A view control system for controlling the display of a view within an image over a computer monitor is disclosed. The system comprises a computer for displaying the view over the monitor and for scrolling the view within the image according to scrolling signals so that various portions of the image can be seen through the view, a computer mouse electrically connected to the computer through a flexible cable for controlling movements of a cursor displayed over the monitor, a view control button installed over the mouse for sensing a direction of a finger input and generating scrolling signals according to the sensed direction of the finger input and the length of time of each input to control the scrolling of the view within the image, and a bi-directional button installed over the mouse for generating a zooming signal within the scrolling signal for zooming in or out of the view within the image.
The present invention discloses a pointing device for scrolling a screen image. The pointing device comprises a chassis, a housing having an opening on its top mounted on the chassis, a vertical sensor installed on the chassis below the opening, a plurality of horizontal sensors installed on the chassis beside the vertical sensor, and a control stick vertically installed inside the opening of the housing comprising a top end and a bottom end. The bottom end of the control stick is in contact with the vertical sensor whereas the top end of the control stick protrudes from the opening of the housing and can be horizontally moved within a predetermined angle with respect to the bottom end of the control stick serving as its center. The pointing device further comprises a plate horizontally installed at the bottom end of the control stick with its bottom side positioned above the horizontal sensors. Horizontal movement of the top end of the control stick will cause corresponding movement of the plate which then causes the bottom surface of the plate to trigger at least one horizontal sensor. The pointing device also comprises a control device electrically connected to the vertical and horizontal sensors for detecting vertical movements of the control stick using the vertical sensor and generating correspondent vertical signals, and detecting horizontal movements of the control stick using the horizontal sensors and generating correspondent horizontal signals.
An automatic scrolling and paging function is provided for use with an object/text editor or a browser, in which either scrolling or paging is automatically performed at a variable speed. A delay time is set as a parameter for control of the display; automatic display of the document is commenced by displaying a first portion of the document; a subsequent portion of the document is displayed after expiration of the delay time; and the display of portions of the document is iterated until the entire document has been displayed. The delay time is reset during the automatic display, thereby changing the rate at which successive portions of the document are displayed. The delay time may depend upon the location of the portion of the document; accordingly, successive portions of the document may be automatically displayed at a varying rate.
In a computer controlled user interactive display, a system is provided for controlling cursor movement on the display screen involving a user activated cursor control device connected to said computer movable in the four orthogonal directions. The system has conventional means for converting the user activated orthogonal movements into cursor movements in said orthogonal directions on said display screen and user interactive means for scaling said cursor movements in each of said four orthogonal directions relative to the corresponding movements in said cursor control device. The invention is particularly directed to such cursor movement rate scaling in respective windows.
Prescribed areas of a track pad surface are dedicated to one or more prescribed or programmable pointing, clicking, scrolling or hot-key functions. These specialized touch sensing areas are adjacent to a main touch sensing area, and include a tactile cue such as a textured border or textured surface. A visual indication such as a label also may be used to identify the specialized function. A visual cue, such as a light, also may be generated when the user's finger is in a specialized touch sensing area. One specialized touch sensing area is dedicated to correspond to a window scrolling function adding convenience for scrolling web pages, word processing documents, tables and other content windows displayed on a computer screen. An on-off button is included to activate or deactivate the track pad operations.
A digital map display scrolling method is provided which is for successively scrolling a displayed portion of a digital map as map information in digital form within a display screen, the method comprising the steps of displaying the displayed portion of the digital map at the display screen, shifting a pointer within the displayed portion of the digital map displayed at the display screen, and making an amount by which the pointer positioned at the displayed portion is shifted correspond to the scrolling speed of the displayed portion of the digital map within the display screen.
