Abstract: A system and method is provided that causes an animation sequence and underlying background process to be in step such that the motion of the animation is coordinated with the painting of the display by the underlying process. A mechanism is used to adjust the thread priority of the animation thread. When the animation is starting, the priority of the animation threads is set to BELOW.sub.-- NORMAL priority. The animation process is then implemented. Subsequently, the animation threads are set back to NORMAL priority. Because the priority of the animation threads is below normal the other, contending processes will react more quickly (due to their higher priority) during the animation process. This will cause the other processes to update (paint) their client areas more quickly. Each change to another processes client area will cause an update to that area, since that other process will have a higher priority relative to the animation sequence.

Abstract: A generic font request is changed to an operating system specific format font request. A font request is received from an application by a font handler. Both the application and the font handler are typically run by an operating system in a computer memory. Once the font handler determines that the font request is a generic font request, i.e. is in a format different than the operating system specific format expected by the operating system, it translates the generic font request to an operating system specific format font request.

Abstract: An application programmer may choose from several alternative different methods for placing dynamically added icons in a graphical user interface (GUI) environment. The application program can pick the appropriate method depending on the situation, which often may involve reacting to a particular user action. The method is implemented in a graphical user interface environment on a computer. The application program selects one of the alternative choices for the placement of dynamically added icons. The selection by the application program is based on particular circumstances as determined by an application programmer of the application program. The dynamically added icon is placed on the display screen according to a procedure corresponding to a selected one of the alternate choices. The dynamically added icons may represent containers holding objects, such as executable programs, database records, graphic images, word processing files, or another container which itself can hold objects.