Automatic generation of user interfaces
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsAnthony L. Crider, Stephen Schwink
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A communications schema is captured into a service-neutral interface schema created by inspecting metadata received from an object and creating from it an abstract user interface model. A transform is applied to the abstract user interface model to generate a user interface that targets a particular user interface technology. Any user interface technology can be targeted so that a user interface for any user interface technology can be auto-generated.
Claims20
A system for generating a user interface comprising:
- a schema generator that receives metadata for a reference object and generates from the received metadata a service-neutral interface schema;
- and
- a user interface generator that receives the service-neutral interface schema and a transform directed to a particular target platform and generates from the service-neutral interface schema and the transform a service-specific user interface.
A method of auto-generating a user interface comprising:
- obtaining metadata of a class object, the metadata comprising a description of ways to interact with the class object comprising at least one method;
- and
- examining the at least one method to determine if the at least one method has communicative intent;
- in response to determining that the at least one method of the class object has communicative intent, schematizing the at least one method by generating an generic internal representation of the at least one method;
- and
- applying a transform directed to a particular target platform to the generic internal representation to programmatically auto-generate a target-specific user interface.
A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions which when executed cause a computing environment to:
- auto-generate a service-specific user interface targeted to a particular platform by applying a target-specific transform to a service-neutral internal representation of methods and properties of a class object, wherein the methods and properties display communicative intent.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.