Patent Application
20180373424
The present invention relates to electronic products and, in particular, to a method and an apparatus for dynamically switching a keyboard background of a virtual keyboard on an electronic device.
Nowadays, with the popularity of smartphones, tablets and other touch screen electronic devices, the touch screen technology has become increasingly familiar to us. These touch screen electronic devices are usually equipped with virtual keyboards for users to perform human-computer interactions such as typing or selection. As a typing tool, it is important for a virtual keyboard to allow accurate and speed typing. However, when it is invoked in the touch screen electronic device, the virtual keyboard itself takes up at least one third of the screen area, so its background picture would be unignorably to the user.
Conventional virtual keyboards typically employ a default picture as the background or provide a number of static pictures for the users to choose one therefrom as the background. However, apparently, this could not satisfy the users' need for personalization.
The present invention is aim to provide a method and an apparatus for dynamically switching a keyboard background, so as to meet the users' need for a personalized keyboard background with fewer resources.
To this end, some embodiments of the present invention provide a method for dynamically switching a keyboard background, comprising: monitoring a parameter associated with switching the keyboard background and determining whether to trigger a dynamic switching of the keyboard background; and when it is determined to trigger a dynamic switching of the keyboard background, obtaining an unused picture corresponding to a designated view from respective background packages and replacing a picture being currently used in the designated view with said unused picture.
According to an aspect of the present invention, the parameter associated with switching the keyboard background may include a system parameter indicating a time or condition for dynamically switching the keyboard background or a user action. The system parameter may include a system time, or the type of an application for which the keyboard is currently invoked, or the number of times the keyboard has been invoked. The user action may include: a particular motion, or a motion made on a particular location, or a motion made on a particular location in a particular application.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the designated view may be a parent view adapted to carry a keyboard view and a menu/candidate view. Deploying the dynamically switchable background picture in the parent view and transparentizing the keyboard view and menu/candidate view in the parent view allow that only one picture for the menu/candidate view is deployed all the background packages. This results in great reductions in required resources and increased efficiency. In addition, the pictures in the background packages may be adapted to be displayed in the parent view.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, the present invention also relates to a device for dynamically switching a keyboard background. The device includes: monitoring device, adapted to monitor a parameter associated with switching the keyboard background; triggering device, adapted to determine whether to trigger a dynamic switching of the keyboard background based on the associated parameter obtained by the monitoring device and send out a triggering instruction when it is determined to trigger a dynamic switching of the keyboard background; replacement device, adapted to receive the triggering instruction from the triggering device, obtain unused pictures corresponding to a designated view from respective background packages and replace a picture being currently used in the designated view with one of the unused pictures; and storage device, adapted to store the background packages.
Compared with the prior art, a parameter associated with switching the keyboard background is configured and monitored in accordance with the present invention so as to allow switching the background between several preset background pictures and thereby providing the user with better personalization experience. In addition, according to the present invention, a dynamically switchable background picture is deployed in the parent view and the keyboard view and menu/candidate view carried in the parent view are transparentized. In this way, full use of the space of the parent view is enabled and the number of necessary pictures in the background packages is reduced by one half, with only one picture for the menu/candidate view being required for all the background packages. This results in significant reductions in the storage burden and workload.
Before describing embodiments of the present invention in detail, it should be noted that these embodiments are primarily directed to combinations of method steps and device components for dynamically switching a background of a virtual keyboard used in a touch screen electronic device. These device components and method steps are shown at proper positions of the accompanying drawings and indicated at conventional numerals in such a manner that only their details related to understanding the embodiments of the invention are presented in order to avoid obscuring the present disclosure by the details apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art who benefit from the present invention.
As used herein, the terms “first”, “second” and so on are intended only to distinguish one entity or action from another without necessarily requiring or implying that these entities actually have such a relationship or that these actions are actually carried out in such an order. In addition, the terms “comprise”, “include” or any other variation thereof are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion. As such, a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of features is not necessarily limited only to those features but may include other features not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus.
The foregoing objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of several specific embodiments which is to be read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Herein, the term “view” is defined in a broad sense and includes a way of viewing a picture or text. In embodiments of the present invention, as a default, a view can be implemented by a virtual table containing named columns and rows, with data in the columns and rows configured to freely define tables referenced during a query of the view and dynamically generate any input component with a definite area. Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the present invention is not limited to any particular implementation of a view.
Reference is now made to
The processor 12 may be a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU) or another suitable information processing device. Depending on the type of hardware employed, the processor 12 may include one or more printed circuit boards and/or one or more microprocessors. The processor 12 may execute computer program instructions to implement a plurality of methods described in detail below.
The interactive interface 14 may receive user input data and output data. The interactive interface 14 may include a touch screen display adapted to display a plurality of views and background pictures deployed in the views.
The memory 16 may include a random access memory (RAM) and/or a read only memory (ROM). The processor 12 may store computer program instructions in the memory 16 and read necessary computer program instructions from memory 16 and execute them. For example, the memory 16 may store one or more software programs. Further, the memory 16 may store the entire or part of a software program to be executed by the processor 12.
In specific embodiments, the storage device 18 may be adapted to store mass data such as, for example, background packages and configuration parameters used to dynamically switch a keyboard background. The storage device 18 may also store software programs executable by one or more processors 12. The storage device 18 may include one or more magnetic storage media such as hard drives, one or more optical storage media such as compact discs (CDs), recordable CDs (CD-Rs), rewritable CDs (CD±RWs), DVDs, recordable DVD (DVD±Rs) or Blu-ray DVDs, one or more semiconductor storage media such as flash memories, SD cards or memory sticks, or other suitable computer-readable media. Furthermore, the storage device 18 may be deployed either locally or on a cloud server.
Referring to
in step S1, monitoring a parameter associated with switching the keyboard background and determining whether to trigger a switching of the keyboard background; and
in step S2, when it is determined to trigger a dynamic switching of the keyboard background, obtaining unused pictures corresponding to a designated view from respective background packages and replacing a picture being currently used in the designated view with one of the unused pictures.
In particular, the parameter associated with the keyboard background is configured to indicate a timing or condition for triggering a dynamic switching of the keyboard background. It may include a system parameter or a user action. The system parameter may include a system time, or the type of an application for which the keyboard is currently invoked, or the number of times the keyboard has been invoked, etc. The user action may include a specific motion such as, for example, drawing a circle or swiping to the left, to the right, upward or downward on the screen with a finger or contact device, or holding the electronic device with a hand and turning it from side to side or shaking it, or manipulating, for example, tapping, pressing or making another motion on, a specific location of the screen with a finger or contact device. In addition, the system parameter may be combined with the user action for, for example, a particular application or a particular location.
Step S1 may further include determining whether a condition for triggering a dynamic switching is satisfied based on the system parameter or user action.
In one embodiment, the determination step may further include: comparing a monitored system time T1 with a time T2 at which the last switching of the keyboard background occurred and determining whether the difference between them exceeds a predetermined time interval Tth. When the determination is positive, a switching is triggered. The time interval may be set beforehand by the user in accordance with his/her preferences. For example, a switching of the keyboard background may be triggered every 5 minutes, every 4 hours, every 1 day or every 1 week.
In another embodiment, the number of times the keyboard has been invoked may be checked to determine whether it is greater than a predetermined threshold value. When the determination is positive, a switching is triggered. Specifically, the determination step may further include: recording the number of times the keyboard has been invoked and triggering a switching of the keyboard background when the number exceeds the predetermined threshold value. The number of times the keyboard has been invoked may be counted so that, for instance, when it reaches the predetermined threshold value of 20, and when the keyboard is then again invoked, i.e., for the 21st time, a switching of the keyboard background is triggered during its invocation. Further, after a switching of the keyboard background is triggered, the recorded number of times the keyboard has been invoked may be reset to zero.
In a further embodiment, the determination step may include: checking an application for which the keyboard is invoked and triggering a switching of the keyboard background when the application is a pre-designated one and activated. For example, a switching of the keyboard background may be triggered when it is detected that the SMS service or Twitter that invokes the keyboard is activated. Alternatively, it may also be configured that, when a certain application, for example, a mail service, is activated, the keyboard background is not switched. Specifically, the current location of a focus may be monitored, and when it enters an input field of an application, invocation of the keyboard may be triggered and the type of the application may be obtained based on the current location of the focus.
In a further embodiment, the determination step may further include: detecting a location currently manipulated by the user or a motion currently made thereby and determining whether the location or motion is a predefined triggering location or motion. For example, the user can set a particular motion for triggering a dynamic switching of the keyboard background, such as, for example, drawing a circle, a square, a triangle, a self-defined shape or another specific shape on the screen with a finger or contact device, or swiping to the left, to the right, upward or downward on the screen, or holding the electronic device with a hand and flipping or shaking it. The predefined triggering location may include the location of a space key or that of another designated key in the keyboard. Here, since a manipulation corresponding to a designated key is usually associated with a character corresponding to the key, in practical implementations, when the location of a designated key is configured as a trigger, it is generally combined with a particular motion apart from tapping, pressing or swiping. For example, with reference to ” which means switching).
In a further embodiment, monitoring the parameter associated with the keyboard background may further include monitoring received information. For example, referring to
Unlike the conventional manual practice, in some embodiments of the present invention, a parameter associated with causing a switching of the keyboard background may be configured and monitored so as to switch the background between several preset background pictures and thereby provide the user with better personalization experience. For example, the keyboard background can be automatically switched at a particular time, or in a particular time interval, or when the number of times the keyboard has been invoked reaches a predetermined threshold value or when a particular application is activated and invokes the keyboard. As a result, the background picture of the keyboard can be switched without requiring additional user interactions.
According to another embodiment of the method for dynamically switching a keyboard background, step S1 may further include: customizing the associated parameter. Specifically, the user may configure the time or condition for triggering a dynamic switching based on his/her preferences. Alternatively, the associated parameter may be a default parameter which can be modified by the user to trigger a dynamic switching in a more desirable way.
According to a further embodiment of the method, step S1 may further include: storing the associated parameter and, after the keyboard is reset, restoring settings for dynamically switching the keyboard background based on the stored associated parameter. The associated parameter may be either stored locally or in a cloud server. In the latter case, the step may further include uploading the associated parameter to the cloud server and, when it is needed to restore the configuration of the keyboard, downloading the associated parameter to the local device.
Subsequently, after a trigger for switching the keyboard background is detected, step S2 is performed.
Invocation of the keyboard typically involves constructing a plurality of views. With reference to
According to an embodiment of the present invention, step S2 may further include: obtaining a parent view of the keyboard and replacing a picture currently used in the parent view with an unused picture in a background package corresponding to the parent view.
Step S2 may further include: configuring the pictures in the background packages so that they are adapted to be displayed in the parent view. For example, pictures in background packages are typically uniformly sized, while the size of the parent view may vary with a resolution of the used screen. For example, the size of the parent view when it is displayed on a 320×480 screen is significantly different from that when it is displayed on a 1080×1920 screen. Thus, in order to ensure high quality of the displayed picture, it is necessary to adjust the size of the pictures in the background packages according to that of the parent view.
In order to make the conventionally invisible background picture in the parent view able to be seen by the user, step S2 may further include: transparentizing the keyboard view and the menu/candidate view in the parent view. In this way, the user will not be affected when the background picture in the parent view is switched to another.
In one embodiment, the transparentization may include: configuring settings of the keyboard and menu/candidate views so that they each gain a certain degree of transparency. For example, a transparentized color may be represented by a hexadecimal value, for example, in the format of “aabbggrr”, where “aa” indicates the transparency; “bb”, the blueness, “gg”, the greenness, and “rr”, the redness. In addition, an “aa” value of “00” (the decimal 0) device that the color is completely transparentized, while an “aa” value of “ff” (the decimal 255) indicates that the color is not transparentized at all. Setting the value indicating the degree of transparency, i.e., “aa”, for example, in the range of “00” to “7f” will make the keyboard and menu/candidate views appear transparent or translucent.
In another embodiment, the transparentization may include: deploying a picture with a preset degree of transparency in each of the keyboard view and the menu/candidate view. According to this embodiment, no matter how many background packages are contained in a single set of background packages, only one common picture rather than respective pictures is needed for each of the keyboard view and the menu/candidate view, achieving a mitigated storage burden and increased efficiency.
In addition, replacing the picture in step S2 may further include: marking each picture in the background packages, upon detection of a trigger for dynamically switching the keyboard background, comparing the current picture with all the pictures in the background packages and replacing the current picture with one of the other pictures. In another embodiment, replacing the picture in step S2 may include: marking only the current picture, and upon detection of a trigger for dynamically switching the keyboard background, replacing the current picture with an unmarked picture in the background packages.
Referring to
The designated view may be a parent view adapted to carry a keyboard view and a menu/candidate view.
Additionally, the monitoring device 210 may also be adapted to obtain a system parameter indicative of a timing or condition for triggering a dynamic switching of the keyboard background or a user action. The system parameter may be a system time, or an application for which the keyboard is currently invoked, or the number of times the keyboard has been invoked. The user action may be a particular motion currently made by the user or a motion made by the user at a particular location. The system parameter may also be combined with the user action for, for example, a particular application or a specific location. The storage device 240 may be further adapted to store previously recorded associated parameters, for example, the system time at which the previous dynamic switching of the keyboard background was triggered, or the number of times the keyboard has been invoked, or user-defined settings for particular motions or locations.
The replacement device 230 may further include a background picture configuration unit adapted to configure the pictures in the background packages so that they are adapted to be displayed in the parent view. Specifically, the background picture configuration unit may obtain a resolution of the device screen and configured configure the pictures in the background packages based on the obtain resolution.
The replacement device 230 may further include a transparentization unit adapted to transparentize the keyboard view and menu/candidate view in the parent view. Specifically, the transparentization unit may be adapted to configure display settings of the keyboard view and menu/candidate view so that they each have a predetermined degree of transparency or deploying a picture with a preset degree of transparency in each of the keyboard view and menu/candidate view.
Referring to
Further, referring to
Furthermore, the user-defined associated parameters stored in the storage device 340 may be downloaded to the local device and used to restore user-defined settings for the local device after it is refreshed or rooted.
Compared with the prior art, a parameter associated with switching the keyboard background is configured and monitored in accordance with the present invention so as to allow switching the background between several preset background pictures and thereby providing the user with better personalization experience. In addition, according to the present invention, a dynamically switchable background picture is deployed in the parent view and the keyboard view and menu/candidate view carried in the parent view are transparentized. In this way, full use of the space of the parent view is enabled and the number of necessary pictures in the background packages is reduced by one half, with only one picture for the menu/candidate view being required for all the background packages. This results in significant reductions in the storage burden and workload.
Although the present invention has been described above with reference to specific embodiments, it is apparent that various modifications and changes may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive. It is noted that many modifications and additions may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the teachings of the present invention, and such modifications and additions are intended to be included within the scope of the present invention. All equivalent changes such as alternations, modifications and variations made in light of the above disclosure by those familiar with the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention are all considered as equivalent embodiments of the present invention. Accordingly, all equivalent changes such as alternations, modifications and variations made to the disclosed embodiments in accordance with the essential principles of the present invention fall within the scope of the invention.
Further, all the nouns, object titles, terms and expressions mentioned throughout this application (including but not limited to the claims, specification, drawings, abstract and selected drawing sections) are not limited to their singular senses, but also covers the plural senses when appropriate as well as any other possible sense subject to expressional limitations of the language used. Accordingly, expressional limitations of the language used in the original application documents have no impact on the scope of their translations in any other language.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 201510078845.7 | Feb 2015 | CN | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/CN2016/070375 | 1/7/2016 | WO | 00 |
