Microsoft Patents Quick Pick User Interface

Google Chrome and Safari have pretty launcher panels that show you multiple recent sites that you’ve visited, giving you quicker access to those sites. Now it seems that Microsoft doesn’t want to be left behind in the browser wars, as it has filed a patent of its own recently, detailing a rather useful “Quick Pick” interface. While it’s not strictly a launcher, it will allow users who have many tabs open at a time a quick way to surf through all the open tabs and pick the desired tab. Some of the features of the Quick Pick interface include:

• A Quick Pick button on the navigation menu and a hot-key to easily launch it
• Launching Quick Pick will display all the open tabs in thumbnail fashion
• Hover your mouse over any thumbnail to see a bigger picture
• Reorganize your tabs by dragging thumbnails across the Quick Pick interface
• Close unwanted tabs via this interface
• Select and view the tab you want via the Quick Pick interface

More details on this can be found at Microsoft’s patent filing.