The present invention relates to an electronic device having a display screen and a touch panel. More specifically, the invention relates to the electronic device in which operability at a time when a plurality of contents are selected can be improved.
Electronic devices, which have a display screen being capable of displaying various information and a touch-panel type operating unit provided on the display screen, are known.
Touch panels, which employ a finger pressure sensor system, a resistive-type system and a capacitive-type system, are known. Users visually recognize characters and images displayed on the display screen, and also can execute processing such as operating and editing data and folders (hereinafter, “contents”) according to mounted applications through tapping, double tapping, flicking, dragging or the like of the touch panels.
For example, when the application is mail software and a mail is created, contents such as image data and document data can be attached to the mail through an operation on the touch panel.
Further, in a case of music players, music data and music files can be selected by an operation on the touch panel, so as to be listened to.
When contents such as image data are attached to mails or are selected for the other operations, users should specify the contents one by one, and thus have to repeat the above operation in order to select the plurality of contents. Therefore, the operation requires time and effort, and the operability is not sufficient.
Further, so-called check boxes for enabling selection of predefined choices enable the selection of the plurality of contents. However, also in this case, radio buttons corresponding to the contents desired to be selected should be specified one by one by tapping or the like, and thus the operation requires time and effort.
Therefore, electronic devices that improve the operability at a time of sequentially selecting the plurality of contents are desired.
An electronic device according to one aspect of the present invention includes:
a display module having a display screen;
a touch panel that is provided on the display screen and accepts touch input; and
a selecting module configured to select two or more contents about which the touch input is accepted by the touch panel when a plurality of contents are displayed on the display module, wherein
when the selected contents are reselected, the selecting module cancels the selection.
A program of an electronic device according to one aspect of the present invention allows a computer of the electronic device provided with a display module having a display screen, and a touch panel, provided on the display screen, for accepting touch input, to execute
a process for selecting two or more contents about which touch input is accepted by the touch panel when the plurality of contents are displayed on the display module, and
a process for canceling the selection when the selected contents are reselected.
An electronic device control method according to one aspect of the present invention is a method for controlling the electronic device including
a display module having a display screen, and
a touch panel, provided on the display screen, for accepting touch input, the method comprising:
selecting two or more contents about which the touch panel accepts the touch input when a plurality of contents are displayed on the display module; and
canceling the selection when the selected contents are reselected.
As shown in
The electronic device 10 according to the embodiment activates one or more applications on an operating system to be a platform, and displays various information on the display screens 21 and 31. Further, a user can operate the touch panel 22 and/or the touch panel 32 to execute processing such as operating and editing.
First, a structure of the portable electronic device 10 according to the embodiment is described.
The electronic device 10 is provided with, as shown in
The display modules 20 and 30 can be constituted by coupling them by means of a coupling mechanism 40 so as to be movable relatively by opening/closing or sliding.
The number of the display modules 20 and 30 is not limited to two.
The first display module 20 and the second display module 30 are housed within casings 23 and 33 which are opened at their respective surfaces in one side, such that the display screens 21 and 31 capable of displaying information thereon can be viewed from the opened sides, as illustrated in
The display screens 21 and 31 can illustrate a liquid crystal display. The touch panels 22 and 32 that the user can manipulate by touching them with a finger tip 100 or the like are provided to the respective opening sides of the display screens 21 and 31 as shown in
The first display module 20 and the second display module 30 can be made to be movable with respect to each other through the coupling mechanism 40. Although the structure of the coupling mechanism 40 is not described in detail, this structure can be such that the first display module 20 is made to be slidable and/or rotatable with respect to the second display module 30, for example.
The electric device 10 is overall controlled by the control module 60 constituted by a CPU or the like, as illustrated in
The first touch panel 22 and the second touch panel 32 are electrically connected to the control module 60 through the first touch-panel determination module 25 and the second touch-panel determination module 35. Inputs from the user through the first touch panel 22 and the second touch panel 32 are transmitted as coordinate information to the control module 60 via the touch panel determination modules 25 and 35, and the control module 60 edits the information on the display screens 21 and 31 and performs the operation in accordance with the input.
The touch panels 22 and 32 accept operations through a user's finger 100, a stylus pen or the like. Examples of the operations accepted by the touch panels 22 and 32 are tapping to be performed by touching the touch panels 22 and 32 for a comparatively short time and then releasing the finger from the touch panels 22 and 32, double tapping to be performed by tapping two times within a predetermined time, so-called dragging to be performed by moving a content selected on the touch panels 22 and 32 with it being touched, and so-called flicking to be performed by touching the touch panels 22 and 32 and then quickly brushing off. Another examples of the operations are so-called pinching to be performed by touching the touch panels 22 and 32 with two fingers and changing a distance between the fingers, so-called long touching to be performed by long-pressing one position of the touch panels 22 and 32, and so-called sliding (swiping) to be performed by touching the touch panels 22 and 32 and tracing the touch panels 22 and 32.
The first display screen 21 and the second display screen 31 are electrically connected to the control module 60, and can display various kinds of information related to operating system and application software to be used.
The operating system incorporated in the electronic device 10 is operated by an operating system control module 70 which is electrically connected to the control module 60. The operating system is a system that serves as an interface for applications and is adapted to perform activation and completion of applications, adjustment of the sound volume, displaying of the time of day, alarm setting, and other system operations.
Further, such various types of applications which are activated by the electronic device 10 are operated by an application control module 71 which is electrically connected to the control module 60, through the operating system. As such applications, mail software, a music player, a browser, and viewer software can be exemplified.
The electronic device 10 can operate the control module 60 or the like and activate an operating system and application to display contents (see step 1 in a flowchart of
The electronic device 10 can display an image, an icon, a file name or a folder as contents instead of a thumbnail, or each folder name where contents are stored.
Concrete examples of contents are a list of data such as image data that can be attached to a created mail when mail software is activated, a list of music data in a case of a music player, a list of links (bookmark) in a case of a browser, and a list of image data and moving image data in a case of viewer software.
Contents can be stored in the memory 61 that is a storage module electrically connected to the control module 60. The memory 61 stores these contents and also the operating system, the applications and programs for performing various operations of the electronic device 10 and the following operations therein.
The selecting module 72 selects two or more contents through the user's operation on the touch panels 22 and 32 with the contents being displayed on the display screens 21 and 31 (see
When the user touches the touch panels 22 and 32 with the finger 100 or the like with the contents being displayed on the display screens 21 and 31 (step 3) and the contents display positions of the display screens 21 and 31 correspond with touched positions (step 4), the selecting module 72 selects and extracts the contents sequentially, and creates a list of the extracted two or more contents.
More concretely, when signals are input into the touch panel determination modules 25 and 35 by a user's operation on the touch panels 22 and 32 (step 3), the selecting module 72 executes a contents selecting process described later (steps 5 to 7).
The contents selecting process is a process for sequentially selecting, as shown in
A flow of the selecting process to be executed by the electronic device 10 is described below more concretely. When contents are present on the route through the sliding operation, the selecting module 72 selects the corresponding contents (step 5).
For example, as indicated by a solid line L in
When the user performs the sliding operation on the touch panels 22 and 32 and traces the same content twice, the same content is selected redundantly more than once (see selecting order of
In a case where the thumbnails 80 and the icons of the contents are arranged on a plurality of screens, it is desirable that when the finger 100 or the like is slid to the ends of the display screens 21 and 31 with the touch panels 22 and 32 being touched or the ends of the display screens 21 and 31 are touched for a predetermined time (step 8), the sliding (swiping) operation is continued on the next screen on which the sliding is not currently performed (step 9).
The selecting module 72 sequentially selects the contents until the user completes the sliding operation. The sliding operation is regarded as being completed, for example, when the user releases the finger 100 or the like from the touch panels 22 and 32 (step 10), and the contents selected in the contents selecting process can be defined (step 11). In the above mode, the selecting module 72 creates a list of the selected contents. The list created by the selecting module 72 is stored in the memory 61. The user can use the list created by the selecting module 72 for attachment to a mail (see
When the user restarts the sliding operation within a predetermined time (for example, 3 seconds) after the sliding operation is completed, the electronic device 10 may continue the contents selecting process with return to step 3 in the flowchart of
Further, when any contents selected by the user are reselected within a predetermined time after the sliding operation is completed, the electronic device 10 may execute a process for deleting the reselected contents from the list.
As shown in
As a result, since the user can select two or more contents through an intuitive operation while visually recognizing the thumbnails 80 of the contents, the operability is improved as much as possible.
In this state, as shown in the flowchart of
Therefore, the user can replay the registered playlists to listen to desired music files in the desired order.
In a case of a music file or the like, since the play order according to user's fondness is important, it is suitable to create a list in the selected order.
When the mail creating operation is input by the user as shown at step 21 in
Since the operation of tracing the touch panel is recognized as another operation such as dragging in some applications, a button 95 for acknowledging that the sequence goes to the process for selecting contents is provided in the present invention.
When the user operates the acknowledge button 95, the electronic device 10 moves to display of a file list screen 97 with check boxes 96 as shown in
Before the content is confirmed, it maybe checked whether the content selected by a pop-up 99 may be attached.
After the content is attached to a mail, when the user selects mail transmission on the mail creating screen (step 26), the mail to which the content is attached is transmitted (step 27).
In the embodiment shown in the drawing, the upper display screen 21 displays a moving-image replay screen, and the lower display screen 31 displays a list 90a of moving images searched in the Internet or the like and a filename 90b of a created bookmark list.
When a moving image is selected in the manner in the flowchart of
According to the present invention, the user can select two or more contents only by tracing desired contents, and can create a list according to the order. Since this operation is extremely intuitive, the operability can be improved as much as possible.
Naturally, the present invention is not limited to the above mail software and music player application, and can be applied also to a browser, viewer software and the like.
For example, when a plurality of image files are displayed on a browser, the electronic device 10 may change saving order of the image files according to the tracing order, and when a plurality of links are displayed, the electronic device 10 may determine a link that is opened next according to the tracing order. Further, the link may be opened on another window according to the link tracing order.
In the electronic device of the present invention, also when the user desires to delete two or more contents collectively, the contents desired to be deleted are selected by sequential tracing. In this case, since the selection order is not required information, an order storing process is omitted.
As described above, since two or more contents can be selected by the intuitive operation, the electronic device 10 that can be easily operated sensuously can be provided to the user.
In the above embodiment, when the user selects two or more contents through sliding on the touch panels 22 and 32 with the finger 100 or the like, the selecting module 72 executes the contents selecting process for sequentially selecting desired contents on the route.
In this embodiment, when the user sequentially touches the touch panels 22 and 32 with the finger 100 or the like (for example, tapping), the contents selecting process selects the contents in the input order.
Description about modules overlapping with the above embodiment is omitted, and the same symbols indicate the same members and the same steps unless otherwise noted.
Similarly to the flowchart of
When the user touches the touch panels 22 and 32 with the finger 100 or the like (step 3) in a state that the contents are displayed on the display screens 21 and 31, and display positions of the contents on the display screens 21 and 31 match with the touched positions (step 4), the selecting module 72 selects and extracts the contents so as to create a list of the contents. The list is stored in the memory 61 (storage module) such as a cache memory.
More concretely, when signals are transmitted to the touch panel determining modules 25 and 35 by a user's operation on the touch panels 22 and 32 (step 3), the selecting module 72 executes a contents selecting process described below (steps 5 to 7).
The contents selecting process is, as shown in
When a content is present on the tapped position, the selecting module 72 selects the corresponding content (step 5).
For example, as indicated by a solid line L in
It is desirable that the electronic device 10 blinks the selected thumbnail 80 or displays an outer frame on an outer periphery of the thumbnail 80 in order that the user easily recognizes the selection.
Further, as shown in
When contents are selected twice or more at the time of sliding, the same content is selected more than once (see the selection order in
In the case where the thumbnails 80 and the icons of contents are arranged over a plurality of screens, it is desirable that when flicking on the ends of the display screens 21 and 31 or touching on the ends of the display screens 21 and 31 for a predetermined time is accepted (step 8), scrolling to the next screen is performed and the selecting operation is continued (step 9).
The above process is continued until the user completes the selection of desired contents. For example, when the contents selection at step 1 is carried out within a predetermined time (for example, for 3 seconds), the selecting operation is continued, and after the predetermined time passes, the selecting operation is regarded as being ended (step 10′), so that contents selected in the contents selecting process can be defined (step 11). As a result, the selecting module 72 creates a list of the selected contents. The user can use the created list for attachment to a mail (see
Further, after the contents selecting process by the electronic device 10 is completed, by reselecting any contents selected by the user through tapping or the like within a predetermined time, the reselected contents may be deleted from the list.
As shown in
As a result, since the user can select two or more contents through an intuitive operation while visually recognizing the thumbnails 80 of the contents, the operability is improved as much as possible.
The electronic device 10 of the present invention can execute the above process through a program.
The present invention is useful as the electronic device in which a plurality of contents can be selected through an intuitive operation and the operability is excellent.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2011-098046 | Apr 2011 | JP | national |
2011-098047 | Apr 2011 | JP | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/JP2012/061098 | 4/25/2012 | WO | 00 | 12/30/2013 |