KR100777183B1 - A terminal and a method for providing menus thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

A terminal and a menu supply method thereof are provided to display plural menu windows of the same layer on one screen and switch the menu, thus a user can easily search and select menus of the same layer on the same screen even without moving to menus of an upper layer to select a different menu. A display(210) provides a screen. A controller(220) controls screen display of the display(210). An input unit(230) manipulates the screen displayed on the display(210) by delivering a control signal to a controller(220). The controller(220) controls so that plural menu windows are displayed in accumulated type, in order that at least some of menu items are shown on the display(210).

Description

A terminal and a method for providing menus

1 is a view showing an example of a hierarchical menu structure screen applied to a conventional mobile terminal.

2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

3A to 7 are exemplary views illustrating various cases in which a plurality of menu windows according to the present invention are displayed on one screen.

8 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of a menu providing method in a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a terminal such as a mobile phone or a computer, and more particularly, to a terminal and a method of providing the menu for allowing a user to easily select a menu.

In general, terminals (or terminal devices) such as mobile phones, MP3 players, PDAs, PMPs, digital cameras, and notebook computers are provided with a display such as an LCD, and provide a menu screen to a user by operating the provided display. The user may view the menu screen and operate a touch pad or a key button to select and execute a desired function or content.

In the menu screen of the conventional terminal as described above, various menus are classified by categories so that a user can easily select a menu. In addition, the lower menu subordinate to the upper menu is configured to enter from the upper menu. That is, the conventional (portable) terminal has a hierarchical (or tree type) menu structure. This will be described in more detail with reference to FIG. 1. 1 is a diagram illustrating an example of a hierarchical menu structure screen applied to a conventional mobile terminal.

As shown in FIG. 1, when a user selects a 'music box' from a list of 'entertainment' which is a higher menu, menus dependent on the 'music box' are displayed as a list. If the user selects an 'MP3 file' from this list, the menus subordinate to the 'MP3 file' are also displayed as a list. If the user selects 'list by singer', the names of the artists of the stored MP3 files are displayed as a list. Also, to listen to a song of a singer, you must select the singer's name and then select the song you want.

In the conventional hierarchical menu structure, when one menu or content is selected, in order to select another menu, it is necessary to exit to an upper layer having a menu to be selected and select.

For example, in the above case, if the user wants to select a list separated by the title of the song rather than the singer's name, the user must return to the 'MP3 file' menu, which is the menu in the upper hierarchy, and select 'List by title'. This inconvenience is aggravated as more menus are subordinate and more menus or contents are at the bottom. However, in the case of portable terminals that are recently released, since the capacity of the memory is increasing and the number of menus and contents stored are increasing, it is determined that the inconvenience of the user is further increased.

In order to solve the above inconvenience, a method of directly displaying a menu of an equivalent level by using the left and right arrow keys has been proposed. That is, the user switches the screen to the adjacent menu of the same category by pressing the left or right direction key. However, this method does not know how many menus the user wants among the equivalent menus, and it is inconvenient to switch screens by pressing several times to find the desired menu. For example, there may be a case where you need to switch the screen only once to the left to the right or seven times to the right.

As described above, since the menu screen of the conventional terminal provides only one screen per category in a hierarchical menu structure, there is a problem of causing inconvenience to users in switching screens for searching for a desired menu. have.

An object of the present invention for solving the above problems is to provide a terminal and a menu providing method for facilitating menu selection.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a terminal for displaying a menu screen having a three-dimensional effect and a method of providing the menu.

Still another object of the present invention is to provide a terminal for displaying a plurality of menu windows on one screen and a method of providing the menu.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a terminal for displaying at least two menus having an equivalent level on one screen and a method of providing the menu.

In order to achieve the above object, a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention, the display unit for providing a screen; A controller for controlling screen display of the display unit; And an input unit configured to transmit a control signal to the controller to manipulate a screen displayed on the display unit, wherein the controller displays the plurality of menu windows in a stacked form so that at least some menu items are visible on the display unit. It is characterized by controlling.

In order to achieve the above object, a method of providing a menu in a terminal according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure includes editing menu windows of a plurality of sub-menus of the selected menu according to a preset display environment when a menu is selected; ; And displaying the edited plurality of menu windows in a stacked form so that at least some menu items are visible.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be noted that the same elements in the figures are represented by the same numerals wherever possible. In addition, detailed descriptions of well-known functions and configurations that may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention will be omitted.

2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in Figure 2, the terminal 200 according to an embodiment of the present invention, the display unit 210 for providing a screen; A controller 220 for controlling screen display of the display unit 210; And an input unit 230 for transmitting a control signal to the control unit 220 to manipulate a screen displayed on the display unit 210.

The display unit 210 may be an LCD, an organic EL, or an equivalent level unit.

The input unit 230 may include at least one of a keypad having a plurality of key buttons, a touch panel for converting a user's contact into an input signal, a pointing device such as an optical mouse, a jog dial, a touch wheel, a rotation wheel, or a unit equivalent thereto. It can be configured to include one.

The controller 220 controls the display unit 210 to display a plurality of menu windows in a stacked form so that at least some menu items are not overlapped with each other. At this time, by the control unit 220, the plurality of menu windows may display menus of the same hierarchy of the same category. Also, only some of the menu windows of the same hierarchy in the same category may be displayed on one screen. That is, all of the menus of the same hierarchy may not be displayed on one screen. The plurality of menu windows may represent detailed items of a corresponding menu.

The plurality of menu windows may be switched in order by the controller 220. That is, the menu window selected by the signal applied from the input unit 230 may be displayed by changing its position to the front of the plurality of menu windows. At this time, the menu window displayed in the front may be changed in the rear row.

By the controller 220, at least one of the plurality of menu windows may have a predetermined transparency to identify contents of the menu windows located behind the stacked structure. The controller 220 may selectively omit unnecessary contents for displaying the contents of the plurality of menu windows (so that a portion of the menu windows is hidden). The size of the plurality of menu windows may be reduced or enlarged according to the screen size of the display unit 210 by the controller 220, and some of the menu windows may be displayed in a cut form. That is, the controller 220 may edit the menu windows according to a preset display environment (for example, the number of menu windows to be displayed, screen size, menu contents, etc.).

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to FIGS. 3A to 7. 3A to 7 are exemplary views illustrating various cases in which a plurality of menu windows according to the present invention are displayed on one screen.

As shown in FIG. 3A, a plurality of menu windows are displayed on the display screen 310. When the display screen 310 is large, the menu windows are normally displayed. However, when the display screen 310 is small and it is difficult to display all of the menu windows, as shown in FIG. 3B, some of the menu windows are cut off so that only the contents can be checked, or the number of unnecessary menu items is omitted, or the menu window is omitted. The overlapping density of these can be increased. Alternatively, menu windows displayed as shown in FIG. 3C may be reduced to fit a small screen. Of course, if the screen is large, the menu windows may be enlarged.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 3D, in order to display a plurality of menu windows, a menu window displayed in front to give a three-dimensional effect such as a perspective is displayed larger, and the menu windows may be displayed smaller and smaller as they go backward.

For the plurality of menu windows as described above, a menu of a lower layer may also be displayed as a plurality of menu windows. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 4A, when the third item 'list by singer' of the MP3 file menu window 410 is selected, the artist window menus 412 to 418 for selecting songs of each artist are displayed. It may be displayed in a stacked manner.

In addition, at least one of the plurality of menu windows may be processed to have transparency, such as a phantom image, in order to identify contents of menu windows located behind it. For example, as shown in FIG. The rearmost window 428 may be processed without transparency, and the centrally located windows 424 and 426 may be processed and displayed with transparency.

As described above, the order of the plurality of menu windows may be changed by the controller 220. For example, when a signal for moving the window forward by the direction key input of the input unit 230 is applied, the control unit 220 moves the menu window 512 that is in front of the front as shown in FIG. The other menu windows 514 to 518 can all move forward one space. Alternatively, when a signal for moving the window backward is applied, the rearmost menu window 518 may move to the front, and the other menu windows 512 to 516 may all move backward one space. The menu window which is positioned to the front by the above order switching may be displayed brighter or clearer than other windows, or the top line of the menu title may be highlighted as shown. In addition, the controller 220 may switch all menu windows displayed at one time. That is, when a signal for switching menu windows at once is applied by an input such as a direction key input, other menu windows of the same category that are not displayed may be displayed instead of the menu windows currently displayed on the screen. In the case of the figure, the menu windows 512 to 518 may be moved to the background, and the next menu windows may be moved to the front and displayed. In addition, the controller 220 may switch the screen to a menu window of a category equivalent to the current category. For example, when a signal for moving a category is applied by input of left and right arrow keys while the menu windows under the category of singer list are displayed, the controller is configured to have a category (for example, a list of titles) corresponding to the singer list. You can go directly to) and display the corresponding menu windows.

A scroll bar may be used to select menu items of the plurality of menu windows. For example, as shown in FIG. 5B, a scroll bar 522 is displayed on one side of the frontmost menu window so that a menu item may be selected by the control of the scroll 524. Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 5C, a scroll bar 532 is displayed on the entire screen, and any menu item of each menu window may be selected by the scroll 534 control. In this case, as shown, the menu item selected according to the scroll movement is displayed as a highlight. When the menu window including the selected menu item is located at the back, the menu item is processed as a phantom image so as to be displayed in front of the window so as not to obscure the front window. have. In addition, the controller 220 may simultaneously move items of several menu windows at the same time according to the movement of the scrolls 524 and 534 so that the playlist of the rear menu window can be searched at the same time as the front window and the cursor or highlight can be searched. You can move and select the same indicator. This allows the user to select multiple pieces of content at once and add them to lists for managing and executing content, such as playlists.

The plurality of menu windows may include an image in a menu item for easy identification or selection of a user. The image may be displayed in the form of a thumbnail nail. For example, as shown in FIG. 6, the menu windows do not overlap in the stacked menu structure, so that a small image is displayed on a portion where the user can easily identify the menu items.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the stacked menu structure may be applied to the general menu structure as well as the content item as described above. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 7, menus related to a message (received message, sent message, multi-mail, message in writing, etc.) may be displayed in a stacked manner, and when 'received message' is selected, The messages can be displayed in each window along with the message contents and the sender information.

The terminal 200 may further include a video processor 240 for stereoscopic display of the plurality of menu windows. The video processor 240 may give a three-dimensional effect when displaying and changing the order of the menu window. When the order of the menu windows is changed by the video processor 240, the menu windows may be moved. For example, when the rear menu windows come forward and the front menu window moves backward, the menu windows can be rotated horizontally or vertically to give an effect of moving. The video processor 240 may be a 3D driver.

The terminal 200 may further include a memory 250 for storing data. The memory 250 may be mounted on the terminal 200 in an internal / external form. The memory 250 may be a server (eg, a content server) that provides data through wired / wireless communication with the terminal 200. To this end, the terminal 200 may further include a transceiver (not shown) for communication with the server. The transceiver may include at least one of an RF module, a Bluetooth module, an IrDA module, an RFID module, or an equivalent level unit.

The controller 220 may read the data of the memory 250 and display the corresponding contents in the stacked menu windows.

In addition, although not shown, the terminal 200 includes a storage medium insertion unit for inserting an external storage medium such as a memory card to store data, a camera module, an audio signal output device such as a speaker, and a voice signal input such as a microphone. Optionally, the apparatus may further include units having additional functions such as a connection terminal for exchanging data with an external digital device, a charging terminal, and a digital sound source reproducing module such as an MP3 module. According to the convergence (convergence) trend of digital devices, the variations of the terminals are very diverse and cannot be enumerated. However, a unit equivalent to the above-mentioned units is further included in the terminal 200 according to the present invention. It can be easily understood by those of ordinary skill in the art.

8 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure of a menu providing method in a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As illustrated in FIG. 8, the method of providing a menu in a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention includes editing menu windows of a plurality of sub-menus of the selected menu according to a preset display environment when a menu is selected; ; And displaying the edited plurality of menu windows in a stacked form such that at least some menu items are not overlapped with each other.

That is, when a signal for selecting a specific menu is applied in step S810, the controller 220 determines that the selected menu according to the display environment (eg, number of menu windows to be displayed, screen size, menu contents, etc.) preset in step S830. Edit the menu window for each of the submenus. In this case, as described above, the control unit 220 cuts a part of the menu windows to omit only the contents, omits the number of unnecessary menu items, increases the density of overlapping menu windows, or reduces all the menu windows. Can be. In addition, perspective may be provided to the menu windows, and at least one of the menu windows may be processed to have transparency. In addition, a scroll bar may be displayed on one side of the menu window or one side of the screen to select menu items of each menu window. In step S840, the controller 220 displays the edited plurality of menu windows in a stacked form.

In addition, the menu providing method in the terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention, after the menu is selected, may further comprise the step of reading data including the content of the sub-menu of the selected menu.

That is, in order to edit the menu windows to be displayed or to display the menu windows, the controller 220 may read data from the memory 250 in operation S820. As described above, the memory 250 may be mounted on the terminal in an internal / external form and may be an external server (eg, a content server).

In addition, the menu providing method in the terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention may further comprise the step of switching the order of the plurality of menu windows by an input from a user.

That is, when a signal for changing the order of the plurality of menu windows is applied by the direction key input of the input unit 230 in step S850, the controller 220 moves the plurality of menu windows in the corresponding direction in step S860. For example, as described above, when a signal for moving the window forward is applied, the menu window that is in front of the window can be moved to the rear, and all other menu windows can be moved forward one space. Alternatively, if a signal to move the window backward is applied, the rearmost menu window may move to the front and all other menu windows may move back one space.

As described above, the order switching of the plurality of menu windows may be implemented in three dimensions by the video processor 240 such as a 3D driver.

In the above, specific preferred embodiments of the present invention have been illustrated and described. However, the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, and various modifications can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the gist of the present invention attached to the claims. will be.

As described above, the terminal and its menu providing method according to the present invention display a plurality of menu windows of the same layer on one screen, so that the user does not have to move to a higher layer menu to select another menu. There is a convenient effect that makes it easy to find and select the menus on the same screen.

In addition, the present invention has an effect of allowing a user to easily find a desired menu by displaying a menu item according to each menu on a plurality of menu windows.

In addition, the present invention has the effect of satisfying the user's interest by giving a three-dimensional effect, such as the menu window is rotated in the movement or switching of the menu window.

Claims (32)

A display unit for providing a screen; A controller for controlling screen display of the display unit; It includes an input unit for transmitting a control signal to the control unit to manipulate the screen displayed on the display unit, And the control unit controls to display the plurality of menu windows in a stacked form such that at least some menu items are visible on the display unit. The method of claim 1, wherein the control unit And displaying the menus of the same hierarchy and the detailed items of the same category on the plurality of menu windows, respectively. The method of claim 2, wherein the control unit And a terminal for changing the order of the plurality of menu windows according to a signal applied from the input unit. The method of claim 3, wherein the control unit When a signal for moving the window forward is applied, the frontmost menu window is moved to the rear and the other menu windows are all moved forward one by one space. The method of claim 3, wherein the control unit When a signal for moving the window back is applied, the rearmost menu window is moved to the front, and the other menu windows are all moved one space backward. The method of claim 3, wherein the control unit And when a signal for moving the plurality of windows is applied, moving the plurality of windows. The method of claim 3, wherein the control unit When a signal is applied to switch the menu windows at once, the terminal characterized in that to display other menu windows of the same category that was not displayed in place of the menu windows displayed on the current screen. The method of claim 3, wherein the control unit When a signal for moving a category is applied, the terminal is characterized in that switching the screen to the menu window of the category equivalent to the current category. The method of claim 2, wherein the control unit And displaying and editing the plurality of menu windows according to a preset display environment. The method of claim 9, wherein the control unit At least one of the plurality of menu windows is processed to have a predetermined transparency. The method of claim 9, wherein the control unit Terminals, characterized in that to display by omitting unnecessary content selectively in the plurality of menu windows. The method of claim 9, wherein the control unit The terminal characterized in that for adjusting the size of the plurality of menu window to display. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of menu windows A terminal comprising a thumbnail-shaped image in the menu item. The method of claim 1, And a video processing unit for stereoscopic display of the plurality of menu windows. 15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the video processor And a 3D driver for giving a three-dimensional effect when the menu window is displayed and the order is switched. The method of claim 1, The terminal further comprises a memory for storing data. The method of claim 16 wherein the memory is Terminal for providing data through communication. The method of claim 17, And a transmitter / receiver for communication with the server. If a menu is selected, editing menu windows of a plurality of submenus of the selected menu according to a preset display environment; And displaying the edited plurality of menu windows in a stacked form so that at least some menu items are visible. 20. The display environment of claim 19 wherein the display environment is A method for providing a menu in a terminal, comprising the number of menu windows to be displayed, a screen size, and menu contents. 20. The method of claim 19, wherein said editing step And at least one of the plurality of menu windows is processed to have a predetermined transparency. 20. The method of claim 19, wherein said editing step Method for providing a menu in the terminal, characterized in that to omit selectively unnecessary content in the plurality of menu windows. 20. The method of claim 19, wherein said editing step Method of providing a menu in the terminal, characterized in that for adjusting the size of the plurality of menu window. 20. The method of claim 19, wherein the plurality of menu windows A method for providing a menu in a terminal, characterized by including a thumbnail-type image in a menu item. The method of claim 19, And after the menu is selected, reading data including contents of a sub-menu of the selected menu. The method of claim 19, And switching the order of the plurality of menu windows by an input from a user. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein said converting step When a signal for moving the window forward is applied, the menu window in front of the menu is moved to the rear and the other menu windows all move forward one by one space. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein said converting step When a signal for moving the window back is applied, the rearmost menu window is moved to the forefront, and all other menu windows are moved one space back. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein said converting step If a signal to move the plurality of windows is applied, the method of providing a menu in the terminal, characterized in that for moving the plurality of windows. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein said converting step When a signal for switching the menu windows at a time is applied, other menu windows of the same category that were not displayed instead of the menu windows displayed on the current screen, characterized in that the menu providing method in the terminal. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein said converting step If a signal to move the category is applied, the menu providing method in the terminal characterized in that the screen is switched to the menu window of the category equivalent to the current category. 27. The method of claim 26, wherein the switching of the order of the plurality of menu windows Method for providing a menu in the terminal, characterized in that implemented in three dimensions.

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