Unified hierarchical and tear off menus in a graphical event-driven computer system

Number of patents in Portfolio can not be more than 2000

United States of America Patent

PATENT NO 5627960
SERIAL NO

08610518

Stats

ATTORNEY / AGENT: (SPONSORED)

Importance

Loading Importance Indicators... loading....

Abstract

See full text

Explicit support is provided at the system software level for application program tear-off menus in a manner that is essentially application-transparent. All menus are transformed into windows and grouped in a single menu layer for each application, greatly simplifying many of the complexities of navigating through hierarchical and tear-off menus. Each application has its own menu layer that is shown and hidden as the application moves to the foreground and background. Tear-off menus, as with all menus, are hidden and shown with the menu layer, generating the desirable 'floating-window' behavior. More particularly, menus are managed in a graphical, event-driven computer system having a computer display by representing the menus as windows, providing a menu layer for containing menus of a computer program, and displaying a menu. Events occurring with respect to the menu layer are detected, in response to which display of the menu is varied.

Loading the Abstract Image... loading....

First Claim

See full text

Family

Loading Family data... loading....

Patent Owner(s)

Patent OwnerAddress
APPLE INCONE APPLE PARK WAY CUPERTINO CA 95014

International Classification(s)

  • [Classification Symbol]
  • [Patents Count]

Inventor(s)

Inventor Name Address # of filed Patents Total Citations
Clifford, Daniel K Palo Alto, CA 2 126
Craycroft, Timothy J Mountian View, CA 4 214

Cited Art Landscape

Load Citation

Patent Citation Ranking

Forward Cite Landscape

Load Citation