Patent ID: 7299421

Claim:
A screen change control apparatus for selecting a desired screen from among a plurality of displayable screens and displaying the selected desired screen on a display device, the plurality of displayable screens being classified in advance into a plurality of screen groups in such a manner that two or more of the screens belong to each of the screen groups, each of the screens belonging to one of the screen groups, said screen change control apparatus comprising: a first operator section operable to designate a desired screen group; a processor adapted to perform first display control to cause said display device to display only respective tabs of the two or more screens belonging to the desired screen group designated via said first operator section; and a second operator section operable to designate a desired one of the tabs displayed on said display device, said second operator section comprising physical switches corresponding to the tabs, each of the physical switches being disposed near said display device in positionally corresponding relation to a tab, memory that stores, as display history information, information of the screen corresponding to the designated tab displayed on said display device, wherein said processor is further adapted to perform second display control to cause said display device to display the screen corresponding to the tab designated by operation of any one of the physical switches in said second operator section, and wherein when the tabs of the two or more screens belonging to the screen group designated via said first operator section are to be displayed on said display device, said processor performs said first display control to switch only the display of the tabs in accordance with designation by said first operator section while still keeping a last-designated screen displayed on said display device, and wherein the screens belonging to each of the screen groups is equal to or smaller in number than the physical switches, and wherein, when said first display control is to be performed in response to operation of said first operator section, the physical switches, positionally corresponding to the displayed tabs, are assigned to the displayed tabs, and wherein said processor further adapted to perform history recall control for reading out the display history information from said memory to cause said display device to display the display history information.