TECHNICAL FIELD

The disclosed embodiments relate generally to mobile computing devices with touch-sensitive displays, particularly to computer-implemented methods and graphical user interfaces for enabling a user conveniently to point, select, and drag objects and edit content on a device with a touch-sensitive display.

BACKGROUND

Mobile computing devices with touch-sensitive displays such as smart phones and pad computing devices are two of the fastest growing categories of computing devices. These devices threaten to displace notebook and desktop computers as the preferred platform for many tasks that users engage in every day. Developers of these mobile devices have eschewed mouse and touchpad pointing devices in favor of on-screen graphical user interfaces and methods that have the user select content and edit content on touch-sensitive displays using direct manipulation of objects on the screen. Ording, et. al. describe one example of this current approach in US2010/0235770A1. However, the performance and usability of these current solutions is generally inferior to the mouse and/or touchpad based solutions commonly employed with conventional notebook and desktop devices. These current solutions do not support quick and precise pointing and selecting and dragging tasks for objects of all sizes. Whereas these current solutions support a simple task such quick selection of a single word or an entire content, they do not support quick selection of a particular item, object, character, group of characters, or group of words. In addition, they do not support equally well tasks performed at any location on the display ranging from tasks near the center of the display to those near the edge of the display. Whereas these solutions seek to support applications written for devices with touch sensitive displays, they do not support access to applications written for conventional notebooks and desktop devices designed for use with a mouse or touchpad. This effectively denies the user access to the host of applications that have been written for desktop and notebook computing devices. Furthermore, these existing solutions do not support “secondary click” actions and “mouse-over” actions commonly used in apps written for access by desktop and notebook computing devices. These existing solutions also do not support user setting of key control parameters to meet user preferences and user needs. Finally, these existing solutions do not support accessibility settings to enable the broadest set of users to access applications on these powerful devices.

We have developed methods and graphical user interfaces for pointing and selecting on computing devices with touch-sensitive displays that overcome the deficiencies of existing solutions.

SUMMARY

A method, comprising: at a mobile computing device with a touch sensitive display: displaying a pointer positioning and control icon; displaying a pointer; detecting a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon beginning at any position along a horizontal extent of the pointer positioning and control icon; and in response to detecting a change in the position of a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon from a first position to a second position: changing the position of the pointer on the touch sensitive display from a pointer first position to a pointer second position such that the change in a horizontal position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a horizontal position of the finger contact and the change in a vertical position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a vertical position of the finger contact.

A mobile computing device, comprising: a touch sensitive display; one or more processors; memory; and one or more programs, wherein the one or more programs are stored in memory and configured to be executed by the one or more processors, the one or more programs including instructions for: displaying a pointer positioning and control icon; displaying a pointer; detecting a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon beginning at any position along a horizontal extent of the pointer positioning and control icon; and in response to detecting a change in the position of a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon from a first position to a second position: changing the position of the pointer on the touch sensitive display from a pointer first position to a pointer second position such that the change in a horizontal position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a horizontal position of the finger contact and the change in a vertical position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a vertical position of the finger contact.

A computer readable storage medium storing one or more programs, the one or more programs comprising instructions, which when executed by a computing device, cause the device to: display a pointer positioning and control icon; display a pointer; detect a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon beginning at any position along a horizontal extent of the pointer positioning and control icon; and in response to detecting a change in the position of a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon from a first position to a second position: change the position of the pointer on the touch sensitive display from a pointer first position to a pointer second position such that the change in a horizontal position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a horizontal position of the finger contact and the change in a vertical position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a vertical position of the finger contact.

A graphical user interface on a computing device with a touch sensitive display, memory, and one or more processors to execute one or more programs stored in memory, the graphical user interface comprising: a pointer positioning and control icon is displayed; a pointer is displayed; finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon beginning at any position along a horizontal extent of the pointer positioning and control icon is detected; and in response to detecting a change in the position of a finger contact on the pointer positioning and control icon from a first position to a second position: the position of the pointer on the touch sensitive display is changed from a pointer first position to a pointer second position such that the change in a horizontal position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a horizontal position of the finger contact and the change in a vertical position of the pointer is proportional to the change in a vertical position of the finger contact.

We begin with a brief description of the drawings.

