Patent ID: 8375323

Claim:
A display control device including a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having a program stored thereon, the program causing a plurality of screens to be hierarchically displayed on a display device by controlling the display device, and the program being executed by the display control device, wherein the display control device further comprises: an update request section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, makes an update request to update a display on the display device; a display update section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, updates the display on the display device in response to receiving the update request from the update request section; a layout holding section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, holds layout information of each screen of the plurality of screens hierarchically displayed on the display device after the display update section processes the update request; a display state determination section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, refers to the layout information of each of the plurality of screens, and determines whether each respective screen of the plurality of screens is one of (i) a screen displayed on the display device, so as to be partially or entirely visible and (ii) a screen fully covered by another screen of the plurality of screens, so as to be invisible; a group assigning section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, assigns only screens, of the plurality of screens, which are simultaneously displayed on the display device so as to be partially or entirely visible, to one group based on a result of the determination by the display state determination section; a group holding section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, holds group information indicating a correspondence between the one group and the screens assigned to the one group by the group assigning section; and a switching request section which, when the program is executed by the display control device, makes a list display request to display a switching destination screen candidate list showing the screens, which are indicated by the group information held in the group holding section, as switching destination screen candidates in a grouped unit, on the display device so as to be visible, wherein, in response to the list display request from the switching request section, the display update section further updates the display on the display device in accordance with the group information held in the group holding section, such that the switching destination screen candidate list is displayed on the display device so as to be visible, and wherein, each time the display update section processes the update request, the layout holding section holds the layout information of each of the plurality of screens hierarchically displayed on the display device.