KR20100053823A - Method for coupling applications in portable terminal - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: An application connection method of a portable terminal is provided to improve convenience of the portable terminal by executing an application connectable with an executed application among a plurality of applications easily. CONSTITUTION: A portable terminal indicates an execution screen of an executed application and a not executed application at the same time(103,105). The portable terminal searches an application connectable with the executed application in a database(107). The portable terminal indicates at least one connectable application differentially(109). If a connection event is created, the portable terminal executes the connectable application(111,113).

Description

Method for Coupling Applications In Portable Terminal

The present invention relates to a method for executing an application of a portable terminal, and more particularly, to an application interworking method of a portable terminal capable of running in conjunction with a plurality of applications provided in the portable terminal.

Recently, portable terminals such as mobile communication terminals, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable multimedia players (PMPs), portable game consoles, and the like, have more and more functions and applications due to the rapid development of processor technology and the increase of memory capacity.

As described above, as the number of applications included in the portable terminal increases, the number of menus corresponding to each application increases, which makes the menu configuration more and more complicated.

However, since a typical portable terminal includes a display device having a small visible screen size and a small number of input keys, a user must move to a menu corresponding to an application to be executed in several steps in order to execute a predetermined application. Therefore, there is a disadvantage in that it is time-consuming and inconvenient to use the menu path movement.

In addition, as recent portable terminals have one or more high performance processors and have a large memory, various multimedia files can be played and different applications share the multimedia files in conjunction with each other to maximize the range of utilization of the portable terminal. have.

For example, an image editing application included in a portable terminal may edit a photographed image, attach the edited image to a message, and send the edited image, and display the image attached to the received message through an image viewer application, or display a phone book. You can run the application to register the image received in the phone book.

However, in order to use different applications provided in the conventional portable terminal, the user must be aware of the types of applications that can be linked to a predetermined application, and the applications that can be linked at the same time can be executed at the same time. There is a disadvantage that it is inconvenient to use because it is executed sequentially.

Korean Patent No. 10-790078 (name of the invention: a method and device for quick access to an application from a mobile communication terminal) arranges at least one or more other applications in the form of a widget on a screen on which a specific application is executed, and Disclosed is a method for accessing an application configured to be enlarged and displayed when a zoom-in is input while a cursor is positioned in an application.

However, Korean Patent No. 10790078 provides a method for directly executing a specific application by arranging different applications on one screen, and also for a method for easily interlocking various applications provided in a portable terminal. It is not disclosed.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an application interworking method of a portable terminal that can provide information of an application that can be linked with a predetermined application and can easily link different applications.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for interlocking an application of a portable terminal, the method including displaying at least one application, executing a predetermined application among the displayed at least one application, Determining at least one application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application among the displayed at least one application, and distinguishing the application from which at least one application determined to be linked to the executed predetermined application is not linked And display the steps. In the step of executing a predetermined application among the displayed at least one application, an execution screen of the executed predetermined application and at least one application except the executed predetermined application may be simultaneously displayed. Determining at least one application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application among the displayed at least one application includes searching a database for an application that can be linked with the executed predetermined application, wherein the database The list of applications that can be linked to each application provided in the portable terminal may be stored. The displaying of the at least one application determined to be interoperable with the executed predetermined application may be performed separately from an application which is not linked to display each of the at least one application determined to be interoperable with the executed predetermined application. At least one of the color, shape, and size of the graphic information may be displayed differently from the graphic information indicating the non-linked application. An application interworking method of the portable terminal may include: selecting a predetermined graphic object included in the executed predetermined application; Dragging and dropping the selected graphic object to any one or more applications determined to be linked to the executed application, and executing the application to which the graphic object is dragged and dropped. It may further include. The graphic object may include at least one of a video, an image, a memo, text, and music.

In addition, the application interworking method of the portable terminal according to another aspect of the present invention for achieving the object of the present invention, the step of executing a predetermined application, the step of determining an application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application And simultaneously displaying an execution screen of the executed predetermined application and at least one application that can be linked to the executed application. Determining an application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application includes searching for an application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application in a database, wherein the database is applied to each application provided in the portable terminal. A list of applications that can be linked to each other may be stored. The application interworking method of the portable terminal may include selecting a predetermined graphic object included in the executed predetermined application, and dragging and dropping the selected graphic object to at least one application simultaneously displayed with the executed predetermined application. The method may further include dragging and dropping, and executing an application to which the graphic object is dragged and dropped.

According to the application interworking method of the portable terminal as described above, when a predetermined application is executed among a plurality of applications displayed on the portable terminal, an execution screen of the executed predetermined application and an application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application are displayed. . Subsequently, when the user drags and drops the graphic information included in the executed predetermined application to the interoperable application, the coordinated application in which the graphic information is dragged and dropped is executed.

Therefore, it is possible to easily identify an application that can be linked to an executed application among a plurality of applications provided in the portable terminal.

In addition, by moving graphic information such as a video, an image, a text, etc. to an application displayed as interoperable, the interoperable application can be easily executed, thereby improving the usability of the portable terminal.

As the present invention allows for various changes and numerous embodiments, particular embodiments will be illustrated in the drawings and described in detail in the written description.

However, this is not intended to limit the present invention to specific embodiments, it should be understood to include all modifications, equivalents, and substitutes included in the spirit and scope of the present invention.

The terms first, second, etc. may be used to describe various components, but the components should not be limited by the terms. The terms are used only for the purpose of distinguishing one component from another. For example, without departing from the scope of the present invention, the first component may be referred to as the second component, and similarly, the second component may also be referred to as the first component. And / or < / RTI > includes any combination of a plurality of related listed items or any of a plurality of related listed items.

When a component is referred to as being "connected" or "connected" to another component, it may be directly connected to or connected to that other component, but it may be understood that other components may be present in between. Should be. On the other hand, when a component is said to be "directly connected" or "directly connected" to another component, it should be understood that there is no other component in between.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular example embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the present invention. Singular expressions include plural expressions unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. In this application, the terms "comprise" or "have" are intended to indicate that there is a feature, number, step, operation, component, part, or combination thereof described in the specification, and one or more other features. It is to be understood that the present invention does not exclude the possibility of the presence or the addition of numbers, steps, operations, components, components, or a combination thereof.

Unless defined otherwise, all terms used herein, including technical or scientific terms, have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. Terms such as those defined in the commonly used dictionaries should be construed as having meanings consistent with the meanings in the context of the related art and shall not be construed in ideal or excessively formal meanings unless expressly defined in this application. Do not.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings, it will be described in detail a preferred embodiment of the present invention. In the following description of the present invention, the same reference numerals are used for the same elements in the drawings and redundant descriptions of the same elements will be omitted.

Hereinafter, in an embodiment of the present invention, an application that can be linked to a predetermined application may have data processed or generated in the executed predetermined application applied to another application, and two or more different applications may include video, image, music, and text. It means that the multimedia data such as can be shared with each other.

1 is a flowchart illustrating an application interworking process of a portable terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 1, after a portable terminal is initialized, a plurality of applications are displayed on a display device (eg, LCD or OLED) of the portable terminal according to a user's key operation or a preset menu (step 101).

Here, a graphic object such as an icon, text, etc. representing each application may be displayed on the display device of the portable terminal, and the application may be executed when an operation event for each graphic object occurs. In addition, the type of application displayed on the display device of the portable terminal may be set at the time of manufacture of the portable terminal or determined by a user's selection.

Thereafter, when a predetermined application is executed among the plurality of applications displayed by the user's selection (step 103), the portable terminal simultaneously displays the predetermined application execution screen and an application which is not executed among the plurality of applications displayed on the display apparatus in step 101 ( Step 105).

In addition, the portable terminal searches for an application that can be linked to the executed application among the displayed plurality of applications in the database (step 107), and displays the searched at least one linkable application separately from the non-linkable application. (Step 109).

In this case, the portable terminal may be distinguished from an application which cannot be linked by converting a graphic object type of an application that can be linked to the currently running application among a plurality of displayed applications. For example, the portable terminal may display a color, a shape, or a size of the graphic object of the linkable application differently from the graphic object of the non-linkable application.

In addition, the database may include a list of a plurality of applications provided in the portable terminal and information of applications that can be linked to each of the plurality of applications.

Thereafter, the portable terminal determines whether an event for instructing interlocking has occurred between the executed application and the interoperable application (step 111). The executed application (i.e., the coordinated application) (step 113).

For example, the interlocking event may be dragged and dropped from a graphic application displaying text, an image, a video, a music file, etc. included in a predetermined application executed by the user, to the predetermined application among the applications indicated as the linkable application. It may be generated by copying or moving graphic information included in an application being executed to a linkable application using a menu or a key provided in a portable terminal.

In addition, when the coordinated application is executed in step 113, the portable terminal may simultaneously display the execution screen of the predetermined application and the execution screen of the coordinated application, and execute the interlocked application internally of the portable terminal without displaying the execution screen of the coordinated application. It may be configured. Alternatively, only the execution screen of the coordinated application may be displayed on the display device of the portable terminal.

Thereafter, the portable terminal determines whether the predetermined application executed in step 103 is terminated (step 115), and if it is determined that the predetermined application is terminated, the portable terminal determines whether another application among a plurality of applications displayed on the portable terminal is executed. (Step 117).

If it is determined in step 117 that another application has been executed, the portable terminal moves to execution step 103 to perform subsequent steps. Alternatively, if it is determined in step 117 that no other application is executed, the interworking process of the portable terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention is terminated.

FIG. 2 illustrates a user interface screen displayed in the interworking process of the portable terminal illustrated in FIG. 1.

Referring to FIG. 2, after the portable terminal is initialized, a plurality of applications are displayed on the display device of the portable terminal according to a user's key operation or a preset menu operation.

In FIG. 2A, a standby screen editing 210, a message 220, a voice call 230, a video call 240, a music playback 250, and a plurality of applications displayed on a display device of a portable terminal are provided. For example, the image viewer 260, the video playback 270, and the phone book 280 are displayed.

When the user executes the image viewer 260 in a state in which a plurality of applications are displayed as shown in FIG. 2A, the portable terminal may be configured as shown in FIG. 2B. The execution screen and other applications 210, 220, 230, 240, 250, 270, and 280 are simultaneously displayed.

In addition, the application information that can be linked with the executed image viewer 220 application is searched in the database, and the graphic information of the linkable application is converted based on the search result.

For example, when the application that can be linked to the image viewer 260 application executed as shown in FIG. 2B is an idle screen editing 210, a message 220, and a phone book 280 application, the application is portable. The terminal changes and displays the shape of the graphic object representing each of the idle screen editing 210, the message 220, and the phone book 280 applications so as to be distinguished from the applications 230, 240, and 250 which are not interoperable. .

In the user interface screen illustrated in FIG. 2B, the color of the graphic object displaying the linkable applications 210, 220, and 280 may be changed to be distinguished from the non-linkable applications 240, 250, and 270. The case is illustrated by way of example.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 2B, the user drags and drops the image 1 261 of the predetermined graphic information included in the image viewer 260 application to the standby screen editing 210 application among the applications that can be linked. When dropped, the idle screen editing application is executed to set image 1 261 as the idle screen.

Alternatively, when the user drags and drops a predetermined image among the images included in the execution screen of the image viewer 260 application to the message 220 application, the drag and drop image is attached to the message.

Alternatively, when the user drags and drops a predetermined image among the images included in the execution screen of the image viewer 260 application to the phone book 280 application, the phone book 280 application is executed to drag and drop the image. The image is configured to be registered to a specific user in the phone book.

3 is a flowchart illustrating an application interworking process of a portable terminal according to another embodiment of the present invention. When one predetermined application is executed through a key operation or a menu operation of a user in the portable terminal, an application that can be linked with the executed application Indicates the process of displaying the information at the same time.

Referring to FIG. 3, after a portable terminal is initialized and a predetermined application among a plurality of applications provided in the portable terminal is executed according to a user's key operation or a menu operation (step 301), the portable terminal may be linked with the executed application. Information of possible applications is retrieved from the database (step 303).

Thereafter, the portable terminal simultaneously displays an execution screen of the executed application and at least one application that can be linked with the executed application on the display device (step 305).

Here, the at least one interoperable application may be displayed as a graphic object such as an icon, a text, etc. representing each application, and may be configured to execute the application when an operation event for each graphic object occurs.

Thereafter, the portable terminal determines whether an event for instructing interworking has occurred between the executed application and the interoperable application (step 307). The executed application (i.e., the coordinated application) (step 309).

For example, the interlocking event may be dragged and dropped from a graphic application displaying text, an image, a video, a music file, etc. included in a predetermined application executed by the user, to the predetermined application among the applications indicated as the linkable application. It may be generated by copying or moving graphic information included in an application being executed to a linkable application using a menu or a key provided in a portable terminal.

In addition, when the coordinated application is executed in step 309, the portable terminal may simultaneously display the execution screen of the predetermined application and the execution screen of the coordinated application. It may be configured. Alternatively, only the execution screen of the coordinated application may be displayed on the display device of the portable terminal.

Thereafter, the portable terminal determines whether the predetermined application executed in step 301 is terminated (step 311). If it is determined that the predetermined application is terminated, the portable terminal determines whether another application among the plurality of applications displayed on the portable terminal is executed. (Step 315).

If it is determined in step 315 that another application has been executed, the portable terminal moves to step 301 to perform subsequent steps. Or, if it is determined in step 315 that another application is not executed, the interworking process of the portable terminal according to another embodiment of the present invention is terminated.

FIG. 4 illustrates a user interface screen displayed in an application interworking process of the portable terminal illustrated in FIG. 3.

Referring to FIG. 4, when the memo writing 410 application is executed according to a user's key operation or a preset menu operation after the portable terminal is initialized, the portable terminal may be linked with the executed memo writing 410 application. After the application is searched in the database, the execution screen of the memo writing application and the searchable linkable application are simultaneously displayed on the display device.

In FIG. 4, a message 420, a phone book 430, and a schedule writing 440 application are searched as an application that can be linked with a memo writing 410 application.

As shown in FIG. 4, in a state in which an execution screen of the memo writing 410 application and applications 420, 430, and 440 that can be linked to the memo writing 410 application are simultaneously displayed, a user of the memo writing 410 application is displayed. When the memo 1 411 included in the execution screen is dragged and dropped into the message 420 application, the message application is executed and the memo 1 411 is added to the edited content of the message 420 application.

Alternatively, when the user drags and drops the memo 1 411 included in the execution screen of the memo writing 410 application to the phone book 430 application, the phone book 430 application is executed and the memo 1 is executed by the user. 411 can be registered to a specific user in the phone book.

Alternatively, when the user drags and drops the memo 1 411 included in the execution screen of the memo writing 410 application to the schedule 440 application, the schedule 440 application is executed and the memo 1 411 is scheduled. To be added to the edited content of the.

Although described with reference to the embodiments above, those skilled in the art will understand that the present invention can be variously modified and changed without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the claims below. Could be.

1 is a flowchart illustrating an application interworking process of a portable terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates a user interface screen displayed in the interworking process of the portable terminal illustrated in FIG. 1.

3 is a flowchart illustrating an application interworking process of a portable terminal according to another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 illustrates a user interface screen displayed in an application interworking process of the portable terminal illustrated in FIG. 3.

Claims (9)

Displaying at least one application; Executing a predetermined application among the displayed at least one application; Determining at least one of the displayed at least one application that can be linked with the executed predetermined application; And And at least one application determined to be linked with the executed predetermined application is displayed separately from an application which is not linked. The method of claim 1, wherein the execution of a predetermined application among the displayed at least one application comprises: And an execution screen of the executed predetermined application and at least one application except the executed predetermined application are simultaneously displayed. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining of at least one application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application among the displayed at least one application includes: Retrieving an application that can be linked to the predetermined application executed in the database, The database is an application interworking method of the portable terminal, characterized in that for storing the application list that can be linked to each application provided in the portable terminal. The method of claim 1, wherein the displaying of the at least one application determined to be interoperable with the executed application is displayed separately from the non-working application. At least one of a color, a shape, and a size of the graphic information indicating each of the at least one application determined to be linked to the predetermined application is displayed differently from the graphic information indicating the non-linked application. Application interworking method of the portable terminal. The method of claim 1, wherein the application interworking method of the portable terminal is performed. Selecting a predetermined graphic object included in the executed predetermined application; Dragging and dropping the selected graphic object to any one of at least one application determined to be linked with the executed predetermined application; And And executing the application dragged and dropped by the graphic object. The method of claim 5, wherein the graphical object is An application interworking method of a portable terminal, comprising at least one of a video, an image, a memo, a text, and music. Executing a predetermined application; Determining an application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application; And And simultaneously displaying the execution screen of the executed predetermined application and at least one application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application. The method of claim 7, wherein the determining of the application that can be linked to the executed predetermined application, Retrieving an application that can be linked to the predetermined application executed in the database, The database is an application interworking method of the portable terminal, characterized in that for storing the application list that can be linked to each of the applications provided in the portable terminal. The method of claim 7, wherein the application interworking method of the portable terminal, Selecting a predetermined graphic object included in the executed predetermined application; Dragging and dropping the selected graphic object to any one of at least one application displayed simultaneously with the executed predetermined application; And And executing the application dragged and dropped by the graphic object.

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