Multi-layer Application with Transparent Portion for Content Integration
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing computer applications struggle to seamlessly integrate and display content from multiple sources, such as HTML and Adobe Flash, as tools often fail to properly overlay specified content, resulting in a fragmented user experience.
Innovation Solution
A multilayer application architecture is introduced, where at least one layer is transparent, allowing content from different sources to be displayed simultaneously without overlap, with the ability to switch between active layers for enhanced interaction and visibility of both layers' content.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If content from multiple sources is combined in a single application, then content integration is improved, but tools fail to properly overlay separately specified content, resulting in a fragmented user experience
Solution Approach 1:
The application interface is divided into multiple layers, each containing content from different sources. These layers can be independently positioned and styled, allowing tools to properly overlay content while maintaining source independence. The layered structure enables precise control over which content appears where, resolving the overlay problem while preserving content integration.
Solution Approach 2:
A layering system acts as an intermediary mechanism between content from different sources and the final display. This intermediary structure allows separate content pieces to be combined seamlessly, with each layer serving as a container that mediates the interaction between different content sources and the user interface tools.
2Ease of operation
If menus are expanded to cover web content for better visibility, then menu display is improved, but underlying web content becomes hidden
Solution Approach 1:
The menu layer is made partially transparent in regions where it overlaps with web content. This local quality change allows the menu to maintain its visibility and functionality while simultaneously allowing underlying web content to remain visible through the transparent portions, preventing information loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The menu layer's transparency or opacity is adjusted in different regions to balance visibility requirements. By changing the optical properties (transparency/opacity) of the menu layer locally, both the menu and underlying web content can be simultaneously visible, resolving the conflict between menu display and content visibility.
Data Source
AI summary
An application in which a portion of a layer is transparent. When the application is a first state (with a first layer on top), a transparent portion of that layer may make a portion of a second layer visible. The first layer may include various menus and the second layer may have a feature that displays web page content in a position that overlaps the transparent portion of the first layer. In a second state, the second layer is rendered on top making the web page feature visible and accessible and, since nothing in the second layer overlays the menus, those menus are also visible and accessible. When needed, the application switches to a first state, for example, to expand a menu's display on top of (i.e., covering) some of the web content, while leaving the uncovered portion of the web content visible through the transparent portion.