Data processing: presentation processing of document – operator i – Presentation processing of document – Layout
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-31
2004-07-13
Feild, Joseph (Department: 2176)
Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator i
Presentation processing of document
Layout
C715S252000, C715S252000, C709S207000, C709S224000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06763496
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention pertains to the use of hyperlinks on computer networks in general, and to the use of hyperlinks with embedded textual content, in particular.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
An on-line information system typically includes one or more computers (the servers) that makes information available so that other computers (the clients) can access the information. The server manages access to the information, which can be structured as a set of independent on-line services. A server and client communicate via messages conforming to a communication protocol that are sent over a communication channel, such as a computer network, or through a dial-up connection.
Typical uses for on-line services include document viewing, electronic commerce, directory lookup, on-line classified advertisements, reference services, electronic bulletin boards, document retrieval, electronic publishing, keyword searching of documents, technical support for products, and directories of on-line services. A service may make information available to clients free of charge, or for a fee, and may be on publicly accessible networks, such as the Internet, or on private networks.
Information sources managed by the server may include files, databases, and applications that execute on the server or on a client computer. 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 employs a browser program executed on the client to access the information managed by the on-line service. Possible user capabilities include viewing, searching, downloading, printing, editing, and filing the information managed by the server. The user may also price, purchase, rent, or reserve services or goods offered through an on-line service.
On-line services are available on the World Wide Web (WWW), which operates over the global Internet. The Internet is a wide area network (WAN) comprising a multitude of generally unrelated computer networks that are interconnected. Similar services are available on private networks called “Intranets” that may not be connected to the Internet, and through local area networks (LANs) and other WANs. The WWW and similar private network architectures provide a “web” of interconnected document objects, and these document objects are located at various sites. 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 usually 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 their own enhancements to HTML. HTML documents are generally static, that is, their contents do not change over time unless modified by a service developer or by the author. HTML documents can be created using programs such as Microsoft Corporation's FRONTPAGE™ web page development program, which are specifically designed for that purpose, or by executing a script file, and can include JAVA™ and/or ACTIVEX™ programming language code.
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 tags for many other features.
The following lines of 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>homepage.
This sample document is a hypertext document because it contains a hypertext “link” (hyperlink) 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 with a client program called a Web browser (described below), 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 the Microsoft Corporation homepage.
The highlighted words or phrases comprise the link's “anchor.” In addition to displaying text, a picture icon may also be used as a hyperlink anchor and may be combined with a text block so that both serve as the hyperlink anchor.
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 shape and/or color when positioned on the hypertext anchor. Selecting a link will cause the associated document to be displayed. Thus, clicking on the highlighted text (underlined in the above example) reading “Microsoft Corporation” would retrieve and display the associated homepage for that entity.
The HTML language also provides a mechanism (the image or “IMG” element) that enables an HTML document to include by reference, an image, which 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 reference occurred in the document.
Another kind of document object in a web page is a “script.” A script is an executable program, or a set of commands stored in a file, that can be run by a server program called a Web server (described below) to produce an HTML document that is then returned to the Web browser. Typical script actions include running library routines or other applications to fetch information from a file or a database, or initiating a request to obtain information from another machine, or retrieving a document corresponding to a selected hypertext link. A script may be run on the Web server when, for example, the end user selects a particular hypertext link in the Web browser, or submits an HTML form request. Scripts are usually written by a service developer in an interpreted language such as Basic, Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl), or Tool Control Language (Tcl) or one of the Unix operating system shell languages, but they also may be written in more complex programming languages such as “C” and then compiled to produce an executable program. Programming in Tcl is described in more detail in
Tcl and the Tk Toolkit,
by John K. Ousterhout, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., USA, 1994.
Angiulo Michael A.
Hennings Eric
Smith Michael D.
Anderson Ronald M.
Feild Joseph
Microsoft Corporation
Nguyen MaiKhanh
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