Patent ID: 6980641

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a computer controlled by an operating system program and having a telephone function library of programs that control the computer to implement conventional telephone functions, said operating system controlling said computer to implement a telephony application programmatic interface (TAPI), comprising a plurality of function calls that are invoked to implement various telephone functions, said operating system being configured to run a dialer program and at least one application program that differs from the dialer program, wherein the at least one application program does not comprise a telephone application program or an operating system navigation utility, wherein the dialer program has an associated phone book file, the phone book file not being associated with the at least one application program, and wherein the dialer program determines activity status of the at least one application program; a TAPI compliant telephony device (TAPI device) coupled to said computer by a data path and structured for connection to a telephone line from a telephone service provider, said TAPI device being interfaced with a TAPI compliant driver program, said driver program being capable of receiving telephone function commands from said programs in said telephone function library and converting the telephone function commands to commands and/or signals specific to said TAPI device and for sending said commands and/or signals to said TAPI device to cause the TAPI device to carry out telephone functions; a keyboard coupled to said computer for providing user inputs; a pointing device coupled to said computer for providing user inputs; and a video display coupled to said computer, wherein the dialer program is configured to retrofit a dialer representation on a title bar of a window of the at least one application program lacking telephony capabilities only when the at least one application program is active to provide the telephony capabilities to the at least one application program, wherein, when a user selects, via the keyboard or the pointing device, the retrofitted dialer representation, the dialer program accesses the phone book file to search for a phone number to be dialed by the dialer program, and wherein the searching of the phone book file is based on a search key, the search key comprising text that is displayed in a window of the at least one application program and highlighted by the user via the keyboard or the pointing device before the user selects the retrofitted dialer representation.