Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Nicholas Michael Simons

Jonathan Bailor

Christopher J Brown

Sugandha SudeshKumar Kapoor

Dong Ming

Jesse Clay Satterfield

Christopher D Edwards

Harold S Gomez

Paula Guntaur

Matthew James Ruhlen

Keri D Vandeberghe

Matthew Charles Gauthier

Glenn L Frankel

Derik Bjorn Stenerson

Robin Emily Wakefield

Andrew L Kwatinetz

Sophia Isabel Vennix

Alberto Swett

Mark Fields

Daniel John Niezgocki Chattan

Michael Augustine Tavis

Kenneth John Yuhas, Jr

Alexei Vopilov

Christopher Todd Seitzinger

Kathleen Anna Cachel

Apurv Suman

Sneha Jayaprakash

Christopher Von Hansen

Portia D Plante

Mitali Madhumita Pattnaik

Marc Christopher Ramsey

Yanlin Peng

Dheeraj Agarwal

Kenneth J Yuhas

Mark Timothy Fields

Described herein is a system and method for displaying annotation(s) of an electronic document. User input to review (e.g., scroll) the electronic document is received, until a selected portion of the electronic document is displayed within a viewport pane of a display. In response to the review input, annotation(s) (e.g., comment(s), comment thread(s), annotation thread(s)) anchored within the selected portion of the electronic document displayed within the viewport pane are identified. Which annotation of the annotation(s) to visually distinguish for a focus of the user is determined. The identified annotation(s) are displayed in an annotation pane, with the determined annotation visually distinguished (highlighted) for the focus of the user. In some embodiments, the anchor associated with the determined annotation is also visually distinguished to provide a contextual link to the user and/or hint(s) that provided a visual signal of annotation(s) associated with an anchor on a particular line are displayed.

Top-align comments: just-in-time highlights and automatic scrolling

A document accessible on a network may be opened by multiple users. A user may use a thin client application to access the document, wherein an image of the document and XML data including comments and locations of the comments in the document. Hint icons are displayed in the document where comments are anchored. Upon selection of a hint, an HTML comments pane may be displayed to a side of the document, exposing comments and replies to comments currently stored in the document. The comments pane may be scrolled to the comment associated with the selected hint. Additionally, highlighting may be provided over elements in the document associated with a selected comment. Comments may be added via the comments pane and saved to the document on the network. Comments and comment location data may be communicated to other clients, allowing for collaborative communication via a thin client application.

Collaborative communication in a web application

An external service application discovery process that connects a host with an external application server running a service application allowing a user of a client computing device to work with a file via a web browser. The host brokers the functionality of an external application server and serves as the platform where interactions between the client computing device and the external application server occur. An open interface protocol, which is a shared communication protocol, allows the host to communicate instructions from the client computing device to the external application server. Through the external service application discovery process, the external application server describes functionality provided by the service application to the host. The host selectively makes the functionality provided by the service application available to users based on the level of implementation of the open platform interface and the conventions of the external service application discovery process understood by the host.

External service application discovery method

A system and method for retrieving, storing and displaying featured content. In one embodiment, featured content is queried from a database storing a list of featured content items. The featured content items stored in the database may include any type of data, such as text data, hyperlink text data, markup document data, computer code, or other types or combinations of data related to a particular topic. Responsive to the query, a set of featured content items is stored in a cache file. A predetermined number of featured content items stored in the cache file are selected and stored in a system registry. Upon receipt of a display command, featured content items are read from the system registry and displayed on an interface. The displayed featured content items can be used to display hyperlinks, announcements, or other information, without inhibiting the efficiency of the boot process of a software application.

System and method for processing featured content

User interface for a display screen

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Nicholas Michael Simons