CN1210645C - Method, system and computer program for managing views at computer display - Google Patents

Abstract

A views management system has a computer display (14) which provides a hideable view bar having pane splitting controls (42,46,48) and a list of open views (44). Through selection of specific ones of the pane splitting controls (42,46,48), a system user can configure the display (14) to show any number and arrangement of tiled views. By simply selecting one of the open views in the list appearing in the view bar, the user can assign that view to the pane currently having focus. The contents of pairs of panes can easily be swapped by a click-drag-drop operation sequence using a cursor- controlling pointing device.

Description

Method of managing views on a computer display

technical field

The present invention relates to computer systems, and more particularly to a method for managing views on a computer system display.

Background technique

Historically, computer systems, whether standalone or part of a network, were relatively simple, low-power devices capable of executing only a single application at any given time. A display or console used to monitor the operation of a system, giving the user only a display or view of the operation. As individual systems or networks become more complex, allowing multiple tasks to be performed simultaneously, users of the system begin to require views of more than one task or operation being performed. The intuitive approach of dedicating a console to each distinct view has obvious practicality, space, and cost drawbacks. It follows that an almost universal approach has been to develop systems and monitors capable of presenting multiple views at any given time.

The two main methods of presenting multiple views on a console are cascading and tiling of display windows or panes. For ease of description, the two terms "window" and "pane" may be considered to be the same thing, that is, a view that occupies less than the entire display screen, but still displays a substantial portion of a particular view. In the case of panes being stacked, only the topmost pane is fully visible on the display screen. The remaining panes are "stacked" below the topmost pane, often with only the titlebar and, perhaps, a vertical edge visible.

The tiled views do not overlap each other, but instead occupy horizontally or vertically divided panes on the monitor screen. Tiling allows the user to see more information about each represented view without having to perform the view selection steps required for cascading views.

Tiling techniques are known to have disadvantages, including a lack of flexibility. Some technologies limit users to simple, fixed tiling arrangements, such as two panes side by side or panes above and below. You run into trouble when the user wants more views than the fixed number of panes available in the system. Other techniques take an all-or-nothing approach, creating titles for each open view. The all-or-nothing approach works satisfactorily only when the number of open panes is small. As the number of open views increases, the size of each title must become smaller and smaller, reducing the amount of useful information presented to the user.

US Patent No. 5,880,725, Southgate, attempts to overcome some of the prior art problems in computer user interfaces that can have both cascading and tiled pane regions on the screen. If the view is displayed in a tiled pane area, then the view can fit into the available space by shrinking the view, if necessary, to the minimum allowable size. This patent discloses what may be called a "best fit" approach, where the view is moved to the available screen space. While this approach can be more flexible in creating the displayed views, it can also end up with panes that are significantly smaller than the user requested.

One well-known operating system enables a user to subdivide a display screen into a wide variety of vertically or horizontally divided frames. While the operating system is so flexible that it allows the user to define the total number and composition of frames required, it is rather inflexible as to the steps that need to be performed to load files into the various frames. In order to load the contents of a specific file into a specific pane, a link to the file must be established and a file name must be typed. This rather tedious process has to be repeated for every frame in the screen.

Another known system uses a fixed number of panes, but allows the user to change the arrangement of the panes relative to each other using a drag and drop operation. Because the number of panes is fixed, the system cannot achieve satisfactory flexibility.

Contents of the invention

Accordingly, the present invention provides a method of managing the view appearance of a display having a work area comprising at least one view pane, the method comprising the steps of: a) designating a view pane in the work area as the focus view window b) activates a view bar that includes a set of pane splitter controls and an open view list; c) splits the focused view pane into two panes in response to selection of a pane splitter control, and the contents of the focused view pane are assigned to the first of the two panes; and d) in response to selection of an open view from the list appearing in the view bar, assigning the selected view to the first of the two panes second pane.

Thus, the present invention overcomes the cited disadvantages of the prior art and can be implemented as a method of managing the appearance of views on a display having a work area containing at least one view pane. A display always contains at least one view pane designated as the active or focused view pane. The user who needs to increase the number of views on the display activates the view bar which contains pane splitter controls and a list of open views. In response to selection of a pane splitter control, the view pane with focus is split into two, and the contents of the focused view pane are assigned to the first of the two panes. Select an open view from the list to control the contents of another view pane.

Description of drawings

Preferred embodiments of the invention may be more readily understood from the following detailed description, made with reference to the accompanying drawings, which are by way of example only:

Figure 1 is a schematic representation of a workstation or computer system console on which the present invention may be implemented;

Fig. 2 is a block diagram of the main components of the computer system console;

Figure 3 is the initial or default appearance of the computer system console display workspace;

Figure 4 is a display of the working area when the view bar normally would be hidden along the right edge of the area when the view bar is unhidden or brought into view;

Figure 5 is a display of the working area when the pane splitter control and the desired view are selected;

Figure 6 is a display of the work area after completion of pane splitting and view selection;

Figure 7 is a view of the working area for describing how to effectively exchange views between existing panes;

Figure 8 is a view of the working area after a view exchange operation;

Figure 9 is a flowchart of the method steps performed in the operation of creating a new view pane and assigning views to the original pane and the new pane; and

Figure 10 is a flowchart of method steps performed in performing a view exchange operation.

Detailed ways

A preferred embodiment of the invention will be described below, but it should be kept in mind that the invention can be implemented in several different forms, eg in dedicated hardware or in a combination of software and hardware. A typical combination of hardware and software is a general purpose computer system with a computer program which, when loaded and executed, causes the system to perform the method steps described below. The software can be pre-loaded into a general-purpose computer system, or can also be used independently as a computer software product that, when loaded into a computer system, causes the system to perform the method steps.

As used herein, the term "computer program" is any expression, in any language, code, or notation, of a set of instructions intended to cause a system with information processing capabilities to perform a specific function, either directly or after translation into another language, and / or reproduction in a different material form.

Referring to FIG. 1 , the present invention is a method for managing views in a computer system 10 including a system unit 12 and a monitor or display 14 . A computer user can configure the various views for display in the work area 16 of the display 14, assign the views to desired panes, and swap panes in a series of intuitive, simple operations.

Figure 2 depicts the major physical components of a general-purpose computer system that, when properly programmed, can implement the present invention. The computer system includes a central processing unit (CPU) subsystem 20 with a processor and supporting registers, cache memory and logic circuits. The computer system also includes random access memory 22, magnetic disk storage 24, and an optical drive 26 such as a CD-R, CD-RW or DVD drive. Where the present invention is implemented as a computer program, it may generally be first made available to a system operator from removable magnetic or optical media for installation on hard disk 24 . Once the initial installation is complete, the program can be transferred from hard disk 24 to RAM 22 as desired. Alternatively, the program can also be directly loaded into the random access memory 22 from the optical medium placed in the optical drive 26 as required. The computer system also includes system input/output (I/O) adapter cards 28 to support the interfacing of standard system components such as keyboard 30 , pointing device 32 and video display 34 . Finally, the computer system may include a network interface card 36, which provides an interface to other network devices.

The preferred embodiment of the invention is described first by reference to changes to the appearance of a display that are made to use the invention, and then by reference to flowcharts describing method steps performed to make those changes. Referring first to Figure 3, the initial or default appearance of a display consists of a single view (VIEW 1) that occupies the entire working area of the display. In the default appearance, it is assumed that the view bar, described in detail below, is hidden along the right edge of the display. When hidden, the view bar is represented by a thin pixel bar 38, which may include a symbol or icon representing the view.

The user changes the appearance of the working area of the display by activating or calling up the view bar, preferably by moving a cursor over the pixel bar 38 . In one implementation of the invention, when a cursor is detected over the pixel bar 38, the view bar is automatically expanded or unhidden. In another implementation, the view bar remains hidden until the user performs a selection operation, eg, clicks a button on a cursor control device, usually a mouse.

Figure 4 shows the working area when the view bar is unhidden using one of the methods described above. The view bar includes pane splitter controls, one by one, a first pair of buttons 46 for splitting a view pane already present in the work area into two vertically distributed panes, and a second pair of buttons 42 for splitting The view pane that already exists in the work area is divided into two horizontally distributed panes. The pane splitting control is only valid for the active pane. Sometimes, the active pane is called the pane with focus, or the focused pane, or the focused view pane. In the case of Figure 4, VIEW 1 is the only pane and defaults to the focused view pane.

The pane splitting control does more than just determine whether the focus view pane is split horizontally or vertically. Depending on which of the two keys is pressed, the control determines whether to place the newly created pane to the right or left (or above or below) of the existing pane. Referring specifically to FIG. 4 , it can be seen that the right-pointing triangle in the horizontal pane split control 42 is selected. As a result of this selection, a second view pane (VIEW 2) is created in the work area to the right of the existing VIEW 1. The views originally included in VIEW 1 are still placed in this pane, and the content of the new view pane (VIEW 2) is selected by the system user from the open view list 44 in the view bar. Figure 6 shows the work area of the display that will appear with the cursor on the particular view VIEW 2 of the newly created pane.

Figure 6 shows the work area when VIEW 1 and VIEW 2 are in a side-by-side relationship. In Figure 6, the view bar has returned to its hidden state. Hiding of the view bar can occur automatically when the cursor is moved from the view bar area; or, depending on the intent of the system implementer, until the user performs some active deselection operation, such as clicking a button on the cursor control device , the hiding of the view bar occurs. Note that Figure 6 shows that VIEW 2 is automatically selected as the focus pane because it is convinced that the system user who created the pane for VIEW 2 is likely to do so for an immediate need to work with that view. If desired, the user can make VIEW 1 the focused pane simply by clicking on that view's title bar.

Although only two panes are shown in Figure 6, the user may choose to create any number of additional views. For example, assuming VIEW 2 remains the focused pane, the user can choose to split the pane into two smaller vertically distributed panes by using the vertical pane split control, and then select the view bar for the resulting empty pane An open view in the list. This process can be repeated any number of times, starting from any pane with focus, with the obvious limitation that as panes get smaller, they can present less and less information to the user. The pane splitter control allows the user to easily create any desired screen structure. The list of views visible in the view bar makes it easier for users to assign specific views to empty panes.

If the user, after having created a tiled arrangement of views, decides that the arrangement is not what he wanted, then the present invention allows the user to rearrange the views very simply without changing the pane structure. Referring to Figure 7, VIEW1 is allocated in one large pane, and VIEW 2 and VIEW 3 are each allocated in smaller panes. If the user decides that VIEW 2 should be allocated in the larger pane, then the views can be swapped using drag and drop. Place the cursor on a view to be swapped, press a device key, then, holding down, move the cursor anywhere on the other of the two panes to be swapped. Release the device button to swap the two views. Figure 8 shows the final result, now VIEW 2 appears in the large pane, and VIEW 1 appears in the lower left pane of the screen.

Although the diagram shows that the panes participating in the exchange are contiguous, this is not required by the present invention. The two panes participating in the swap can be completely separated from each other by one or more intervening panes. The views that are swapped are determined only by the position of the cursor when the device key is initially pressed and subsequently when the device key is released.

Referring back momentarily to FIG. 4, the two additional controls 49 and 48 of the view bar shown in the figure were not previously discussed. As noted previously, the system can be implemented so that the view bar automatically hides (disappears) if the user moves the cursor away from the view bar area. In some cases, users may not want the view bar to disappear automatically. Control 49 is a "pin" control that, when selected, locks the view bar in a visible state regardless of the current position of the cursor. Once the view bar is locked in the visible state, it cannot be hidden until some active action is taken to reset the pin control. An example of a suitable active action may be clicking a pin again, and the like. Control 48 is a detachment control that, when activated, causes the selected view to tear off or be removed from the current pane and into its own separate detachment window, which can be independent of other tiles pane is moved.

9 is a flowchart of method steps performed in the process of building a tiled screen structure and assigning views to each pane in the structure. An initial step 50 in the process is to generate a default display consisting of a single view with focus and a thin pixel strip representing the hidden view strip. After generating the default display, at step 52 the system monitors the position of the cursor. When the cursor is detected to be over a hidden view bar, at step 54 the view bar is shown/unhidden while the system waits for a pane splitter control to be selected. Once at step 56 it is detected that a pane split control is selected, the display's video buffers are established for two different panes in the space originally allocated to the pane in focus. Whether the new panes are placed next to each other or on top of each other depends, of course, on which pane splitter is selected.

In step 60, the data in view of the currently focused pane is allocated to one of two video buffers. Likewise, the assignment depends on which pane splitter is selected when creating the two new panes. The system then enters a wait state during which it monitors the state and condition of the cursor to determine if an open view is selected among the list of views appearing in the view bar. Once it is detected at step 62 that an open view is selected, at step 64 the data for the selected view is loaded into the second of the two newly created panes. As mentioned earlier, it is entirely at the system user's discretion how many times to run this process in order to obtain a satisfactory tiling of the display's work area.

Figure 10 is a flowchart of the steps performed in completing the previously discussed view swap operation. An initial step 70 of the process is to determine whether a particular key or button has been pressed while the cursor is over an existing pane. Once a key or button is detected to be pressed, the system begins to monitor the state of the cursor to determine if the same key or button is subsequently released after the cursor has moved over another existing pane. If the key has been released while test 72 is displayed over the second pane, data representing the two affected views is exchanged between the first and second panes.

Claims (4)

CLAIMS 1. A method of managing the view appearance of a display having a work area comprising at least one view window, said method comprising the steps of: a) Designate a view pane in the work area as the focus view pane; b) activate a view bar that includes a set of pane splitter controls and a list of open views; c) splitting the focused view pane into two panes in response to selection of a pane splitter control, the content of the focused view pane being assigned to the first of the two panes; and d) in response to selection of an open view from the list appearing in the view bar, assigning the selected view to the second of the two panes. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the view bar is generally hidden at an edge of the work area, and wherein the step of activating the view bar is moving the cursor to coincide with said edge of the work area positional response. 3. The method of claim 2, including the additional step of locking the view bar into the displayed state in response to user input. 4. A method as claimed in any preceding claim, including the additional steps of: in response to a user selecting a view pane in the work area, and dragging the contents of the selected view pane to another view pane in the work area A pane operation that exchanges the contents of the selected view pane with the other view pane.

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