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:
Jun. 26, 2001
Filed:
Dec. 11, 1998
Chenhong Xia, Morgan Hill, CA (US);
John Hudson Bailey, Durham, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A system and method for aiding a user in scrolling through a multiple-page are disclosed. The system and method include providing visual and/or audio cues in a graphical user interface (GUI) environment including a window to alert a user that a portion of the document is not currently displayed in the window. The scrolling may also be made more customizable and convenient. In a first aspect, the GUI includes a scroll bar which appears briefly at the center of a window. This indicates to the user that the document contains more than one page and that the user may scroll to view content beyond what is currently displayed. In this aspect, the scroll bar may be dynamic and dockable. Thus, in this aspect a mechanism is provided to allow the user to dock the scroll bar in a desired location. In a second aspect, the system and method include providing voice cues indicating the total number of pages in the document or that the document contains multiple pages. The voice cue may optionally indicate the current page number when the page is scrolled into the window. In another aspect, the method and system include providing variations on the scroll bar and the scrolling related GUI components. The user may customize the scroll bar and GUI components. Customization may include allowing the user to dock the GUI components used for scrolling. These components may be docked to the window's status bar to free additional space for the window.