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Apple Files Patent for Translucent Windows
jpkunst writes "John Kheit at Mac Observer reports on US Patent Application No. 20040090467, published on May 13, 2004, in which Apple filed a patent application for 'Graduated visual and manipulative translucency for windows.'" Begin the hunt for prior art! It's a challenge to find a non-Apple translucent window that isn't just a snippet of desktop wallpaper pasted in the background.
Or are we all going to change our stance because its Apple?
It'll be interesting to see how the opinions on Slashdot differ from if any other company tried this sort of garbage.
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?rele ase_id=142811
Trillian also has it, but I don't know when they added it. I thought win2k also had it built in when it came out.
Yeah, I've got some windows with graduated transparency that can be manipulated. They're in my FREAKIN' CAR.
Enlightenment?
OS/2 Warp 4 Betas offered translucent windows. The feature was removed from the final release for performance reasons. Hardware just wasn't quite there in '95 to support that feature. As least that's my recollection of it.
I know that the enlightenment window manager had translucent windows in the late 90's. Anyone have a time stamped picture from way back then? Perhaps in the internet way back archives...
even EverQuest uses those in their current UI.
http://home.insightbb.com/~ryanvm/tinyutilities/vi trite/
Vitrite allows you to do this with any Win32 Window (on 2k, XP, etc).
FLR
See MacSlash for more of them
and the announcement that Longhorn will feature a heavily translucent interface -- Aero Glass?
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Translucency has been around for a while, but Apple is filing for time dependent translucency. E-term had that?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I only briefly skimmed the article, but it seems to me that this isn't as broad as it initially seems.
:)
The translucency can be graduated so that, over time, if the window's contents remain unchanged, the window becomes more translucent. In addition to visual translucency, windows according to the present invention also have a manipulative translucent quality. Upon reaching a certain level of visual translucency, user input in the region of the window is interpreted as an operation on the underlying objects rather than the contents of the overlaying window.
So, the windows fade with time (if they are not used much), and the windows below are phased above the fading window... Rather than just plain old tinted windows.
I personally have never experienced anything like this, it sounds like it could be useful... or maybe I'm just behind the times
Here's a screen shot I have from 1998: http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/new/linux/handogod_med .jpg
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
It's not a patent for visual translucency, but 'manipulative' translucency :
...
If the contents of a window don't change for a preset amount of time the window becomes visualy translucent, but also all user input goes to the underlying (and now visible !) window
(take from MacSlash.com comments)
"it's my understanding that apple has a powerful patent on the use of "alpha" channels. the claim is that alpha-channels were invented by the NeXT team back in 1988.
apple of course now owns NeXT, which may explain why they think they can beat the prior art.
K."
Hey everybody, this is NOT a patent on translucent windows. It is a patent on fading windows. That's right, it covers windows that fade over time as their content remains static. Once their translucency reaches a certain point, they no longer receive focus from user input, instead it passes to the underlying UI elements.
Imagine if your console log was set to full screen, but behaved in this manner. As long as nothing is logged the window gradually fades out and you can use your other windows. As soon as something is logged it becomes more opaque and accepts user input again.
I suppose more people click on patent articles if they sound ridiculously easy to find prior art for or otherwise abusive, but this one actually sounds innovative.
Methods and systems for providing graphical user interfaces are described. overlaid, Information-bearing windows whose contents remain unchanged for a predetermined period of time become translucent. The translucency can be graduated so that, over time, if the window's contents remain unchanged, the window becomes more translucent. In addition to visual translucency, windows according to the present invention also have a manipulative translucent quality. Upon reaching a certain level of visual translucency, user input in the region of the window is interpreted as an operation on the underlying objects rather than the contents of the overlaying window.
Yes, software patents are evil...so lets do the right thing and not claim that every transparent xterm hack qualifies as 'prior art'.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Applying more and more sophistocated graphical rendering techniques to graphical user interfaces should not be patentable. The reason they weren't used twenty years ago isn't that NO ONE thought of it, its because of performance advances since then.
How unique is software in being incumbered by BOTH patents and copyright?
Last I checked the anger around here doesn't seem to be outrage at companies holding patents. It's outrage at companies using patents.
Apple patents practically everything they work with but very, very, very rarely uses any of these patents. In fact if you look at their intellectual property actions, some of them are kind of morally dubious but they almost never involve patents. Even when they're making legal threats against things which actually violate patents they hold-- for example, Aqua skins for other OSes-- they tend to choose to base their legal complaints on means other than patents, other forms of intellectual property.
Since history shows that Apple tends not to use patents they hold, I don't see any problem with them holding a bad patent. This is probably just the old "defensive patent" technique, where someone patents something just to make sure no one else can claim it was stolen, or to build up a "patent shield".
Of course, it's very easy that someday all the big software companies could choose to start using their defensive patents offensively, and the patent shields would become a shieldwall blocking any small companies from entering the business. But at the moment that's just a hypothetical, and Apple has no more or fewer frivolous patents than any other large software company, pretty much. We don't get pissy at those other such companies, for example IBM. Therefore not getting pissy at Apple would appear to be the consistent thing to do?
But the prior art search is still a good idea! It's good to have these things as clearly documented as possible in case spurious claims ever did wind up happening.
Apple is a company owned by their shareholders; the same with Microsoft, IBM, etc. And their behavior isn't all that different, except one little detail: one of them is a monopoly.
If some kind of behavior is legal (even if someone don't like it too much) for a smaller company, one that owns 90%+ of the market can't behave the same way.
now for the "control both the hw and sw" myth... Apple just uses an older business model, where they assemble a machine and it's OS (hw is basically a PC's, with the difference of an IBM/Motorola RISC chip).
But this is true, that Apple "is not your friend". The same with MS, and IBM and HP, Dell, Sun, etc. Companies are not "friends", they are businesses and they will choose one course of action over another to make $$ or, at most, sometimes to win some goodwill (and probably someone is measuring this in $$ terms).
Time dependent translucency?? Wow, hook a timer to ramp the window translucency up or down. That took about 10 seconds of work. If I control it by the phase of the Moon, can I patent that?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This isn't simply "translucent windows." Hell, you can do that in WinXP and 2000 with third-party software. This is different:
"Information-bearing windows whose contents remain unchanged for a predetermined period of time become translucent. The translucency can be graduated so that, over time, if the window's contents remain unchanged, the window becomes more translucent. In addition to visual translucency, windows according to the present invention also have a manipulative translucent quality. Upon reaching a certain level of visual translucency, user input in the region of the window is interpreted as an operation on the underlying objects rather than the contents of the overlaying window."
If you're going to go looking for prior art, that's what you need to find: windows that become more translucent as more time passes where you're not doing anything to them, and that eventually become so translucent that when you go to click on them, you're instead able to click on desktop objects behind the window.
While I don't think that this is particularly deserving of a patent, it is neat, and so far as I can tell, novel. It's not just "translucent windows."
"Translucency has been around for a while, but Apple is filing for time dependent translucency."
Translucent windows?
(looks outdoors)
How are they new again?
Yes, someone who RTFA!
For crying out loud, they are attempting to patent a very particular behavior of a window. One that I have NEVER seen used in an OS or app before, so I doubt you will find prior art specific enough to invalidate the patent.
This does do something interesting though... give people a peek into what is coming up in MacOS X 10.4
That's right, Win2K had it at least since 1999, and I'm absolutely sure there are much earlier examples.
Well atleast it updates when completely moved.
Perhaps (just guessing) Eterm doesnt qualify because of the way the "transparancy" was accieved. Afaik, every Eterm had in memory a copy of the background image, and just painted the approperiate part as it's (Eterms) backgroud. So it did NOT "read" the actual background imaging, it just painted the background picture.
As a result, if you had multiple windows on top of each other, all showed the background, while on "Terminal.app" (OS X), the transparancy shows underlying windows, apps, graphics et al.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
worse even because they control both the hardware and software
And you think that Microsoft dont control both the hardware and the software? (and that's not all else they control either!) Im amazed you are that shortsighted.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
translucent windows. Its a system where windows become more translucent as time goes on, and you can actually work with the window underneath.
This is not obvious, and simply having windows that are translucent probably not violate this patent.
Translucency is simply a color modification is not patentable. What they are talking about is a process for adaptive translucent windows that alter not just appearance but condition as well.
That being said...most software patents suck.
I hate to offer this as prior art, but Everquest has had time-dependent transparency for over a year. I personally think it's a pain in the ass, but it works.
You mouse over a window and it becomes however opaque you want (based on your settings). Then if you move your mouse off the window, after a user-defined period the window becomes as much more transparent as the user has defined. Defaults were something like 100% opaque, then after 5 seconds, 50% transparent.
There's probably prior prior art, but I don't know based on time.
There was a tool for Windows called Vitrix or something that would allow the user to easily set transparency, but now I can't find it. And it wasn't time-dependent.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
jpkunst, I know you were in a hurry to get a story submitted to and accepted by slashdot. I can imagine the scene now; Palms moist, you rush to type a compelling, FUD-spreading (same thing, around these parts) story which will be sure to get your story accepted! And in your mad rush, you don't even bother to read the patent application. If you're going to link something, you should really read it in its entirety to find out if it contradicts your story.
If you want to complain about Apple patenting translucent windows, perhaps you should examine U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,432, entitled "Method and Apparatus for Providing Translucent Images on a Computer Display", which is referred in Patent application 20040090467 (your link.) This patent was granted September 7, 1999 (filed April 11, 1997.) That appears to be a patent on software transparency by blending layers done by the CPU, which is to say it does not compete with hardware transparency.
True laziness is a virtue. Your brand, however, leaves something to be desired.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nope, even if Apple had translucent windows before anyone else, they would have had to apply for a patent on the technique within 1 year of public release or even that is valid prior art for the current patent. Of course, as another poster said, they aren't simply patenting translucent windows (well, not entirely clause 26 is), but fading out windows over time. One of the comments on that page also pointed out that this is out virtually every On Screen Display menu works. And even that is bloody obvious to someone mildly skilled in the art.
And "spring loaded folders" I don't know how many times the topic has come up on the nautilus devel list by non-coders who have no idea that such a feature is implemented on the Mac. So not only is that particular patent obvious to a practitioner of the art, but to a complete novice in the art. Stupid USPTO.
Let's hope that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth.
Microsoft, IBM, and others have been stockpiling their software patents for years.. and now of late, it seems, that Apple has decided to join the fray.
I just want to know when we're finally going to go nuclear (nuculer?) with the back and forth patent infringment suits - because that's when the shits really gonna hit the fan.
And i wonder - has is not already begun? IBM, while clearly in the right wrt SCO and Linux begs the question... they "launched" a few tactical nukes in that little debate with their 8 or so patent infringment suits... while we cheer them on... should we not do so with a bit of trepidation?
Software patents are screwy and stupid... and its not going to take much pushing and shoving for all hell to break loose...
or is that for all lawyers to start raking in the dough as the cost of the judicial branch makes the US military budget look like a blip on the radar. We'll have to start cloning humans just to make enough lawyers.
Do you think that it will be "Global Thermonuclear War", where one side who's far less defenseless as SCO will actually shoot back - and then everyone starts shooting at everyone with patent infringment suits? Or will it be more gradual?
Either way... i think i should ditch this communications and networking gig, and go become a lawyer.... it soon may be the only actual viable non-outsourced job left in America by 2010.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
are we all going to change our stance because its Apple?
Well, yeah. It's called reputation and it doesn't appear out of thin air; a company needs a good PR team and competitive products to earn it.
Don't worry though, the system is self-fixing - if they annoy their customers beyond a certain point or start behaving like really bad kids, you'll get more Apple-bashing than you can handle. After all, and IIRC that was what happened in the pre-Jobs-comeback era, when the Apple is dying trolls ran rampant.
Sailors. Oh man!
READ THE FUCKING PATENT. It's not enough just to be translucent. It has to allow stuff like becoming transparent to user input over time as well.
Patents are supposed to be for specific implementations, not conecpts. In software specific implementations (the code) are already covered by copyright and trade secrets. Here it is being used to say that noone but Patentholder may make something that does X. Only in computing do we allow such control of concepts.
What if everything was done this way? "Sorry FooCo has a patent on cars with three doors, you can't put that rear door on your truck." "Sorry BarCorp has a patent on methods of displaying text on a screen, you'll have to stick with the teletype or license from them."This is why software patents just don't make sense.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The existence of a patent can have a chilling effect on innovation, even if you don't use it (would you build your house on a remote-control landmine - even if the person that planted it promised they wouldn't press the button?).
"I can understand why though, without their GUI to set them apart what do they really have to offer?"
Well, they've got this thing where the power button is on the keyboard.
And you get to Think Different
Oh, and the iPod. Don't forget the iPod. Which is eardelicious!
Apple is wonderful. Sigh.
Disclaimer: I'm equally opposed to software patents as everyone else here is, I just want to corrent some misinformation here.
I do not want to spoil the fun here, but this patent is in fact not about translucent windows, so anyone here posting about prior art in the respect is basically Off Topic.
Instead, the patent basically describes the overlays Apple has been using for certain system functions like increasing/decreasing brightness (whenever you press the corressponding buttons on the keyboard an overlay shows up, displaying the current volume, and then slowly fades away again unless you press the key again). The patent exactly describes the Apple OSDs, even if maybe in a bit of general way, so it could probably be applied to similarly behaving ordinary windows.
A comparable programm would e.g. be "xosd" and prior art would probably be best searched for in TVs and other appliances using on-screen-displays.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.................
Apple had a relatively new look and feel in the personal
computer arena.
Microsoft said hey, we should license this.
Apple said OK, license it for Windows 286 and/or 2.0 and
continued to develop the interface.
Apple continued to develop the interface while Microsoft
continued to develop the interface to DOS.
Apple made great strides in the gui department while Microsoft
continued to develop a new version of Windows with these
unlicensed enhancements.
Apple cried foul, Microsoft released Windows 3.
Apple sued.
Why are the patenting this? its new and they would like to implement it in their products without concern or loss in R&D
as it is quite clear that Microsoft has no problems rolling innovation into their products, problem is it isn't their innovation.
JMHO and some will take this as flame bait but as long as the software model is 'we charge you to use this';
for profit businesses need some form of remedy to protect themselves from the Microsofts of this planet.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Here it is - Vitrite
This isn't time-dependent, but it is very handy.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
They even defend against that in the blurb. Eterm just pastes a relative bit of the desktop background in it. Move your "transparent" Eterm over another window, and what do you see? Your desktop background. Move a transparent OS X window over your browser window, and what do you see? Your browser.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Apple isn't patenting "translucent windows", they are patenting a specific method for choosing to make windows translucent. The method seems pretty hokey to me (windows automatically become more translucent over time and eventually let events pass through), and probably has horrible usability problems. I can just see the support calls: "but my Microsoft Word window was there a few minutes ago, and after I came back from getting a cup of coffee it was just gone".
In this wonderful world of software patents, the patent may be valid, but it is not relevant to anything real.
If you want to read about good uses of translucency in user interfaces, see this survey from 1994 (long before OS X).
...so typical, it almost seems like a troll. I believe this is what the grandparent poster was looking for.
but if Apple doesn't patent this some other company might. Given Apple's involment in the open source community with Darwin, http://www.opensource.apple.com/ , I would rather see them with a patent for this than some company based on patents only.
This is the usual Apple apology. Apple is the "good" company, and otherwise "bad" behavior is OK for them to pursue, since an evil company might patent it first, and we all know that Apple never does anything evil. Oh, and they're involved in open source, too, which makes them even more of a "good" company, unlike some other evil companies who aren't involved in supporting open source at all.
It's all fairly typical of the excuse making by Apple followers who otherwise masquerade as FOSS zealots in other threads.
It's going to be a lot harder to find prior art for this one.
Yes: that's because it's probably a bad idea. People have looked at use/time-dependent changes of window state or appearance before, but they have never become popular. You can probably still dig up some prior art from the HCI literature if you really care. Many bad patents are just not worth fighting, however.
Nice. Someone who READ the patent instead of just commenting on the stupid summary. This is a VERY SPECIFIC method of USING translucent windows. Not just "a patent on translucent windows."
This is essentially a patent on a context-sensitive user interface, where windows become more or less opaque based on how many windows are open and how many are layered, and whether or not the user interfaces with them. I imagine this would look very cool and be fairly usable.
There are applications that can turn transparent over time.
There are applications that you can click through if they are transparent.
If you can find an application that does both then go ahead and submit it as prior art otherwise as far as the patent office is concerned, it's a "novel" idea.
BTW those ideas of yours are GREAT!
*runs to go patent them*
The only reason most implementations of 'transparency' isn't 'real' (only one layer and/or non-realistic blending and/or not affecting certain surfaces (such as video) is because the CPU/GPUs haven't been fast enought to implement it, not because no-one thought of it.
Very true. In 1999 (.com boom heydey) the company I was working for hired a graphic design company to come up with a new "look" to our product. The designs that came back looked kind of average, but notably included windows with alpha blended backgrounds. Since I was the lead Human Interface / User Interface guy, it fell on me to prototype the design.
IIRC I just extended JInternalFrame and used Graphics2D's alpha-blended drawing capabilities. It took me maybe two hours from when I started thinking about it until I had a working demo.
It didn't seem that novel at the time. I don't know of anybody else who did it. But it didn't make it out of the prototype phase because, well, Java - at least back then - was dog slow at doing this sort of image processing.
This isn't exactly what apple patented, but I know at least 5 years ago I was toying around with the idea but stopped for exactly what you said: The CPU just wasn't fast enough.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
In 1992 I was working on a Radar Display project which used Barco graphics generators on Sony 20kx20k displays with two screens, front and back.
The back screen held the flight information, and the front held the information windows. It was possible to make the front windows fade to invisible if required (outline only left). Sounds like a graduated window to me.
This was an absolute piece of piss in X using the PEXLib extensions BTW.
Having transparent or translucent windows was pretty common in Radar Display system, both commercial and military.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I can do this in WinAMP - the window fades out when I don't use it for a couple of seconds.. .. when did they put that feature in?
Neko
If slashdot was around when Edison was alive, someone here would claim that his lightbulb patents were invalid because the sun was prior art.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Apple must do this. If you look at the "new" features of longhorn, nearly every one has been done by Apple for years with OS X. Apple has been using translucent windows, expose window management, drop shadows for windows and auto discovery networking....all of which MS announced as breakthrough technologies that THEY are rolling out in Longhorn. These are just a few examples there are more.
Apple has been bitten once my MS knocking off the GUI and other Mac elements. This time around it will not be so easy. Remember it is also up to Apple if they wish to enforce this patent, or with whom they wish to enforce it.
Judging by the abstract, the window needs to be inactive for a certain time before becoming translucent, and the translucency becomes greater the longer the window remains unchanged.
I don't think any software patents are good. However, *if* software patents are permissable, this is a novel application of a concept and I would think that the implementation meets the standards for patentability.
I still don't think it should be patentable, however.
This is a VERY SPECIFIC method of USING translucent windows. Not just "a patent on translucent windows."
Just to sumarize, the idea of translucent windows certainly isn't new. People have tried doing something that would resemble translucent windows. But because of performance considerations and limitations in the graphics system used, the result wasn't perfect. But I think even a nonperfect implementation would qualify as prior art as far as the idea is concerned. Had the patent been about a specific algorithm to implement translucent windows more efficiently, it would certainly have made sense. Actually I think what it takes to make efficient translucent windows is hardware, not software. So I have mentioned two things the patent could have been about: The idea of using translucent windows or an efficient way to implement them. But it turns out there is really a third option, the patent is actually about an application of translucent windows. AFAIK there are some minimum requirements to patents, you shouldn't be able to patent something obvious. And personally I think the efficient translucence is a better invention than some application of it.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
It doesn't matter. The graphics card is a black box. The implementation of it's compositing is irrelevant to OS X. Compositing in the graphics card may mean producing a final frame buffer, or it may mean doing it on the fly. Just because the Amiga was blitting chucks of memory about 15 years ago doesn't mean that it is necessarily the way it must be done now. Nor does it mean that was the way it was always done before the Amiga. The Atari 400/800 predated the Amiga, and it's "player missile graphics" were never incorporated into the frame buffer. Nor did many games systems with sprites - GameBoy for example. Go back even further and Pong didn't even have a frame buffer.
I am neither a patent agent nor a lawyer, but I have read about the patent process and learned the following:
U.S. patent applications always name one or more individual inventors, and they usually name an assignee. Engineers' employment contracts typically require an employee to name her employer as assignee in any patent on an invention developed with the employer's resources. The shorthand "Foo Corp filed a patent for the baz process" means "An employee of Foo Corp filed a patent for the baz process, using a patent lawyer retained by Foo Corp, naming Foo Corp as assignee."
A) I count 20 so far, mostly modded "insightful", and not one of them modded "redundant"
I know it's a pain, but as well as reading the title of the story, try and read the first 5 or so comments to see that all 5 of them are discussing the point that you're just about to make. Please.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
based on reading just the title, Microsoft has applied for a few.
My favorite title is "Universal Computing Device".
20040093593 Software componentization
20040093568 Handwritten file names
20040093515 Cross platform network authentication and authorization model
20040093393 System and method for selecting a media file for a mobile device
20040093389 Light weight file I/O over system area networks
20040093372 Challenge and response interaction between client and server computing devices
20040093371 Memory bound functions for spam deterrence and the like
20040092297 Personal mobile computing device having antenna microphone and speech detection for improved speech recognition
20040090457 System and apparatus for sending complete responses to truncated electronic mail messages on a mobile device
20040088657 Method for selecting a font
20040088589 System and method for preserving state data of a personal computer in a standby state in the event of an AC power failure
20040088537 Method and apparatus for traversing a translation device with a security protocol
20040088394 On-line wizard entry point management computer system and method
20040088390 Method and levels of ping notification
20040088335 Method and system for ghosting a property during synchronization
20040088321 Method and system for modifying schema definitions
20040086191 Passive embedded interaction code
20040086181 Active embedded interaction code
20040085523 Pen projection display
20040085468 Photo-sensor array with pixel-level signal comparison
20040085370 Input mode selector on a mobile device
20040085364 Page bar control
20040085358 Glow highlighting as an ink attribute
20040085302 Statistical model for global localization
20040085287 Decoding and error correction in 2-D arrays
20040085286 Universal computing device
20040083460 Forward walking through binary code to determine offsets for stack walking
20040080499 Adaptive input pen mode selection
20040080482 Display controller permitting connection of multiple displays with a single video cable
20040078792 System and method for selectively deactivating auto-deploy functionality of a software input panel
20040078597 Automatic client authentication for a wireless network protected by PEAP, EAP-TLS, or other extensible authentication protocols
20040078581 Installation of black box for trusted component for digital rights management (DRM) on computing device
20040078565 Method for prompting a user to install and execute an unauthenticated computer application
20040078460 Network connection setup procedure for traffic admission control and implicit network bandwidth reservation
20040078383 Navigating media content via groups within a playlist
20040078382 Adaptive menu system for media players
20040078357 Optimizing media player memory during rendering
20040078356 Method for selecting terms from vocabularies in a category-based system
20040077314 Bluetooth smart mode switching for security and privacy
20040076069 System and method for initializing a memory device from block oriented NAND flash
20040075696 System and method for automatic mnemonic assignment
20040075695 Method and apparatus for providing context menus on a hand-held device
20040075687 System and method for managing a message view
20040075673 System and method for scaling data according to an optimal width for display on a mobile device
20040075672 System and method for block scaling data to fit a screen on a mobile device
20040075671 System and method for scaling images to fit a screen on a mobile device according to a non-linear scale factor
20040075648 System and method for inputting special characters
20040075623 Method and system for displaying images on multiple monitors
20040073873 Adaptive image formatting control
20040073872 System and method for converting between text format and outline format
It's not a patent on translucent windows, it's a patent for using graduated levels of translucency instead of active/inactive window coloring schemes. From what I've read, it appears that the longer you go without performing actions in the window, the more translucent it becomes, to the point where you can "click through" it and input into whatever object is underneath.
This particular interface feature would be incredibly annoying and confusing to people with less than perfect eyesight, so I hope that Apple defends its patent and that it never appears outside of Apple's software.
If it was simply an attempt to patent translucent windows, it would be easy to knock down. Some games use translucent pop-ups in their interfaces via D3D / OpenGL.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Personally, I would like a windowing system whose windows sank or rose to different levels, reordering themselves based on which applications had the most interesting content. Applications steal focus all the time so that wouldn't change anything; Perhaps in a system like this you could more easily enforce a rule about applications not stealing focus. The focussed application would always be pulled immediately to the top, with a title bar button provided to send it back to its rightful place in the hierarchy so you can get back to what you were doing. Windows could be scaled, dimmed, and made translucent to varying degrees to convey the impression of depth, up until the point when the retinal scanning interface becomes the norm, making it easy to project quality stereo images. (I hereby abdicate all copyright on this idea and place the concept in the public domain. That ought to take care of any of those pesky patents. Will someone please implement this now?) :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They are trying to patent the ability to turn one window transparent, and manipulate the windows under it, without the transparent window 'dropping' below the ones you are manipulating.
I dont think that type of thing has ever been done before...
Perhaps software patents should have a much shorter life span? (say, 3 years?) it would give the company that 'discovered' it time to develop the 'technology' first, but wouldent blanket the whole computing industry for too long
And the whole reason I should have to do that is, what now? So companies like Apple can monopolize things that other people have done before/could easily come up with themselves/is so fucking obvious the patent examiner should be shot...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
if you're using OS X to read this, and have a keyboard with volume up/down keys on it, this is for you:
press one of the volume buttons on your keyboard.
note the translucent display element indicating the current system volume - a gray, lozenge-shaped "window" to use the generic term for such things. notice that you can interact with the other interface elements behind it with the mouse/keyboard. note that, after a period of inactivity (after you let go of the volume adjustment key) the interface element indicating the current volume slowly fades to transparent.
ta. da.
if you're not, however, using OS X and/or have never seen this in the wild, this patent will pretty much assure you that the same thing won't show up on a windows box near you any time soon.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Do you suppose Microsoft patented Transparent Government and that's why we can't have one?
...but they weren't dynamic as Apple's are.
Even so, X has had backing store for years. You can't tell me translucency isn't the "logical next step."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Prior art? Glass2k under windows 2k. It works just fine. Maybe a little hard on older hardware.
What Apple has come up with is a pretty interesting idea... a window that slowly gets more transparent as you ignore it, and after a certain point it ignores user inputs, which are then passed to the next window behind it. I'm not sure it's a good idea, but it is an interesting one, and definitely is a novel one.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It's a challenge to find a non-Apple translucent window that isn't just a snippet of desktop wallpaper pasted in the background.
It wouldn't matter if you did. The patent is not directed to just any translucent windows. The application acknowledges that there exist various prior art methods to draw objects, including windows, translucently, inlcuding methods they patented years ago.
The application appears to be directed more particularly to the user interface device of having a window's translucency be a function of the amount of time that has passed since the content most recently changed.
Weird but true. Outlook 2003 shows small windows in the bottom left corner of the screen with just the subject and sender when an e-mail arrives. That small window starts solid then goes increasingly translucent until it disappears. If you hover your mouse over it, it goes solid again and starts fading again if you move your mouse away.
S im pleDemo.html
Regardless, it's not worthy of a patent. For Apple or Microsoft.
But (unrelated) the real genius comes once more from PARC: magic lenses. Which isn't even new.
They do so much more than being translucent: they change visual properties of the data underneath.
It may not serve as prior art (because they don't fade over time), but certainly makes Apple look like a fool for trying to patent something so basic and stupid.
http://www2.parc.com/istl/projects/MagicLenses/
And there's a nice Java demo:
http://www2.parc.com/istl/projects/MagicLenses/
Not too long after Commodore crashed-and-burned, I saw some stuff that was being done vis-a-vis the AmigaOS GUI that involved translucency. I have lost my archives from that time, unfortunately, but it is much as described here. IIRC, one aspect was that the translucency could vary with mouse movement as well, so as a user moved "off" a window with the mouse, the transparency could increase to make the partially-hidden underlying window more visible.
I wonder if this will have an adverse effect on Sun's Project Looking Glass?
You misunderstand what the "bad" behavior is. Holding the patent isn't it. It's what gets done with it.
How about this? Or this? That took only about a minute of googling to find.