Patent ID: 8522247

Claim:
A method for indicating relative usage of multiple system resources of a computer system for a plurality of applications each running in a separate active window displayed in a graphical user interface (GUI) of the computer system, wherein each active window is represented on a taskbar element of the GUI by a separate taskbar button, the method comprising: determining, for each of the active windows, a resource usage rate of the application running in the active window for each of the multiple system resources, wherein each of the resource usage rates comprises a percentage of a total system resource usage for which the application accounts; ranking, for each of the multiple system resources, the applications in order of their respectively determined resource usage rates to create a relative usage ranking of the applications for the system resource; selecting, for each of the relative usage rankings, a corresponding relative display characteristic, wherein each relative display characteristic is selected from a set consisting of relative taskbar button size, relative taskbar button font color, and relative taskbar button font size, and wherein a different relative display characteristic is selected from the set for each relative usage ranking; and redisplaying the taskbar buttons with the selected relative display characteristics concurrently altered to respectively indicate the corresponding relative usage rankings of the applications running in the active windows represented by the redisplayed taskbar buttons.