Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Technology Liecsnsing, LLC

Reed L Townsend

Steven P Dodge

Bryan Douglas Scott

Alexander J Kolmykov-Zotov

Todd A Torset

Xiao Tu

Alexander J Zotov

Erik Michael Geidl

Jennifer A Teed

Samir Shiraz Pradhan

Robert J Jarrett

Emily K Rimas-Ribikauskas

Kenneth W Sykes

Olumuyiwa M Durojaiye

Shawn R LeProwse

Ian C LeGrow

Uros Batricevic

Joyce Wu

Pamela De La Torre Baltierra

Leroy B Keely

Jan-Kristian Markiewicz

David Andrew Matthews

Philip Ti-Fei Su

Krishnan Menon

Alan Stephenson

Todd M Landstad

Josh A Clow

Stefan Wick

Matt Lerner

Brian Wheeler

Vijayakumar Rangasamy

Mariel Young

Vipul Aneja

Doron J Holan

Steve Dodge

Brigette Krantz

Kyril Feldman

Stephen Harry Wright

Lawrence William Osterman

Michael H Tsang

Fei Su

Hirofumi Yamamoto

Sheng Yi

Tianyi Chen

Jacob Rossi

Stephen V Dennis

Mudit Agrawal

Raju Ramanathan

Andrey Borissov Batchvarov

Kyle Thomas Beck

Eliyas Yakub

Pak Kiu Chung

Vishnu Sivaji

Alexander J Kolmkov-Zotov

Sameer Shariff

Megan L Fu

Tu Xiao

Shawn R Leprowse

In accordance with one or more aspects of a dynamic soft keyboard, a user input is received via a soft keyboard having multiple keys. Information describing a current input environment for the soft keyboard is obtained, and a determination is made as to which one or more keys of the multiple keys was intended to be selected by the user input. This determination is made based at least in part on the current input environment.

Dynamic soft keyboard

Methods of controlling the display and use of a UI element are disclosed. In an embodiment, the UI element may configured so that it initially maintains a topmost position but eventually allows other applications to assume the topmost position. In an embodiment, the display of the element may be adjusted in response to an input so that the UI element is not visible on the display. In an embodiment, the use of the UI element may allow for seamless dragging of the UI element even if the user inadvertently fails to make consistent contact with the touch-sensitive display while dragging the UI element.

Assisting user interface element use

A method for rejecting an unintentional palm touch is disclosed. In at least some embodiments, a touch is detected by a touch-sensitive surface associated with a display. Characteristics of the touch may be used to generate a set of parameters related to the touch. In an embodiment, firmware is used to determine a reliability value for the touch. The reliability value and the location of the touch is provided to a software module. The software module uses the reliability value and an activity context to determine a confidence level of the touch. In an embodiment, the confidence level may include an evaluation of changes in the reliability value over time. If the confidence level for the touch is too low, it may be rejected.

Unintentional touch rejection

Methods, systems, and apparatuses for beautifying raw drawing data include a beautification engine having a raw data processor that receives the drawing data and identifies a set of segments in the data. A beautification director constructs a structural representation of the set of segments data that specifies a topological relationship between the segments. A single primitive beautifier identifies a segment in the structural representation to be beautified and a single primitive beautification action is applied to the segment to generate beautified raw drawing data. A multiple primitive beautifier identifies adjacent segments in the structural representation to be beautified and a multiple beautification action is applied to the adjacent segments to generate further beautified drawing data.

System and method for drawing beautification

Devices, methods, and computer-readable media process to distinguish user input device gestures, such as gestures input via a pen in a pen-based computing system, e.g., to quickly and reliably distinguish between electronic ink entry, single taps, double taps, press-and-hold actions, dragging operations, and the like. The devices, methods, and computer-readable media process quickly and reliably distinguishes between input device gestures by utilizing a gesture profile that includes a preferential input type, e.g. to preferentially recognize a received input as a first input type over a second input type.

Processing for distinguishing pen gestures and dynamic self-calibration of pen-based computing systems

Techniques relating to scrolling, object selection, and object moving are discussed. Strokes are inputted by a user, for instance using a touch sensitive surface. Strokes are directed to a scrollable surface with objects therein. Strokes that end before meeting a condition select the objects, and strokes then end after meeting the condition move the objects or representations thereof. The condition may be a distance. Selection may only occur when strokes meet a threshold condition such as having a particular direction (e.g., perpendicular to a direction for scrolling the surface) or moving a minimal distance. Strokes in a scrolling direction (e.g., horizontal) may scroll the surface in that direction and strokes in another direction (e.g., vertical) may both select and move the objects. Objects selected may slide on rails before moving.

Cross slide gesture

Embodiments relate to a computing device having storage, a processor, a display, a first human input device, and a second human input device, where the first human input device is in a first category of human input devices and the second human input device is in a second category of human input devices. The computing device may perform a process involving executing a windowing environment that manages windows of applications executing on the computing device. The windowing environment may receive raw inputs from the first and second human input devices and in turn generate input pointers for the raw inputs, respectively. The input pointers may be or include instances of an input pointer class implemented by the windowing environment, the pointer class used by the windowing environment for arbitrary different types of human input pointer devices including the first human input device and the second human input device.

Pointer unification

The inertia system provides a common platform and application-programming interface (API) for applications to extend the input received from various multi-touch hardware devices to simulate real-world behavior of application objects. To move naturally, application objects should exhibit physical characteristics such as elasticity and deceleration. When a user lifts all contacts from an object, the inertia system provides additional manipulation events to the application so that the application can handle the events as if the user was still moving the object with touch. The inertia system generates the events based on a simulation of the behavior of the objects. If the user moves an object into another object, the inertia system simulates the boundary characteristics of the objects. Thus, the inertia system provides more realistic movement for application objects manipulated using multi-touch hardware and the API provides a consistent feel to manipulations across applications.

Multi-touch object inertia simulation

The manipulation system described herein provides a common platform and application-programming interface (API) for applications to communicate with various multi-touch hardware devices, and facilitates the interpretation of multi-touch input as one or more manipulations. Manipulations map more directly to user intentions than do individual touch inputs and add support for basic transformation of objects using multiple touch contacts. An application can use manipulations to support rotating, resizing, and translating multiple objects at the same time. The manipulation system outputs two-dimensional (2D) affine transforms that contain rotation, scale, and translation information. Thus, using the manipulation system the application author can focus more on building touch-capable applications and let the manipulation system handle the underlying transformations and communication with the multi-touch hardware.

Multi-touch manipulation of application objects

A tablet PC having an interactive display, which is touchscreen enabled, may be enhanced to provide a user with superior usability and efficiency. A touchscreen device may be configured to receive multiple concurrent touchscreen contacts. The attributes of the multiple concurrent touchscreen contracts may be mapped to operations performed on the computing device. As a result, a user can trigger the execution of the toggle accessibility aid operation and the screen rotation operation with greater convenience. Moreover, the tablet PC may be configured to map an operation to a hand gesture or input.

Multi-touch uses, gestures, and implementation

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Reed L Townsend