Patent ID: 7429993

Claim:
A method for unobtrusively presenting selected visual content on a display that is coupled to a computing system to present an output thereof, and on which other visual content is presented, comprising the steps of: (a) designating the selected visual content from among a plurality of different types of visual content presentable by the computing system on the display and setting a window style of the selected visual content to ‘INACTIVE’ thus causing the selected visual content to not be activated by input from a mouse or a keyboard; (b) presenting the selected visual content in a region of the display such that the selected visual content is initially rendered visually and functionally unobtrusive so as to enable a user to direct input to the other visual content, even when the selected visual content at least partially occupies and overlies the region of the display occupied by the other visual content, and without requiring the user to affirmatively change how the selected visual content is initially rendered, the presenting including fading the selected visual content from an initial appearance to a desired transparency level; and (c) enabling the computing system to respond to the input directed to a portion of the other visual content to which the input is directed, even though the portion is overlaid by the selected visual content, as though the selected visual content were not being presented on the display.