Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1997-11-25
2001-08-14
Choules, Jack (Department: 2177)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06275829
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally relates to inserting an image in a document that is accessed over a network, and more specifically, to the inclusion of a reduced size or “thumbnail” image representing a larger image in a Web page that is to be accessible over the Internet or an Intranet, so that the thumbnail image represents the original image and so that the original image is retrieved and displayed in the Web page by selecting the thumbnail image.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
An on-line information system typically includes one computer system (a server) that makes information available so that other computer systems (clients) can access the information. The server manages access to the information, which can be structured as a set of independent on-line services. The server and client communicate via messages conforming to a communication protocol and sent over a communication channel such as a computer network or through a dial-up connection.
Information sources managed by the server may include files, databases, and applications on the server system or on an external computer system. The information that the server provides may simply be stored on the server, may be converted from other formats manually or automatically, may be computed on the server in response to a client request, may be derived from data and applications on the server or other machines, or may be derived by any combination of these techniques.
The user of an on-line service typically uses a browser program executed on the client system to access the information managed by the on-line service. The browser enables the user to selectively view, search, download, print, edit, and/or file the information managed by the server. On-line services are available on the World Wide Web (WWW), which operates over the global Internet. The Internet interconnects a large number of otherwise unrelated computers or sites. Similar services are available on private networks called Intranets that may not be connected to the Internet, and through local area networks (LANs). The WWW and similar private architectures provide a “web” of interconnected document objects. On the WWW, these document objects are located at various sites on the global Internet. A more complete description of the WWW is provided in “The World-Wide Web,” by T. Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau, A. Luotonen, H. F. Nielsen, and A. Secret,
Communications of the ACM,
37 (8), pp. 76-82, August 1994, and in “World Wide Web: The Information Universe,” by Berners-Lee, T., et al., in
Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy
, Vol. 1, No. 2, Meckler, Westport, Conn., Spring 1992.
Among the types of document objects in an on-line service are documents and scripts. Documents that are published on the WWW are written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). This language is described in
HyperText Markup Language Specification—
2.0, by T. Berners-Lee and D. Connolly, RFC 1866, proposed standard, November 1995, and in “World Wide Web & HTML,” by Douglas C. McArthur, in Dr. Dobbs Journal, December 1994, pp. 18-20, 22, 24, 26 and 86. Many companies are also developing enhancements to HTML. HTML documents can be created using programs specifically designed for that purpose or by executing script files.
The HTML language is used for writing hypertext documents, which are more formally referred to as Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) documents that conform to a particular Document Type Definition (DTD). An HTML document includes a hierarchical set of markup elements; most elements have a start tag, followed by content, followed by an end tag. The content is a combination of text and nested markup elements. Tags, which are enclosed in angle brackets (‘<’ and ‘>’), indicate how the document is structured and how to display the document, as well as destinations and labels for hypertext links. There are tags for markup elements such as titles and headers, text attributes such as bold. and italic, lists, paragraph boundaries, links to other documents or other parts of the same document, in-line graphic images, and for many other features.
The following lines of exemplary HTML briefly illustrate how the language is used:
Some words are <B>bold</B>, others are <I>italic</I>. Here we start a new paragraph.<P>Here's a link to the <A HREF=“http://www.microsoft.com”>Microsoft Corporation </A>home page.
This sample document is a hypertext document because it contains a hypertext link to another document in the line that includes “HREF=.” The format of this link is described below. A hypertext document may also have a link to other parts of the same document. Linked documents may generally be located anywhere on the Internet. When a user is viewing the document using a web browser, the links are displayed as highlighted words or phrases. For example, using a web browser, the sample document above might be displayed on the user's screen as follows:
Some words are bold, others are italic. Here we start a new paragraph.
Here's a link to Microsoft Corporation home page.
In a web browser, the link may be selected, for example, by clicking on the highlighted area with a mouse. Typically, the screen cursor changes when positioned on a hypertext link. Selecting a link will cause the associated document to be displayed. Thus, clicking on the highlighted text “Microsoft Corporation” would fetch and display the associated home page for that entity.
Similarly, the HTML language also provides a mechanism (the image or “IMG” element) that enables an HTML document to include an image that is stored as a separate file. When the end user views the HTML document, the included image is displayed as part of the document, at the point where the image element was positioned in the document. The following line of HTML briefly illustrates how the language is used to incorporate an image into an HTML document:
<IMG SRC=“bigsailboat.gif”>
The following line of HTML shows how the language provides a hyperlink from a displayed thumbnail image (littlesailboat.gif) to the original (fullsize) image (bigsailboat.gif):
<A HREF=“bigsailboat.gif”><IMG SRC=“littlesailboat.gif”></A>
When the user is viewing the Web page that includes the displayed thumbnail image using a web browser, the hyperlink connection from the thumbnail image to the original image is activated by the selection of the displayed thumbnail image. In the prior art, it has been necessary to manually create the hyperlink from a thumbnail image to the original fullsize image, so that the original image is retrieved and displayed when the user selects the thumbnail image.
Each document object in a web has an identifier called a Universal Resource Identifier (URI). These identifiers are described in more detail in T. Berners-Lee, “
Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW: A Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and Addresses of Objects on the Network as used in the World
-
Wide Web
,” RFC 1630, CERN, June 1994; and T. Berners-Lee, L. Masinter, and M. McCahill, “
Uniform Resource Locators
(
URL
),” RFC 1738, CERN, Xerox PARC, University of Minnesota, December 1994. A URL allows any object on the Internet to be referred to by name or address, such as in a link in an HTML document as shown above. There are two types of URIs: a Universal Resource Name (URN), and a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URN references an object by name within a given name space. The Internet community has not yet defined the syntax of URNs. A URL references an object by defining an access algorithm using network protocols. An example of a URL is “bttp://www.microsoft.com”. A URL has the syntax “scheme://host:port/path/search” where
“scheme” identifies the access protocol (such as HTTP, FTP or GOPHER);
“host” is the Internet domain name of the machine that supports the protocol;
“port” is the transmission control protocol (TCP) port number of the appropriate server (if different from the default);
“path” is a sche
Angiulo Michael
Peters Chris
Anderson Ronald M.
Choules Jack
Lewis Cheryl R.
Microsoft Corporation
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