Apple awarded patent for user interface items (the Dock)
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Oct 8, 2008 at 1:24pm
Apple has been awarded a patent (number 7434177) for an user interface for providing consolidation and access with the US Patent & Trademark Office. It’s for the Dock in Mac OS X.
Methods and systems for providing graphical user interfaces are described. To provide greater access and consolidation to frequently used items in the graphical user interface, a userbar is established which includes a plurality of item representations. To permit a greater number of items to reside in the userbar, a magnification function can be provided which magnifies items within the userbar when they are proximate the cursor associated with the graphical user interface.
The inventors are Bas Ording, Steve Jobs and Donald J. Lindsay.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
