Method of maintaining characteristics information about a system component either modified by an application program or a user initiated change
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorJeffrey L. Bogdan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An operating system provides a number of window elements that the operating system itself or applications may use in displaying a window. The operating system includes a dialog box for enabling a user to adjust the individual sizes of the respective window elements independently of the size of the window. The bitmaps for the window elements are stored in a cache that is re-drawn each time the user changes the size of any of the window elements.
Claims20
In a computer system having an output device and processor for running an operating system having a graphical user interface and an application program wherein the application program and the graphical user interface output window elements that are based on a visual representation of the window elements provided by the operating system, a method comprising the computer-implement steps of:
- maintaining information by the operating system about the metric characteristics of a specific window element provided by the operating system independent of other window elements provided by the operating system;
- outputting by the application program and the graphical user interface, the specific window element provided by the operating system, wherein the output it uniformly based solely on the information maintained by the operating system about the metric characteristics of the specific window element provided by the operating system;
- providing a function in the operating system for obtaining the information that is maintained about the metric characteristics of the specific window element provided by the operating system;
- and
- calling the operating system function by the application program and the graphical user interface of the operating system to obtain the information maintained about the metric characteristics of the specific window element provided by the operating system.
In a computer system having an output device and processor for running an operating system having a graphical user interface and an application program, a method comprising computer-implement steps of:
- storing information by the operating system about system metrics that specific information about certain system components, including information about the size of selected system-provided window elements independent of the size of other system-provided window elements;
- outputting by the application program and the graphical user interface the selected system-provided window elements uniformly based solely on the information stored by the operating system about the system metrics of the selected system-provided window element;
- providing a function in the operating system for accessing the system metrics on behalf of the application program and the graphical user interface;
- and
- calling the function by the application program and the graphical user interface.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.