Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Warren Leung

Tyler Robert Adams

Barry Christopher Allyn

Michael I Borysenko

Anthony Joseph Beeman

Eric Wyld Lieberman

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

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.

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Warren Leung