Portable electronic apparatus and associated method

Abstract

A portable electronic apparatus including a touch-sensitive display on a first side surface of the apparatus housing; a first input device arranged to be actuated with a first digit of a hand of a typical user; a second input device arranged to be actuated with a second digit of the hand of the typical user, allowing the user to operate at least the first input device and the second input device without change of grip; and a controller coupled to the touch-sensitive display, the first input device and second input device, the controller displaying content on the touch-sensitive display. The controller can affect the display of content on the touch-sensitive display in a first manner when the first input is actuated and to affect the display of content on the touch-sensitive display in a second manner when the second input is actuated.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This application claims priority from, and is a Continuation-in-part application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 135,624, filed on May 23, 2005, status pending.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The disclosed embodiments generally relate to portable electronic equipment, and more particularly to a pocket computer having a graphical user interface. The disclosed embodiments also relate to various methods of operating the user interface. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Pocket computers with graphical user interfaces have become increasingly popular in recent years. Perhaps the most common example of a pocket computer is a personal digital assistant (PDA), which may be embodied in various different forms. Some pocket computers resemble laptop personal computers but in a miniaturized scale, i.e. they comprise a graphical display and a small hardware keyboard. The graphical display is typically touch-sensitive and may be operated by way ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0035] In view of the above, it would be advantageous to solve or at least reduce the above-identified and other problems and shortcomings with the prior art, and to provide improvements to a pocket computer.

[0048] The receiving a first input and the receiving a second input may be performed without an intermediate change of grip of the hand by the user.

Problems solved by technology

It is well known in the field that because of the noticeably limited resources of pocket computers, in terms of physical size, display size, data processing power and input device, compared to laptop or desktop computers, user interface solutions known from laptop or desktop computers are generally not applicable or relevant for pocket computers.

An issue thus arises of how to be able to provide a way for the user to pan and select data in the same document, as the method of dragging is used in both cases.

However, this method is cumbersome and inconvenient, forcing the user to know or recognize which mode is currently active each time the user wishes to perform either a text selection operation or a panning operation.

Consequently, there is a problem in how to provide a simple and intuitive way for a user to select data in a manner distinct from the conventional drag-method.

Because of the size and limited user interface of pocket computers, they are limited in the graphical user interface in general, and in the way multiple selection may be provided in list elements, in particular.

Discontinuous multiple selection is not possible with this method.

In handheld devices, however, available display space is limited and there is most often no free space where to drag the window.

This makes some important use cases (e.g. checking a telephone number from an underlying application view to input it in the active window) impossible to perform.

Firstly, the movement of the dialog affects performance adversely.

Secondly, if the dialog is very large, i.e. occupies most of the visible display area, dragging the window can be inconvenient for the user, as he / she may have to drag the window across a large part of the whole display.

This may result in a situation where the user drags the dialog outside the visible display area, which instantly prevents any further interaction with the dialog.

Thus the user can not close the dialog and may have to restart the application, which may result in a data loss.

In handheld devices usable with stylus, the conventional interaction required for scrolling content, i.e. press stylus down on the scroll bar and drag horizontally or vertically, is very tiring for the hand, as the scroll bars may be positioned anywhere on the display, providing no physical support to alleviate scrolling.

Moreover, in a handheld device, because of limited display space, the scroll bars are typically quite small (thin) and may therefore be difficult to hit with a stylus—particularly if the handheld device is used in a moving environment.

This leads to poor overall hardware ergonomics during scrolling and can be very disturbing for the overall user experience of the device.

Most hand-held devices do not support multiple windows, nor do they provide for closing of applications.

In summary, a problem with the prior art in this respect is how to efficiently and intuitively switch between running applications on a hand-held device such as a pocket computer.

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