Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Scott R Swanson

Alex Aben-Athar Kipman

Timothy R Sullivan

Dale Rogerson

Justin McRoberts

Michael Arnquist

Donna Wallace

Jonathan Cannon Gordon

Madhavi Lakamsani

Paul Glenn McKee

Saurabh Jain

Octavia Petrovici

Christopher J McGuire

A target acquisition model is used to position the screen display areas. An area is docked by acquiring the screen display area to be docked and dragging a representation of the screen display area towards the desired location. As the mouse pointer enters the boundaries of the target area, a target group appears within the area. A target group represents the five behaviors that can be triggered: dock to left, dock to top, dock to right, dock to bottom and dock together or tab dock. Touching the desired docking target with the mouse acquires the target.

System and method for customizing the visual layout of screen display areas

The aforementioned need is satisfied by the present invention in which a help architecture supports an application and a help engine operating on a computer, where the help engine is for locating help topics relevant to the application. In the help architecture, at least one help library stores a plurality of help topics therein, where the help topics are accessible to a user from the help library by way of the computer, and a central store stores topic metadata corresponding to help topics available from each help library. The central store in response to a search request from the help engine locates topic metadata relevant to the search request and returns information from the located topic metadata.

Context-based help engine, dynamic help, and help architecture

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Scott R Swanson