Dropping hyperlink onto document object

Details Dropping hyperlink onto document object Dropping hyperlink onto document object

1997-05-06

2001-05-15

Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2176)

Data processing: database and file management or data structures

Database design

Data structure types

C707S793000, C345S215000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06233591

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer software, particularly for use in wide area networks, including the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet worldwide web is an international electronic network comprising a vast number of interconnected electronic sites using common communication protocols. The architecture of the worldwide web (simply, “web”) includes the use of web “pages” at a site to provide text, graphical, audio, and video information to users accessing that site. Selectable information is typically indicated by means of text or graphical images (e.g., icons or bitmapped images) which are associated with remote address pointers known as Universal Resource Locators (URL's), typically having the following form: “http://www.adobe.com”.
Selection of text, an icon, or an image having a URL causes the user's program to access the web page designated by the URL. In addition, objects (e.g., data files, images, video clips, etc.) within a web page can also be assigned URL's, such that selection of the associated text, icon, or image causes the object to be transferred (downloaded) to the user's computer for playback or storage.
Modern “electronic documents” comprise text, format and control codes, and embedded objects, such as figures (e.g., vector or bitmapped graphics images), audio clips, and/or video clips. In addition, some documents (for example, documents produced in WordPerfect 6.1 from Corel Corporation of Ontario, Canada) may include “hypertext” or “hyperlinks”. Hyperlinks are areas in a document containing pointer information that a user can select (e.g., by “clicking” with a pointer device, such as a mouse), causing the current application (e.g., wordprocessor, spreadsheet, etc.) to “jump” to a new document or a different location in the current document.
The present invention is directed at extending the concept of hyperlinks to include URL's, and includes a convenient, easy to use method of creating URL hyperlinks.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention embodies document hyperlinks that allow a user to jump to another object or page within the same document or in another document altogether either on a local storage device, or on a remote storage device over a local area network, private wide area network, or the Internet. Hyperlinks that access a document from the Internet are called URL hyperlinks.
A URL hyperlink in accordance with the present invention can be created as a new object (e.g., a graphics figure or text) or assigned to an existing object. With a figure-based hyperlink, a user can click anywhere within the figure's bounding box area to invoke a jump to the designated destination. In the preferred embodiment, with a text-based URL hyperlink, ajump will be invoked only when the user clicks on the specific characters that are associated with the URL hyperlink.
In the preferred embodiment, figure-based hyperlinks are signified by an icon or “badge” that appears in the lower left corner of a figure's bounding box. Text-based hyperlinks preferably are signified by using different text attributes and colors that the user defines—for instance, the user may want each hyperlink to be colored blue and underlined.
In the preferred embodiment, URL hyperlinks can be created three different ways:
Figure Select and Assign—the user can select a figure or text within a figure and open a dialog to enter a URL for the hyperlink to use.
Hyperlink Tool—the user can use a hyperlink tool from a Tool palette and draw an invisible rectangle around an area the user wishes to be a hyperlink. A dialog then opens to let the user define the URL to be used. The user can use this tool, for example, to define hot spots on a bitmap to create an image map having several URL hyperlinks.
Drag and Drop—a user can assign a URL hyperlink to an existing figure by dragging a URL link directly from a web browser and dropping the URL link on the figure. If the user drags and drops a URL link on an empty part of a document, a new text-based hyperlink figure is created using the text associated with the URL link as displayed in the web browser.
The details of the preferred embodiment of the present invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Once the details of the invention are known, numerous additional innovations and changes will become obvious to one skilled in the art.


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