Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
2000-02-17
2002-12-10
Nguyen, Cao H. (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06493000
ABSTRACT:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS (CLAIMING BENEFIT UNDER 35 U.S.C. 120)
None.
MICROFICHE APPENDIX
Not applicable.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the arts of web browser graphical user interface technology and web browser link history management. In particular, this invention relates to methods and systems for web browsers which allow the user to control the visual display of certain types of link and document retrieval operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet and the World Wide Web have become critical, integral parts of commercial operations, personal lives, and the education process. At the heart of the Internet content is Internet browser technology and Internet server technology. An Internet server contains content which is available to systems and browsers which have Internet connectivity. Web browser or “client” computers may request documents from web addresses, to which appropriate web servers respond by transmitting one or more web documents, image or graphics files, forms, audio clips, etc. The most common protocol for transmission of web documents and contents from servers to browsers is Hyper Text Transmission Protocol (“HTTP”).
FIG. 1
shows the fundamental client-server arrangement of Internet and intranet communications. A client browser computer (
1
) is provided with Internet access (
2
) to the World Wide Web (
3
) through common means such as a dial-up telephone line and modem, cable modem, or local area network (“LAN”). The web browser computer (
1
) is also provided with appropriate web browsing software, such as Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Explorer. A web server computer (
5
) is likewise provided with Internet access (
4
) to the World Wide Web (
3
) using similar means, or higher-bandwidth means such as T
1
and T
3
data lines, and a web server suite of software. Alternatively, client and servers may be interconnected via an Intranet (
6
), such as a corporate LAN. These arrangements are well known within the art.
The most common type of Internet content or document is Hyper Text Markup Language (“HTML”) documents, but other formats are equally well known in the art such as Adobe Portable Document Format (“PDF”). HTML, PDF and other web documents provide “hyperlinks” within the document, which allow a user to select another document or web site to view. Hyperlinks are specially marked text or areas in the document which when selected by the user commands the browser software to retrieve or fetch the indicated document. For example, the text
<A HREF=“http://www.patents.ibm.com”>VIEW PATENTS</A>
when embedded into an HTML document will produce a specially marked or highlighted string of text in the web browser window which simply reads “VIEW PATENTS”. Most commonly, this text will appear in underlined blue text, but the HTML document may specify alternate display characteristics for hyperlinks, as well as the web browser may have options for the display of hyperlinks. If the web browser user selects the hyperlink, such as clicking on the hyperlink using a mouse, the web browser will request the base document from web address www.patents.ibm.com using HTTP commands. The appropriate server for this web address will respond to the request by transmitting a web document, such as index.htm, to the requesting web browser.
Ordinarily, when the user selects a plain hyperlink, the current page being displayed in the web broswer's graphical user interface (“GUI”) window disappears and the newly received page is displayed. If the parent page is an index, for example the IBM web site www.patents.ibm.com, and the user wishes to visit each descending link (e.g. read the document with tips on how to use the site), then the parent or index page disappears and the new page is displayed (such as the help page). The user must click the browser's “back” button to return to displaying the parent page if desired.
FIG. 2
shows an example partial “site map” for a typical web site. A base document (
21
), or “home page”, is transmitted by the hosting web server to a requesting web browser using HTTP whenever a web browser “points” to a plain web address without a file specification, such as www.corp.com. In
FIG. 2
, an example of a base HTML document “index.htm” includes four hyperlinks. If the user selects or clicks on the displayed link for “help”, the file “help.htm” is transmitted by the web server to the browser. In the web browser GUI window, the display of “index.htm” (
21
) is replaced with a display of “help.htm” (
22
). The user can further select a hyperlink in “help.htm” (
22
), such as “Product A”, which will cause the web browser to transmit the file “helpA.htm” (
23
). This can continue many layers deep, and does not have to be organized as a simple tree structure, as shown, because hyperlinks can refer to files on other web addresses, to other parent files, etc.
However, web browser software maintains a “history” of visited files assuming a tree-like structure. The “back” button shows the previous page, and the “forward” button shows the next page (if the “back” button has been used). Sometimes, a user may descend multiple layers into a web site in such a way that the “back” button must be pressed many times to return to this “main” or top level page.
Coding of the HTML pages can ease this burden to some degree by using “frames”. In frames-based HTML pages, the user's web browser GUT window is split into multiple “panes”, and the code in the HTML of the page can control presentation of the information in each frame. Typically, a top-level list of hyperlinks or navigation bar is presented in one pane, while selected documents are updated in another pane.
FIG. 3
shows an example of a frames-based display. On a portion (
30
) of a the user's browser computer screen, a web browser (
31
), such as Netscape's Navigator, is running in its own window. The browser is currently pointed (
34
) at the top or home page of the example web site. The web page “index.htm” is configured to split the GUI display into three frames. The upper frame (
32
) is being used to display a general banner, the left frame (
33
) is being used to display a list of hyperlinks from the top page (or navigation bar), and the right-bottom frame (
35
) is displaying the contents of the currently selected page. If the user were to select the “help” hyperlink in the left frame (
33
), the display might proceed to appear as shown in FIG.
4
. As shown in
FIG. 4
, the web browser (
31
) is now pointed (
34
) at the file “help.htm”, and the contents of that file are displayed in the bottom-right frame or pane (
35
). Two hyperlinks (
40
and
41
) are shown in the bottom-right frame, with the top-level hyperlinks of index.htm still available in the left frame (
33
). This illustrates how the HTML page can control which information is replaced and which remains visible when a hyperlink is selected. However, frames are not a generalized solution, and must be included in the HTML source. This requires the web page and site designer to anticipate or predict the most likely path a user will traverse the pages in the site, and of course cannot cover all possibilities available.
Still other HTML coding functions allow some web pages which have hyperlinks to launch or “spawn” a new web browser instance in a new window. Using this functionality, if a user selects a certain hyperlink in the currently displayed page, an entirely new instance of the web browser is initiated in its own independent GUI window. Again, the web page designer must predict or anticipate which links a user would desire to spawn new window and which links the user may want to simply replace the current display.
FIG. 5
illustrates an example of such a multiple-window scheme. In such a case, when a user selects one of the hyperlinks in the base page in the first browser window (
31
), a new instance of the browser is spawned in a new window (
31
′) and the information for the selected page is dis
Brown Michael W.
Ullmann Cristi N.
Wynn Allen C.
Frantz Robert H.
Mims Jr. David A.
Nguyen Cao H.
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