Patent ID: 7487467

Claim:
A method for presenting a set of icons associated with a first application in a display, the method comprising: presenting the set of icons for the first application to the user in the display so that an icon from the set of icons can be selected by a user via a keypad; receiving an interruption while executing the first application; using three-dimensional graphical display techniques to create an iconized but still-active representation of the first application on a side of the display; and displaying an interrupting dialog associated with the interruption in a primary area of the display; wherein the set of icons are presented in the display such that the spatial layout of the set of icons is substantially the same as the layout of the keypad, resulting in an intuitive interface that allows the user to select desired choices quickly and easily; wherein the set of icons is partitioned into a hierarchical set of icons that includes two or more levels of hierarchy; wherein a visualization of the complete hierarchical set of icons is displayed in the display, and wherein multiple levels of hierarchy from the hierarchical set of icons are simultaneously displayed in the display using three-dimensional graphical display techniques; wherein simultaneously displaying multiple levels of hierarchy from the hierarchical set of items in the display results in an intuitive interface that allows the user to select desired choices from the hierarchical set of icons quickly and easily; and wherein transitioning to the iconized representation of the first application allows the user to recognize intuitively that a status change has occurred and gives the user visual context into the status of the first application.