Other Computer 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 …

Toward A User-Centered I2-Enabled Collaborative Learning And Teaching Environment: The Cal Poly Scandinavian Style Participatory Design Project, Helen Y. Chu, Franz Kurfess, David Gillette, Craig Schultz, Mary Somerville, Marita Holst, Peter Lundkvist, Anita Mirijamdotter, Robert Sundlof, Seppo Tanskanen, Markus Tiburzi

Helen Y. Chu

Information Technology Services and the University Library partnered to build an Internet2-enabled Learning Commons (LC) at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. The project team now extends the campus partnership model to include student and faculty users in collaboratively applying Scandinavian style co-design methodologies for physical and virtual learning and teaching environments. The interactive design approach was tested from January to June 2005 with funding from a U.S. Office of Naval Research Internet2 MiniGrant subcontract award. The project evaluated the efficacy of an interactive design/redesign methodology for encouraging user-driven, boundary-crossing information exchange and knowledge creation. Involving graduate and …

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 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 …