversations in a user defined order. Conversations may also be associated together so that they may appear together and flow together in the inbox. Additionally, the system may enable a user to delay display of a conversation until a later time based on various criteria such as location, time, and client device. A user may also move important emails to the top of an inbox for prominent display. The system may perform the actions automatically based on observed user behavior. Furthermore, the system may enable touch interactions for interacting with and managing the conversations, and quick controls may be provided for executing commands to perform actions associated with the conversations.

Managing conversations

Smooth animation effects during zooming are provided by retaining content displayed at a previous zoom level. If the zoom operation is a zoom out operation, new content is stretched to a current zoom level, aligned with the retained content, and placed underneath it. If the zoom operation is a zoom in operation, new content is scaled down to the current zoom level, aligned with the retained content, and displayed on top of the retained content. The new content is then zoomed with the retained content. The retained content is then deleted. When zooming out, the retained content fades out. When zooming in, the new content fades in. Smooth scrolling animation is also provided by pre-rendering a portion of content and teleporting to a final viewport position and thereby skipping over blank content.

Animations for scroll and zoom

Spatial organization of communications is provided. A communication application initiates operations to present a visual representation of a communication on a two-dimensional canvas after a detected intent to do as such. In response to the intent, the visual representation is generated and displayed on the two-dimensional canvas. A detected interaction with the visual representation triggers a modification of the communication based on the interaction.

Spatially organizing communications

Application of content and associated functionality from multiple content sources to an electronic content item is provided. Content from a first document may be displayed over a second document via a user interface component. If desired, such content may be inserted into the second document, and application functionality associated with the inserted content may be retained after it is inserted into the second document. One or more navigation means may be provided for conveniently navigating inside a content item (e.g., a document) for adding new content or for reviewing or editing existing content. In addition, a number of content views and content mappings may be provided.

Application of multiple content items and functionality to an electronic content item

Buffer display techniques are described. In one or more implementations, at least part of an off-screen buffer is rasterized by an application to generate an item for display by the computing device. One or more communications are formed that describe the part of the off-screen buffer which contains the item that is to be copied to update an onscreen buffer.

Buffer display techniques

Interaction between an application, a user interface framework, and a graphics module to render a portion of an application surface. The application requests a surface corresponding to a particular range of the application surface from the user interface framework. In response, the user interface framework provides the requested ranged surface to the application. The application instructs the graphics module to populate the ranged surface by drawing into the ranged surface. The application then instructs the user interface framework to compose the ranged surface using the drawn ranged surface and other information available to the user interface framework. The user interface framework composing a composed surface using the drawn surface provided by the application, and additional information available to the user interface framework. The user interface framework may cache information from previously composed surface to allow for faster re-rendering should those portions later come into view on the display.

Application and user interface framework interaction

Animation of computer-generated display components of user interfaces and content items is provided. An animation application or engine creates images of individual display components (e.g., bitmap images) and places those images on animation layers. Animation behaviors may be specified for the layers to indicate how the layers and associated display component images animate or behave when their properties change (e.g., a movement of an object contained on a layer), as well as, to change properties on layers in order to trigger animations (e.g., an animation that causes an object to rotate). In order to achieve high animation frame rates, the animation application may utilize three processing threads, including a user interface thread, a compositor thread and a rendering thread. Display behavior may be optimized and controlled by utilizing a declarative markup language, such as the Extensible Markup Language, for defining display behavior functionality and properties.

Animation of computer-generated display components of user interfaces and content items

Architecture generates low resolution placeholder content that preserves the usefulness of application responsiveness by preserving and displaying the structure of the content. This facilitates decreased memory requirements associated with pre-rendering structurally-intact content. The architecture enables the storing of pre-rendered content at a lower zoom level than is intended for actual display to require fewer resources, pre-rendering content at a lower zoom level to allow the application to adjust for the lower zoom level to provide more structural integrity than would be achieved rendering at full display zoom level and compressing the resulting data, stretching the pre-rendered content to the zoom level that is intended for display in order to achieve a low resolution appearance that merges directly with the full resolution content, and transitioning between low resolution content and full resolution content when the full resolution content becomes available.

Low resolution placeholder content for document navigation

Memory storage and processing for idle computer-generated graphical display components are discarded for conserving memory capacity, processing resources and power consumption. If a computer-generated display frame goes idle for a prescribed duration, for example, 30 seconds, wherein no user action or processor action is performed on the idle display frame, stored data representing the idle display frame is discarded from memory and processing for the idle display component is ceased, thus conserving memory space, processing resources and power consumption (e.g., battery power). If the discarded display frame becomes active again, its discarded resources may be recreated. Alternatively, an idle display component may be passed to a separate application and may be reclaimed by a requiring application when the idle display component becomes active again.

Discarding idle graphical display components from memory and processing

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Michael I Borysenko