Patent Application
20110173533
This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Taiwanese Patent Application No. 098120269, filed Jun. 17, 2009, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operation method of a touch screen, and more particularly to a touch operation method and an operation method of an electronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the market of various consumable electronic products, touch panels have been widely applied into various portable electronic products, such as personal digital assistant (PDA), mobile phone, notebook computer and tablet computer, etc., to be used as an interface tool for communicating data. In addition, the current electronic products are designed to be more light, thin, short and small, thus the electronic products have no enough space to contain conventional input devices, such as keyboard or mouse, etc. More particularly to the tablet computer with the humanized design, the touch panels have been a crucial component. Furthermore, the touch panels further have many humanized operation modes, such as the functions of the keyboard or the mouse, and the handwriting input, etc., except displaying multi-level menus. More particularly, the touch panels can integrate the input function and the output function into a same interface (screen), which cannot be performed by the conventional input devices.
In conventional touch screens, when users operate files in the electronic devices, they may perform a selection in a menu displayed on the touch screens or employ hardware operating-keys on the electronic devices to perform relative operations. Thus, the conventional touch screens only can list a common connatural function menu of general documents or files, and cannot display different function menus according to the different attributes of the documents or the files. When the users operate the touch screens, they should switch the menus and the objects reiteratively. Thus if touching wrongly in the process, the relative operation even may be performed again.
To solve the above problem, a U.S. Pat. No. 7,479,949 discloses an operation method of a touch screen. The operation method of the touch screen employs a single-dot or multi-dots touching mode to operate the touch screen. For the multi-dots touching mode, the users can employ moving tracks of two fingers on the touch screen to zoom in and zoom out pictures displayed on the touch screen. For the single-dot touching mode, the users can employ a left-moving of a finger to view the files in a previous-page or employ a right-moving of a finger to view the files in the previous-page. The above operation method is convenient in use, but the users must remember a plurality of operation gestures in advance. Furthermore, when the electronic devices judge the operation gestures, they may misjudge the operation gestures because the strength of touching the objects is not enough or the direction thereof is deviated, thus the users must perform the operation gestures again.
The present invention relates to a touch operation method, which outputs a floating menu when a touch screen is touched, such that users can easily operates the touch screen to reduce wrong operations of giving gestures.
The present invention also relates to an operation method of an electronic device, which make users smoothly operate the electronic device without remembering operation gestures of the electronic device, to effectually improve a convenience of a touch screen.
A touch operation method in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention is adapted for a touch screen. The touch operation method comprises judging whether an await-selection object displayed on the touch screen is touched; outputting a floating menu corresponding to an attribute of the await-selection object when a touch time period of touching the await-selection object lasts for a first determined time period; judging whether one of a plurality of menu fields in the floating menu is selected, and performing a first instruction corresponding to the selected menu field when one of the menu fields in the floating menu is selected; and performing a second instruction corresponding to the selected menu field when a touch time period of selecting the selected menu field lasts for a second predetermined time period.
In an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the step of outputting the floating menu comprises outputting the floating menu on the basis of a touch point of touching the await-selection object.
In an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the step of performing the second instruction corresponding to the selected menu field when the touch time period of selecting the selected menu field lasts for the second predetermined time period, comprises judging whether the selected menu field is still uninterruptedly selected after the touch time period of selecting the selected menu field lasts for the second predetermined time period; and repeating the second instruction every a predetermined time interval when the selected menu field is still uninterruptedly selected.
An operation method of an electronic device in accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the present invention is provided. The electronic device comprises a touch screen, and the touch screen displays at least one await-selection object. The operation method of the electronic device comprises outputting a floating menu corresponding to an attribute of the await-selection object when a touch time period of touching the await-selection object lasts for a first predetermined time period; performing a first instruction corresponding to a selected menu field when a touch time period of selecting one of a plurality of menu fields in the floating menu does not last for a second predetermined time period, and performing a second instruction corresponding to the selected menu field when the touch time period of selecting the selected menu field lasts for the second predetermined time period. The first predetermined time period is less than the second predetermined time period.
The present invention outputs the floating menu when the touch screen is touched, thus the users can easily operate the electronic device without remembering the operation gestures of the electronic device. Therefore the present invention not only can reduce the wrong operations of giving the operation gestures, but also can effectually improve the using convenience of the touch screen.
These and other features and advantages of the various embodiments disclosed herein will be better understood with respect to the following description and drawings, in which like numbers refer to like parts throughout, and in which:
Reference will now be made to the drawings to describe exemplary embodiments of the present touch operation method and the present operation method of the electronic device, in detail. The following description is given by way of example, and not limitation.
Please refer to
In an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, the await-selection object may be a photo, a video file, a document file, an email, or other file which may be freely viewed or edited by the users.
In this exemplary embodiment, when the await-selection object is outputted to the touch screen, the electronic device judges whether the await-selection object is touched (a step S104). Please refer to
When the coordinate position of the touch point is located in a range of an await-selection object, the electronic device defines the await-selection object is selected by the users (a step S210) and returns to the step S104. On the contrary, when the coordinate position of the touch point is not located in the range of any of the await-selection objects, the electronic device defines the users do not select any of the await-selection object and returns to the step S202.
Referring to
In this exemplary embodiment, after determining the touched await-selection object, the touch operation method will search a floating menu corresponding to the await-selection object in a database of the electronic device according to an attribute of the await-selection object (a step S110). The await-selection objects with different attributes have different floating menus. For example, comparing photo files with video files, the photo files have functions of zooming in, zooming out and rotating, and the video files do not have those functions. On the contrary, the video files have functions of playing, fast-forwarding and rewinding, and the photo files do not have those functions.
After searching the corresponding floating menu, the electronic device outputs the floating menu to the touch screen (a step S112). A mode for outputting the floating menu may be outputting the floating menu on the basis of a touch point of touching the await-selection object, and outputting the floating menu to a central position of the touch screen or outputting menu fields in the floating menu to different corners of the touch screen. The floating menu generally comprises a plurality of menu fields. Then the electronic device judges which of the menu fields in the floating menu is selected (a step S114).
In the step S114, a method may be regarding the touch point as an original point when outputting the floating menu, and only applying lateral stresses on the original point to select different menu fields without employing the finger of the users to touch the menu fields. For example, initially the position of the original point is a central position of the floating menu, that is, a central menu field in the center of the floating menu (which may be indicated by reversed out, to make the users know the current position). When the stress applied to the original point is judged to be a later stress which an applied-stress direction thereof is towards a lower edge of an image, the electronic device determines the menu field selected by the users is a menu field below the central menu field (which one of the menu fields below the central menu field is determined by an existent time of the lateral stress and how often does the electronic device judge). Therefore, the users can employ the lateral stresses with the various directions to select different menu fields. When the electronic device detects the lateral stress of the original point, the later stress performs a direction-index operation to obtain a direction index. Then a corresponding menu field is defined as the selected menu field according to the direction of the direction index and the length of the pressed time period.
When determining the selected menu field in the step S114, the electronic device performs a corresponding first instruction according to the function represented by the selected menu field (a step S116). Secondly, the operation method judges whether the original menu field is selected (a step S117). That is, the electronic device judges whether the users continuously select the same menu field. When the users continuously select the same menu field, the electronic device will further judge whether a touch time period of selecting the selected menu field lasts for a second predetermined time period (a step S118).
The step of judging whether the original menu field is selected may be performing the coordinate-converting operation for the touch-position data after the electronic device receives the touch-position data to obtain the coordinate position of the current touch point. Then the operation method judges whether the coordinate position of the current touch point is located in the range of the menu field which has performed the first instruction. When judging the coordinate position of the current touch point is located in the range of the menu field which has performed the first instruction, it defines the original menu field is continuously selected. In addition, when the coordinate position of the current touch point is not located in the range of the menu field which has performed the first instruction, the electronic device only performs the first instruction and returns the step S114. When the floating menu is not touched and a non-touch time period thereof lasts for a third predetermined time period, it will close the floating menu (a step S122) and return the step S104. On the contrary, when the non-touch time period of not touching the floating menu does not last for the third predetermined time period, it will returns the step S114 and judges whether having a menu field which is selected. If no menu field is selected, the step S120 is performed.
In this exemplary embodiment, when the touch time period of selecting the selected menu field lasts for the second predetermined time period, the electronic device performs a second instruction corresponding to the selected menu field. The first instruction may be same to the second instruction, or different with the second instruction, which is determined by needs of designers.
After performing the second instruction, the electronic device uninterruptedly judges whether the selected menu field is continuously selected (a step S126). The judging mode is performing the coordinate-converting operation for the touch-position data after the electronic device receives the touch-position data to obtain the coordinate position of the current touch point. Then the operation method judges whether the coordinate position of the current touch point is located in the range of the selected menu field. When judging the coordinate position of the current touch point is located in the range of the selected menu field, the second instruction is repeated every a predetermined time interval. On the contrary, when the selected menu field is not continuously selected, the step S120 is performed.
Please refer to
Referring to
Please refer to
In this exemplary embodiment, when outputting the menu fields 412a˜412d, the electronic device moves the await-selection object 404 to a central position of the touch screen 402, and moves the await-selection objects 406˜410 to edges of the touch screen 402. This is only an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, but is still determined by the needs of the designers in actual.
In
In
In summary, the touch operation method and the operation method of the electronic device of the present invention output a floating menu when the touch screen is touched. Thus the users can easily operate the electronic device without remembering the operation gestures of the electronic device. Therefore, the touch operation method and the operation method of the electronic device not only can reduce the wrong operations of giving the operation gestures, but also can improve the using convenience of the touch screen.
The above description is given by way of example, and not limitation. Given the above disclosure, one skilled in the art could devise variations that are within the scope and spirit of the invention disclosed herein, including configurations ways of the recessed portions and materials and/or designs of the attaching structures. Further, the various features of the embodiments disclosed herein can be used alone, or in varying combinations with each other and are not intended to be limited to the specific combination described herein. Thus, the scope of the claims is not to be limited by the illustrated embodiments.
