Supporting display of context menus in both cascaded and overlapping styles

摘要

A computing system provided according to an aspect of the present invention contains a server system operable to send a same hierarchical menu to client systems which display the sub-menus of the hierarchical menu in a overlapping style or a cascading style. As a result, the implementation of server systems supporting such client systems may be simplified. According to another aspect, an event handler is also implemented on the server system, to process the events generated by client system displaying menus in both the overlapping style and the cascading style. According to yet another aspect, a server system stores a in-memory representation of a context menu, and thereafter serves requests from different clients for the same hierarchical menu based on such in-memory representation.

主权项

1. A computing system comprising:
a server system operable to send a context menu associated with a first graphical element, said context menu containing a first sub-menu and a second sub-menu, wherein said second sub-menu is represented as a child of a parent menu item contained in said first sub-menu; a first client system to receive said context menu associated with said first graphical element, and display said first sub-menu and said second sub-menu in an overlapping style on a first display unit associated with said first client system, wherein said context menu is displayed in a first display area on said first display unit; and a second client system to also receive said context menu associated with said first graphical element, and then display said first sub-menu and said second sub-menu in a cascaded style on a second display unit associated with said second client system, wherein said context menu is displayed in a second display area on said second display unit, wherein said first display area is smaller than said second display area, wherein said second sub-menu is displayed upon selection of said parent menu item in each of said first client system and said second client system, wherein said first sub-menu and said second sub-menu are displayed in said cascading style in said first client system in view of said first display area being smaller than said second display area.