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On July 12 the Patent Office processed a patent application from Microsoft filed on the 9th of February, 2006 of what appears to be a possible alternative for the decade-old taskbar we all know and cherish in Windows.



Time and time again, Windows enthusiasts have jumped on the idea of replacing the taskbar in the ‘next’ version of Windows as one of the most revolutionary user interface changes Microsoft can make. For Windows Vista (Longhorn), the center of attention was the sidebar before undergoing major feature-reduction surgery in 2005 - a lot of people fantasized about how the sidebar could become the taskbar replacement, however that soon worn-off.

Microsoft Research VIBEThis time around a bunch of Microsoft Researchers have come up with a way to manage multi-tasking windows by the use of what they call a “clipping list”. The inventors, Tara Matthews, George Robertson, Mary Czerwinski and Desney Tan are all except Tara, part of the infamous MSR VIBE (Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment) project aimed at enhancing information presentation and work efficiency. Ironically, they can’t seem to do the same for the website - it’s renders horribly in Firefox.

Their proposed solution, one of many I’d imagine, detailed in over 30 or so odd pages can be summarized as thumbnails with an icon - “A clipping comprises an image of a region of a window and an icon.” To picture what that might look like, imagine each of your minimized application buttons represented by a ’tile’ and an overlaid icon with text. These tiles would then be stacked vertically on the side of the screen looking somewhat a sidebar. The following diagrams were provided.



A task bar containing icons is a way to manage windows for a plurality of tasks by representing the windows with images smaller than the windows. A more effective way to manage windows is to use “clippings.” A clipping comprises an image and an icon. The image in a clipping is a region of a window with which the clipping is associated. The icon represents the application with which the window is associated. Clippings “distill” the information contained in a window to make it easier for users to quickly understand the status of the window and the task for which the window was created.