David H Huynh

US Patent:

7725837, May 25, 2010

Filed:

Mar 31, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/096615

Inventors:

Curtis G. Wong - Medina WA, US
David F. Huynh - Cambridge MA, US
Patrick M. Baudisch - Seattle WA, US
Steven M. Drucker - Bellevue WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 3/048

US Classification:

715815, 715720, 715721, 715838

Abstract:

The present subject matter describes a browser for efficiently presenting and browsing a large digital photograph collection. The browser includes a graphical interface—referred to as a time quilt—that combines a wrappable timeline with a space filling layout. Thumbnails representing individual images or clusters of images are laid out chronologically in columns, from top to bottom. When the bottom of a column is reached, a new column is started to the right of the existing column(s). Semantic zooming is used wherein zooming in on a thumbnail image that represents a cluster renders thumbnails of images in the cluster when the thumbnails of the images can be rendered in a legible size. Tiered zooming is also described, which is semantic zooming on multiple levels—representative thumbnails give way to clusters of representative thumbnails that each represent an image or a cluster of images.