Abstract: A deferred placement prompt is provided in a user interface when an application window is launched. Responsive to the presentation of the deferred placement prompt, the user can provide a directional placement instruction (e.g., a “drag” of the prompt, a selection of a screen region, a keyboard input) to indicate the user's preference for placement of the launched window. The user interface can give cooperative feedback to the user during the deferred placement prompt operation, such as highlighting an application window to be replaced, responsive to a directional placement instruction, animating the deferred placement prompt, etc.

Abstract: An application window divider control is shared by a first application window and a second application window in a user interface. Based on a received directional instruction that moves the application window divider control along an axis of the user interface, placement of the first application window and the second application window may be positioned across a range of consistently spaced points along an axis of the user interface. Placement adjustment can also impact other application windows in the user interface. The application window divider control may also snap to provide “magnetic” points along the axis when certain conditions are satisfied.

Abstract: Described herein are embodiments that relate to implementation of multi-stage gestures, using multi-stage gestures to control applications, and allowing, under certain conditions, invocation of an open operation (which would normally only open an application or bring an application to the fore) to cause a target application to terminate before being newly opened. A multi-stage gesture may be used to invoke different functions at respective gesture stages of a same input stroke. The functions may be different forms of application “closing”, such as backgrounding or suspending an application, terminating an application, and restarting an application. The restarting (including termination) of an application when the application is opened may be termed a “smart-restart”, which may involve interpreting from specific user activity that a user intends to restart an application.

Abstract: One or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed for notifying a user of availability of a service on a user's first platform (e.g., cell phone) where the user may have already used the service (or a variation thereof) on a second platform (e.g., laptop computer). In this manner, a user can be made aware of the availability of the service when using the first platform (e.g., cell phone) without having to search for (a version of) the service for the first platform, where the user may merely be aware of (a version of) the service for the second platform (e.g., laptop).