US 7,623,888 B1Granted

Ranked presentation of user-interface display elements in a user-interface skin

AssigneeSprint Spectrum L.P.

InventorEric S. Wolter

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Abstract

A method and apparatus for ranked presentation of user-interface display elements is disclosed. A device will hold data that indicates a priority order for selecting user-interface display elements, such as buttons, labels, etc., to present. When a user-interface skin is loaded onto the device and the skin has a limited number of slots (i.e., segments, spaces, places, etc.) for presenting user-interface display elements, the priority order will be used as a basis to select which elements to present in the available slots. For example, if the skin has only five slots for presentation of user-interface display elements, just the top five elements in the priority list will be presented. Those top five elements can then be presented in any order, such as in priority order, alphabetical order, or randomly.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A wireless handheld device comprising:

a processor;
data storage;
a display screen;
a wireless communication interface for communicating over an air interface;
ranking-data stored in the data storage, the ranking-data defining a rank-ordered listing of N user-interface display elements;
and
program logic stored in the data storage and executable by the processor,
wherein the program logic is executable with respect to a first user-interface skin defining P slots for presentation of user-interface display elements, where 1<P<N, (i) to select the top P ranked user-interface display elements of the rank-ordered listing, and (ii) to present the P selected user-interface display elements in the P slots of the first user-interface skin on the display screen, and
wherein the program logic is executable with respect to a second user-interface skin defining P′ slots for presentation of user-interface display elements, where 1<P′<N and where P′ is not equal to P, (i) to select the top P′ ranked user-interface display elements of the rank-ordered listing, and (ii) to present the P′ selected user-interface display elements in the P′ slots of the second user-interface skin on the display screen.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.