The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 08, 1998
Filed:
Aug. 23, 1996
George E Hall, Jr, Hillsborough, NC (US);
Mark Edward Molander, Cary, NC (US);
Intenational Business Machines Corp., Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Methods, systems and program products which provide dynamic status to a user. The status is provided by providing a plurality of icons arranged in a pattern corresponding to the relationship between the items the icons represent. User input is acquired which indicates whether the plurality of icons are to be displayed and the icons are selectively displayed based on the user input. A segmented status line is displayed adjacent the plurality of icons. The segmented status line is made up of a plurality of linearly arranged status segments. Each segment of the status line corresponds to at least one of the plurality of icons such that the appearance of a segment of the segmented status line reflects the status of the item associated with the icon corresponding to the segment of the status line. Furthermore, the status segment corresponding to an icon is aligned with its corresponding icon such that the sequence of the segments of the status line correspond to the relationship between the items represented by the icons. The appearance of the segments of the segmented status line is revised as the status of the item corresponding to the segment of the status line changes.