We have been reporting about Microsoft’s innovations related to the upcoming foldable Surface Centaurus as revealed in Microsoft’s patents. Now another Microsoft patent has more details about how Microsoft has planned to create the navigation user interface for user-generated content on a foldable device.
The patent first describes the challenge faced in content navigation on a hinged device when the volume of such content is high.
In an example, the user can use the hinged device to generate content, such as notes, journal entries, documents, and so on. Some users can generate volumes of content, such as by creating daily journal entries over many years. Some users may not organize their created content, and thus finding specific content within their created content can be challenging and time consuming. This can detract from user enjoyment and lead to user frustration when using these types of devices.
Then the solution has been provided in the form of semantics which can be described as “sections” of the content. The patent also talks about the hinge being used as the input mechanism for navigation.
Techniques for navigational aid for a hinged device via semantic abstraction are described. Generally, the techniques described herein improve a user experience when the user is navigating through content, such as user-generated content in an electronic document. For example, the techniques described herein semantically abstract authored content in an electronic document to provide abstracted content. In implementations, abstracted content includes abstracted pages that each represent a different section of the authored content. When a user scans through an electronic document, rather than scanning page by page, techniques described herein instead navigate through displays of the abstracted pages. In addition, a hinge between different displays can be used as an input mechanism to control a speed of navigating through the abstracted pages to allow a user to more easily locate specific sections of the authored content.
The foldable Centaurus device has seen its share of tech media coverage in the last few days, as Microsoft is claimed to readying it for launch in Q1 or H1 2020. Microsoft’s foldable Centaurus device, as per a report will be powered by the Intel Lakefield processor. But another report claimed that Centaurus hardware has many configurations under testing. Some of the protos have Intel processors while others have ARM processors.
