Unified hierarchical and tear off menus in a graphical event-driven computer system

Explicit support is provided at the system software level for application program tear-off menus in a manner that is essentially application-transparent. All menus are transformed into windows and grouped in a single menu layer for each application, greatly simplifying many of the complexities of na...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors CRAYCROFT; TIMOTHY J, CLIFFORD; DANIEL K
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 06.05.1997
Edition6
Subjects
CALCULATING
COMPUTING
COUNTING
ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
PHYSICS
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Summary:Explicit support is provided at the system software level for application program tear-off menus in a manner that is essentially application-transparent. All menus are transformed into windows and grouped in a single menu layer for each application, greatly simplifying many of the complexities of navigating through hierarchical and tear-off menus. Each application has its own menu layer that is shown and hidden as the application moves to the foreground and background. Tear-off menus, as with all menus, are hidden and shown with the menu layer, generating the desirable "floating-window" behavior. More particularly, menus are managed in a graphical, event-driven computer system having a computer display by representing the menus as windows, providing a menu layer for containing menus of a computer program, and displaying a menu. Events occurring with respect to the menu layer are detected, in response to which display of the menu is varied.
Bibliography:Application Number: US19960610518