Microsoft Corporation
Closing, starting, and restarting applications

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.