Patent ID: 7293243

Claim:
A method performed by a computer system for displaying in a viewing area of a viewer display associated with a viewer computing device a representation of a shared window that is shared by a sharer computing device, comprising: receiving at the viewer computing device a windows list describing characteristics of the shared window, wherein the characteristics comprise a size of the shared window, the windows list including an indication of an obscured area representing a portion of a window that is not shared that overlaps the shared window; comparing the size of the shared window to a size of the viewing area; displaying a full scale representation of the shared window within the viewing area if the size of the shared window is less than or equal to the size of the viewing area; and if the size of the shared window is greater than the size of the viewing area, calculating a scaling factor by which to scale the shared window to create a scaled representation of the shared window, whereby the scaled representation of the shared window has a size that is substantially equal to the size of the viewing area; and comparing the calculated scaling factor to a threshold scaling factor; displaying within the viewing area at least a portion of a first scaled representation of the shared window having a scale corresponding to the threshold scaling value if the calculated scaling factor is less than the threshold scaling factor wherein the portion not displayed can be brought into the viewing area without changing the scaling factor, the displayed portion of the first scaled representation of the shared window indicating the obscured area but not the window that is not shared; and displaying within the viewing area a second scaled representation of the shared window having a scale corresponding to the calculated scaling factor if the calculated scaling factor is greater than or equal to the threshold scaling factor, the second scaled representation of the shared window indicating the obscured area but not the window that is not shared.