Distribution of application windows in a computing device display

#The invention relates generally to computing devices and, more particularly, to graphical user interfaces that run on computing devices.

#Computing devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, and handheld computers, personal digital assistants, palm computers, and telephone handsets that incorporate a display, have become progressively easier to use especially due to the wide availability of operating systems that employ graphical user interfaces. These graphical user interfaces make use of metaphorical desktops and file folders that make computing devices increasingly more intuitive to manipulate. By way of the graphical user interface, a user can open files and/or programs as application windows that enable a drag and drop operation for copying or moving an icon from one application to another.

#In a graphical user interface, the term “drag” refers to moving an icon on a display screen. The icon may represent a computing device file, computing device program, or any other desktop object or image. To drag an icon across a display screen, the user typically selects the icon with a mouse button and moves the mouse while keeping the mouse button depressed. The term “drag” is also used more generally to refer to any operation in which the mouse button is held down while the mouse is moved. For example, a user might drag the mouse to select a block of text.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a computing device in accordance with one embodiment of the invention;

#FIG. 2 is an illustration of a computing device desktop in which an embodiment of the invention may be practiced;

#FIG. 3 is an illustration of a computing device desktop after operation of an embodiment of the invention;

#In addition to the above-identified Figures, an exemplary script file has been included in Appendix A to illustrate the program commands that distribute the last two opened windows using the WINDOWS™ operating system. The execution of the commands of the script file is brought about by the activation of a multimedia key present on many keyboards.

#Embodiments of the invention described herein enable a computing device user to quickly distribute a predetermined quantity of windows within a computing device display. In one embodiment, these windows are automatically resized so that each of the resized windows fits within the desktop display area without overlapping any of the other opened windows. This enables the computing device user to view all of the icons within the window. This also allows all of the icons within a window to be viewed so that icons can be dragged from one window to another.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a computing device in accordance with one embodiment of the invention. The computing device includes processor 100 that controls the operation of the computing device as directed by an operating system running on the processor. An example of such a processor is a POWERPC™ or PENTIUM™ processor.