Patent ID: 8601442

Claim:
A method performed by a computing system having a display for visually indicating on the display a timing of execution of a marker within executable code, the method comprising: during a time frame, an act of one or more processors of the computing system executing binary code of an application program, the binary code including a binary version of a marker, the binary version of the marker being configured to generate an event for a visualization application programming interface when executed, the binary version of the marker being a compiled version of a source code version of the marker that was added by a user to source code of the application program from which the binary code was compiled, the source code version of the marker identifying one or more of a single point or a range of executable instructions in the application program and including a custom user-specified comment for display in connection with the marker during visualization; an act of the computing system automatically collecting timeline data regarding the execution of the application program that was acquired during the act of executing during the time frame, including collecting data regarding the execution of the binary version of the marker in the time frame; and an act of displaying on the display a timeline visualization of the execution of the application program, the timeline visualization based on the collected timeline data and including a visualization of one or more threads of the application program along with a visualization of the marker displayed in the context of the timeframe and the one or more threads, the timeline visualization providing access to the custom user-specified comment of the marker.