Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Remote data accessing – Using interconnected networks
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-21
2002-04-30
Dinh, Dung C. (Department: 2153)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Remote data accessing
Using interconnected networks
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06381637
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to the Internet, and more particularly to an apparatus having an Internet automatic Web browsing function.
BACKGROUND ART
As personal computers become popular recently, the Internet has become widely used. The Internet is a gigantic aggregate of interconnected computer networks. Its main functions include electronic mail, network news (electronic bulletin board or electronic conference), file transfer (FTP: file transfer protocol), and World Wide Web (WWW). In particular, WWW, an aggregate of hypertext documents coded in the language called HTML, described later, combines various types of information dispersively existing on the Internet and makes them accessible.
As a prerequisite for understanding the present invention, the following describes the structure and operation of the Internet system for the WWW and the structure of a hypertext document.
As shown in
FIG. 24
, the distribution of hypertext documents is performed by computers
243
and
244
, called WWW servers, on the Internet. A user can use a browser program, called a WWW browser (also called a Web browser), on a client computer (hereafter simply called a client) to access documents on the Internet. Normally, the client computer
241
is connected to the Internet via a service organization called a service provider which offers a dedicated communication line of its own. That is, the client. computer
241
dials up the host computer of the service provider via a public line to make access to the Internet. This makes it possible for the user to get information (text, image, sound, and so on) from around the world while staying at home. This practice is called network surfing because it is like surfing through information waves.
A unit of information that is accessed is a file on the WWW server, called a page. Setting up a link, which will be described later, allows the user to jump from one page to another for sequential browsing. The length of a page is variable and may change according to the page creator.
A particular page (home page) on the WWW is assigned an address called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) which is a unique address on the Internet.
A URL is composed of a protocol name, server name, and an item path name, as shown below.
http://www.abc.or.jp/def/ghi.html
The protocol name indicates the method by which the computer interprets information. Because the WWW server and the Web browser transfer information by the method called HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), the protocol name, the first part of the above URL, is “http:”. There is also a protocol, called ftp, for use in file transfer. The “www.abc.or.jp” represents a server name. The “www” indicates that the server is a WWW server. The “abc” in “abc.or.jp” indicates an organization name, “or” indicates an organization type (in this example, an organization/individual), and “jp” indicates a code representing a country (in this example, Japan). The item path name “def/ghi.html” after the server name indicates the location of an item on the server. The path name usually indicates the name of a file constituting a page. The “def” in “def/ghi.html” is a directory name, “ghi” is a file name, and “html” is an extension indicating that the file is an html file.
Next, the structure of an HTML file (HTML document) will be described.
As described above, HTML is an abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language, and a WWW document is usually written in this language. A document written in this language is called an HTML document, and its file is called an HTML file (or HTML text).
FIG. 20
shows the basic structure of an HTML document. An HTML document, a text file in essence, contains codes, called tags enclosed by symbols “<” and “>”, in a page. Normally, a specified range is bounded by a pair of the start tag and the end tag. The end tag is distinguished from the start tag by “/”. Note that there is a tag which is used alone, such as <P> indicating the start of a new paragraph. The tag allows character design information and layout information, as well as link information, to be specified. The browser interprets the tag, displays on the screen the HTML document in a format intended by the creator, or controls link operations.
The detailed description of.HTML is omitted here because it is well known. As shown in FIG.
20
(
a
), the basic structure of an HTML document contains various types of tags in the text document. When the HTML document is interpreted by the browser and displayed on the screen, the tags are not displayed, as in FIG.
20
(
b
), with only the specified control reflected on the display. The function which passes control to another page, associated with a character string in the HTML document, when the user executes an operation (for example, click) on the character string, is called a link. In this specification, such a character string part in the HTML document is also called a link for the sake of convenience. A link
201
in a page of the HTML document “aaa.html”, shown in FIG.
20
(
a
), is described as:
<A HREF=“bbb.html”>BBB</A>
The tags used for setting up a link are called anchor tags (<A . . . >. . . </A>), and the part enclosed by the anchor tags is called an anchor point or a hot point. The “HREF=” in <A HREF=“bbb.html”> in the start tag of the anchor tags indicates access information on the link destination (in this example, a file name). On the browser screen, the character string “BBB” is highlighted as in the displayed character string
203
shown in FIG.
20
(
b
). This highlight display is realized by displaying the character string in a color different from other character strings or by underlining. This allows the user to identify that, if the user points this character string, he or she will be able to jump to some other page.
A link
202
indicates a link to an in-line image. In this case, the image file named “ggg.gif” is displayed on the screen as an image
204
. When the user points the image
204
, the content of the link destination “bbb.html” is read and displayed. An in-line image is an image embedded in a page of the HTML document page for display.
There are several patterns used in a link for link destination access information.
As shown in
FIG. 21
, when a link is set up (or created) for another page (or an HTML file) in the same server (host), the file name (sometimes, including a directory) is link destination information. FIG.
21
(
a
) shows a link source HTML file and a link destination HTML file. FIG.
21
(
b
) shows the content displayed on the browser display screens associated with the respective files. In this example, when the user points the anchor point character string “BBB”, the HTML file “bbb.html” which is a link destination representing another page is requested and its content is displayed.
As shown in
FIG. 22
, a link may be set up to some other location in the same page. In such a case, the item name of the location is used as link destination information. As shown in FIG.
22
(
a
), the link source description <A HREF=“#aaa>AAA</A>” indicates the position of the link destination and, on the other hand, the link destination description <A NAME=“aaa”>AAA</A> indicates that the item name “aaa” is linked with the source. As shown in FIG.
22
(
b
), when the user points the highlighted character string “AAA” on the browser screen, display control is passed to the position of the item “AAA” which is in a subsequent location within the same page. This is useful in a long page to display a list of items each having a link to the corresponding item at a subsequent location.
FIG. 23
indicates a link to a location in a separate page in the same server. In this case, the combination of the file name of the separate page and an item name in the document is used as the link destination access information. In this example, control jumps to the item “ppp” in a separate file “bbb.html” in the same server. FIG.
23
(
a
) shows the link source and link des
Access Co., Ltd.
Dellett and Walters
Dinh Dung C.
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