Patent ID: 8015504

Claim:
A method of displaying information from a plurality of programs, comprising: displaying a console window on a display screen, the console window including a plurality of windows displaying information from the plurality of programs, at least some of the plurality of windows each comprising information from different ones of the plurality of programs from others of said plurality of windows, wherein a first window of the plurality of windows displays first information for a program of the plurality of programs, the first information being a subset of displayable information of the program; displaying an application shell window on the display screen, the application shell window being a separate window from the console window and wherein displaying the application shell window comprises displaying in the application shell window a first application for the program while the other of the plurality of programs run in the background, the first application comprising configuration information for the program that is related to the first information being displayed in the first window and a formatting option for display of the first information in the console window; receiving updated configuration information via the application shell window, relative to the configuration information; displaying updated first information in at least one of the plurality of windows within the console window responsive to the updated configuration information received via the application shell window; displaying a second application in the application shell window, the second application corresponding to a second program; displaying an icon with the second application for launching from the second application a pod corresponding to the second application in the console window; receiving a selection of the icon; and responsive to receiving the selection of the icon, launching a pod corresponding to the second application in the console window where the pod was not running before the selection of the icon, the pod comprising information from the second program.