Engineering Commons^™

Inventions On Selecting Gui Elements, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Selecting an object or element is a fundamental operation in any graphic user interface. It is necessary to select an object before doing any operation (such as, dragging, copying, opening, deleting etc.) on that object. The GUI may provide features to select any single object or even multiple objects. The feature of selecting multiple objects can provides tremendous power to the GUI as the user can do complex operations on multiple objects in one go. However, the process of selection is not as simple as it appears to the user of a GUI. The internal logic of a selection mechanism …

Inventions On Displaying And Resizing Windows, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Windows are used quite frequently in a GUI environment. The greatest advantage of using windows is that each window creates a virtual screen space. Hence, although the physical screen space is limited to a few inches, use of windows can create unlimited screen space to display innumerable items. The use of windows facilitates the user to open and interact with multiple programs or documents simultaneously in different windows. Sometimes a single program may also open multiple windows to display various items. The user can resize the windows and move their location time to time as desired. However, there are several …

Inventions On Drag And Drop In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Drag and drop operation is one of the key capabilities of any Graphical User Interface. The user can do quite complex operations simply by visually dragging and dropping objects from one location to another. It saves user from remembering and typing a lot of commands. The result of a drag and drop operation may vary depending the type of source object and type of destination object. For example dragging a file and dropping on a folder may copy or move the file to the destination folder, dropping that file to a remote ftp location may upload that file using internet, …

Inventions On Color Selections In Graphical User Interfaces, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Color is an important aspect of any graphical user interface. Color is used to make a GUI attractive and meaningful. But, there are difficulties in using colors too. Improper use of color can give adverse effects. Wrong colors at wrong place make the GUI look clumsy and confusing. Besides the aesthetics issues there are many other issues involved with colors. One of the contradictions relating to usage of color is “The color of the GUI should be customizable to suit user preference. But at the same time it should not be customizable, as that will cause annoyance and confusion to …

Inventions On Gui Aesthetics, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Aesthetics or “look and feel” is one of the most important features of any graphical user interface. Better aesthetics makes the interface user-friendlier and more popular. Better aesthetics helps the user to understand the meaning of various components and memorize the navigation paths. A better look and feel ultimately makes a GUI more efficient and effective. Various methods are adopted to improve the aesthetics of a GUI, such as, by using colors, using 3D graphics, using pictorial icons, using sound etc.

It is important to provide links to all the features on the desktop or a quick access panel. But …

Inventions On Using Sound And Speech In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Voice recognition facilitates a human interaction with the machine. VR may be used to replace the manual task of pushing buttons on a wireless telephone keypad. This is particularly useful when the hands of the user are busy with other activities like driving a car.

However, the VRS system has several limitations. The VRS requires lot of training and customization in order to be effectively used by individual users as each individual falls into different voice patterns. Besides the voice interface is complex and is not as reliable as the keyboard or mouse. This article illustrates some interesting inventions on …

Inventions On Presenting Textual Items In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although a GUI largely replaces textual descriptions by graphical icons, the textual items are not completely removed. The textual items are inevitably used in window titles, message boxes, help items, menu items and popup items. Textual items are necessary for communicating messages that are beyond the limitation of graphical messages. However, it is necessary to harness the textual items on the graphical interface in such a way that they complement each other to produce the best effect. One has to keep various considerations in mind while applying textual items in Graphical User Interface. This article illustrates a few inventions on …

Inventions On Gui For Touch Sensitive Screens, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A touch sensitive screen displays the information on the screen and also receives the input by sensing a user’s touch on the same screen. This mechanism facilitates system interaction directly through the screen without needing a mouse or keyboard. This method has the advantage to make the system compact by removing keyboard, mouse and similar interactive device. However there are certain difficulties to implement a touch screen interface. The display screens of portable devices are becoming smaller thereby leaving lesser space for display of data, menu or touch screen interaction. Besides some screens need to display so much of information …

Inventions On Gui For Eye Cursor Controls Systems, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Operating a GUI through eyeball is a complex mechanism and not used as often as mouse or trackball. But there are situations where eye-mouse devices can play a tremendous role especially where the hands of the user are not available or busy to perform other activities. The difficulties of implementing an eye-cursor control system are many. The article illustrates some inventions on eye-cursor control system, which attempt to eliminate the difficulties of the prior art mechanisms.

Inventions On Dialog Boxes Used In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The dialog boxes are useful in case of displaying warnings, errors, confirmations etc. in special situations. A typical dialog box is displayed in a small window with some text message along with a few options for the user to select. However, there are certain difficulties associated in programming and implementing a conventional dialog box, such as, severe programming effort, rigidity of the hard coded message, obscuring screen space and so on. There is a need to overcome these difficulties of the dialog box to make them more efficient and useful. The modality of the dialog boxes also creates some limitations. …

Inventions On Expressing Emotions In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The conventional GUI is more mechanical and does not recognize or communicate emotions. The modern GUIs are trying to infer the likely emotional state and personality of the user and communicate through a corresponding emotional state. Emotions are expressed in graphical icons, sounds, pictures and other means. The emotions are found to be useful in especially in communication software, interactive learning systems, robotics and other adaptive environments. Various mechanisms have been developed to express emotions through graphical user interfaces. This article illustrates some interesting inventions selected from US patent database.

Inventions On Tree Navigators Used In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A tree view or tree navigator is used to display hierarchical data organized in the form of a tree. In a tree structure there are parent and child nodes. The child nodes may further have descendants to n levels. There are many methods to make the navigation easy. Some of these are expanding and collapsing branches, splitting the tree, displaying a parent node in a separate tree, zooming branches, scrolling in various directions etc. It is still a difficult exercise to handle large trees efficiently. The effort still continues to manage large number of nodes with faster speed, greater control, …

10 Inventions On Scrolling And Scrollbars In Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Scrolling mechanism is used to display and edit large documents in a limited screen space or window. The scrolling mechanism may include a vertical scroll bar or a horizontal scroll bar or both to move the contents of the documents up and down or left and right. There may be navigation buttons on the screen representing the navigation keys on the keyboard. The user can click these buttons to scroll the screen. There may be very different methods of scrolling such as by using the “thumb”, as popularly used with a pdf document. Scrolling may be achieved through eyeball tracking …

10 Inventions On Command Buttons In A Graphical User Interface, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A command button may contain a textual label or a graphic image or both. It may be static or animated. There can be many different features to make a command button attractive and effective. As command button is a typical GUI element, most improvement on GUI in general will also be applicable to command buttons. Besides, there are also inventions to improve various aspects of command buttons in specific. This article illustrates 10 selected inventions from US patent database. Each invention is followed by a TRIZ based analysis in brief.

Inventions On Menu And Toolbar Coordination, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Both toolbar and dropdown menu are used popularly in a graphical user interface with a similar objective of providing easy access to the internal functions. Often the same functions are provided through both menu and toolbar. Both toolbar and dropdown menu have their own advantages and disadvantages. A menu can provide more options occupying less real estate, while toolbar can provide a single click access without navigating through trees and branches. As a menu and toolbar system shares many common objectives, it is often useful maintain some relationship to coordinate between both the elements of a GUI system. The relationships …

10 Inventions On Improving Toolbars: A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Toolbar is one among the popular elements of a graphical user interface. The other popular elements of graphical user interface are buttons, menu, scrollbar, dialog box etc., all of which provide easy access to various functions of a GUI system. A toolbar often does a similar function as the menu but with certain differences. A menu has the advantage of holding a large number of items without needing any additional screen space. In contrast, each button on the toolbar permanently occupies some space on the screen. It’s not possible to implement large number of functions through a toolbar, as they …

Inventions On Adaptable Menu: A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The menu is one of the most widely used elements of a graphical user interface. The objective of a menu system is to provide various commands and functions to the user in an easy way so that the user can just select the desired operation from a given list instead of typing a complex command in the command prompt. In a conventional menu system the menu items or options are hard-coded in the computer program. The programmer or developer composes menu items at the time of development. The developer tries to include all options that he feels may be required …

10 Inventions On Key Guides And Keyboard Templates, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A keyboard has many function keys and each function key can have multiple functions when used with control, shift and alt keys, it is difficult for a user to remember the functionality of the function keys. We need a mechanism to indicate the operations assigned to each function key for different software programs. A keyboard guide or template is used for this purpose.

This article illustrates 10 inventions on keyboard key guide and function key templates selected from US patent database. Various mechanisms of keyboard templates have been proposed, including static, dynamic, manual, mechanical, onscreen display and others.

10 Inventions On Ergonomically Developed Computer Accessories, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The height, shape and habit of every human being are different. In large workplaces, the construction of computer furniture and accessories cannot be of that user. The major made according these peculiarities of every human being. As a result every computer user has to work on standard computer furniture and standard computer accessories that may not match with his physical construction and peculiarities physical problems caused by prolonged computer usage can be categorized as neck pain and stiffness, low back pain and stiffness, and strain of the wrists. These problems are caused by chairs, computer desks, and keyboard support stands …

Inventions On Integrating Pointing Devices With Computer Keyboard, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A keyboard is the most essential input device for the computer. Although a keyboard contains navigation keys, in most cases we use a pointing device like mouse to operate the cursor. There are many kinds of pointing devices like mouse, track ball, touch pad, touch stick, joy stick and so on each used for different purposes. Although each of these pointing devices have specific advantages, the disadvantages of using all these pointing devices is that they occupy lot of desk space, clutter the table by using several cables and makes the place messy. Many inventors have tried to integrate one …

10 Inventions On Keyboard Key Switch Mechanism, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The key switches of the keyboard of a computer system are generally comprised of a key cap having a plunger, conductive rubber disposed above a membrane circuit and compressed by the plunger to trigger the membrane circuit causing it to produce an electric signal to the computer. Some key switches use springs. Some other keyboards use rubber domes or a dome sheet, which do the function of springs. When the user depresses the key button the spring or domes collapse. The key switch depresses the key stem, which actuates the button on the membrane circuit. When the user releases the …

10 Inventions On Laptop Keyboards, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A desktop keyboard has several sections like character key section, navigation key section, numeric key section, and function key section etc. each consisting of several number of keys. However, a laptop computer does not have so much of space to accommodate all these keys into the keyboard. There are several considerations while designing a laptop keyboard.

This article illustrates 10 inventions on keyboards for laptop and portable computers. The inventions are selected from US patent database. The inventions try to improve various aspects of a laptop keyboard, such as reducing size, folding and concealing, ergonomic features, improving quality and reducing …

10 Inventions On Special Type Of Keyboards, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A keyboard is the most important input device for a computer. It is used with various types and sizes of computer. But the same standard keyboard will not work efficiently with different types of computers at different environments. There is a need to develop special keyboards to meet special requirements.

This article illustrates 10 inventions on special types of keyboards. The special keyboard are used in special computers or computers used for special purposes. A special keyboard is to be understood as a keyboard having features beyond a normal keyboard. The example of special keyboards are, a children’s keyboard which …

Keyboards For Inputting Chinese Language: A Study Based On Us Patents, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

As the structure of Chinese characters are very different, it is very difficult to input Chinese characters into computer quickly and conveniently. The conventional keyboard does not support the pictorial characters in Chinese language. There are 3000 to 6000 commonly used pictorial Chinese characters (Hanzi).

There are a few existing systems which include "PinYin" (phonetic) system, a combination of the PinYin system and character form techniques, whole character encoding, stroke input encoding, and stoke form encoding. Each of the methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. This article describes two inventions on inputting Chinese language through a standard keyboard.

Avoiding Repetitive Stress Injuries By Using Ergonomically Improved Keyboards, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Most conventional keyboards are designed keeping their technical efficiency in mind and not human comfort or ergonomic aspects. This leads to various physical problems by keyboard users and more seriousness to the prolonged users.

The major physical problems caused by prolonged keyboard usage can be categorized as neck pain and stiffness, low back pain and stiffness, and strain of the wrists. These problems are caused by chairs, computer desks, and keyboard support stands that are unsuitable for the particular computer user.

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is a debilitating injury to the wrist joint which has been frequently attributed to long …

Keyboards For Inputting Japanese Language: A Study Based On Us Patents, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The most commonly used Japanese alphabets are Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. The Kanji alphabet includes pictographs or ideographic characters that were adopted from the Chinese alphabet. Hiragana is used to spell words of Japanese origin, while Katakana is used to spell words of western or other foreign origin.

Two methods are commonly used to input Japanese to the computer. One, the “kana input method” that uses a keyboard having 46 Japanese iroha (or kana) letter keys. The other method is “Roma-ji input method”, where the Japanese letters are composed of English input from a standard QWERTY keyboard. Both the methods …

10 Inventions On Collapsible Keyboards, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although a bigger keyboard is often comfortable to work with, they cannot be fit into laptop and small size computer boxes. The portable and handheld computers need small size keyboards. So there is a need to reduce the size of the keyboard to fit into the laptop box. There are various mechanisms to reduce the size of the keyboard; collapsible keyboard is one of them.

Although different inventions intend to achieve the same objective of reducing the keyboard size, they all differ in their mechanism. For example, some invention uses a compression mechanism, some invention uses a folding mechanism, and …

10 Inventions On Modular Keyboards, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

As a standard keyboard is quite spacious many inventions try to use the space of keyboard to use for various activities. A modular keyboard is designed in such a way that the components of the keyboard can be attached and detached as per the need. This article illustrates 10 inventions on modular keyboard from US patent database. The objective of these inventions is to make a keyboard modular, so that the same keyboard can be made smaller by detaching some of its components and larger by attaching additional attachments. Some modular keyboards provide slots for external attachments like mouse, telephone, …

10 Inventions On Reducing Keyboard Size, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A conventional computer keyboard consists of as many as 101 keys. The keyboard has several sections, such as text entry section, navigation section, and numeric keypad etc. and each having several keys on the keyboard. The size of the keyboard is a major inconvenience for portable computers, as they cannot be carried easily. Thus there are certain circumstances which compels to reduce the size of a keyboard. Reducing the size of a keyboard leads to several problems. A reduced size keyboard may not contain all the keys available on a full size keyboard; a reduced size keyboard may not be …

Inventions On Reducing Number Of Keys On A Computer Keyboard, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A computer keyboard consists of several sections and each section consists of several numbers of keys. The text entry section contains the standard character keys, navigation section contains cursor movement and page control keys, numeric keypad contains numeric keys and function keys section contain function keys and special keys. Although the increased number of keys helps smooth interaction with a computer there are situations where it is necessary to reduce the number of keys. The need for reducing number of keys in a keyboard creates a technical contradiction. Generally more number of keys can support more number of functions and …