Patent ID: 8407612

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for pinning a tab in a tab group element of a multi-document application, the method comprising: an act of providing a multi-document interface, the multiple document interface comprising: a view area configured to display one document at a time, even if multiple documents are opened in the multi-document application; and a tab group element configured to display a plurality of tabs, each tab comprising a control that permits a corresponding document to be visualized in the view area, wherein if there are too many tabs to be displayed simultaneously in the tab group element, the multi-document interface displays a subset of the plurality of tabs along with a navigation control for navigating through the plurality of tabs to change which subset is displayed in the tab group element; an act of detecting a user selection to pin a selected tab of the plurality of tab groups; an act of assigning a pin status to the selected tab in response to the act of detecting, wherein the pin status gives the selected tab higher protection against being hidden when there are more tabs in the tab group element than are capable of being simultaneously displayed in the tab group element; in response to the act of detecting, an act of persisting the pin status of the selected tab in a manner that the pin status survives closing and reloading of the multi-document application; providing a configuration interface control which is user selectable for selecting a display setting for controlling whether the selected tab will be positioned in a same row within the tab group element with one or more other tabs that have an unassigned pin status or, alternatively, whether the selected tab will be placed in a different row than the one or more other tabs having the unassigned pin status; and displaying the selected tab in either the same row or the different row according to the display setting.