Patent ID: 7844918

Claim:
A method comprising: registering with an operating system (OS) to be sent a notification when a predetermined file type is being displayed in a display device; receiving an event notification regarding a graphical element, said event notification indicating said graphical element has been selected by a user; determining a file to display as said graphical element; displaying said graphical element representing said file; determining whether the user has selected said graphical element, and when the user has selected said graphical element, then changing a view of said graphical element from a view mode to a scan mode wherein said view mode renders said graphical element representing a single segment of said file and wherein said scan mode renders said graphical element representing a plurality of segments of said file; displaying a segment controller with said graphical element, said segment controller operable to select which segment of said file to be displayed in said graphical element; wherein displaying a segment controller with said graphical element comprises: providing a counter associated with said segment controller, said counter displaying: i) a segment count associated with said file, and ii) a segment number associated with a page of said file currently rendered as said graphical element; and reading a preference file to determine which segment of said file to display in said graphical element in the view mode, where the segment is identified in the scan mode and saved to the preference file; wherein said displaying said graphical element comprises: obscuring an area used by said OS for displaying graphical elements with a new area and using an OS window grouping mechanism to maintain proper placement and sizing of said new area in said user's desktop.