Data processing: presentation processing of document – operator i – Presentation processing of document – Layout
Reexamination Certificate
1998-10-19
2004-06-15
Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2178)
Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator i
Presentation processing of document
Layout
C715S252000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06751777
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention is generally related to computers and computer software. More specifically, the invention is generally related to the display of and navigation between hypertext documents with browser computer programs and the like.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The amount and variety of information that can be accessed through a computer continues to increase at an astounding rate. The Internet, in particular, has enabled computer users to access a wide variety of information from other computers located all over the world.
Much of the information accessible via the Internet is organized into hypertext documents, which are typically documents formatted in a language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and which are accessed via a segment of the Internet known as the World Wide Web. Hypertext documents typically include one or more embedded “hypertext links” that an end user can select to either jump to different documents, or to jump to different locations within the same document. Each hypertext document typically is identified by the storage location (known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)) at which the document is stored, with a hypertext link to a particular document, or “target”, specifying the storage location of that document so that, upon selection of the link, that document may be retrieved.
A wide variety of other information such as text, graphics, video, sound, and animation may be integrated into hypertext documents, and moreover, these documents can be organized into “sites”, typically maintained by a single entity, that collect multiple related documents together in a coherent fashion. Furthermore, due to the immense popularity of the World Wide Web, many private computer networks now also support hypertext documents, as do a number of existing computer operating systems and computer software applications.
A computer program, often referred to as a browser, is typically used to navigate between and through hypertext documents. With a browser, an end user can use a mouse or other pointing device to point and click on links such as highlighted text, images or other user interface components (e.g., buttons) in documents to navigate to different documents and/or to different locations within the same document.
Many browsers also support the use of bookmarks (also sometimes referred to as aliases, shortcuts or favorites), through which a user can maintain a list of favorite sites or documents that a user expects to revisit in the future. Retrieving a bookmarked document at a later date then only requires the user to locate the bookmark corresponding to a desired document in the list, and then select that bookmark to initiate retrieval of the document.
Conventional hypertext links and bookmarks may both be characterized as single-target links. Specifically, a conventional hypertext link or bookmark is associated with a single target, such that any time such a hypertext link or bookmark is activated, the document stored at its associated target is retrieved.
However, oftentimes there may be several targets relevant to a particular type of information that a user wishes to retrieve. For example, it is common for many web sites to be “mirrored”, where multiple identical copies of the documents in a web site are stored on multiple computers (also known as “servers”) accessed at different storage locations to permit a greater number of users to access such documents at any given time. As another example, it may be desirable to provide multiple copies of a document in several languages so that, for example, a user who speaks English can retrieve an English-language version of a document, while a user who speaks Spanish can retrieve a Spanish-language version.
With conventional hypertext links and bookmarks limited to single targets, multiple hypertext links or bookmarks often must be used to support multiple targets for a given topic or type of information. If multiple hypertext links are displayed in a given hypertext document, however, the document may become relatively cluttered, and hence less visually appealing. Similarly, bookmarking multiple targets can lead to cluttering up of a bookmark list, often making it more difficult for a user to find specific bookmarks in the list.
Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that the use of multiple single-target links to provide access to multiple targets requires some degree of user effort and decision making to select the most appropriate target among several alternatives. Just the fact that a user has to select between multiple links interrupts browsing, and often leads to decreased productivity. Furthermore, having a user manually select between multiple links introduces the possibility of human error, since a user may initially select the wrong link and have to navigate back to the original document, and then to another of the available choices.
Moreover, in many instances, the user may not have sufficient information to make a reasonable guess as to which is the most appropriate link to take. For example, most users desire to retrieve documents as quickly as possible. Thus, with mirrored web sites, a user is often encouraged to select a site that is closest geographically to the user, since it is presumed that the amount of “traffic” on the Internet between a user and a server decreases the closer the server is to the user. The speed at which a document may be retrieved, however, can also vary significantly depending upon other factors such as the workload of the server, the time of day, the actual amount of traffic on the portion of the Internet between the user and the server, etc. Without knowing these factors in advance, a user is often left picking a target at random, or simply based upon geographical proximity. As often as not, the user will not select the optimum server to handle his or her request, and may waste valuable time connected to a sub-optimum server.
Another difficulty with single-target links is that oftentimes documents stored at particular storage locations can become unretrievable, e.g., if the documents were moved to other storage locations, or if the documents were completely removed. As a result, any single-target link pointing to an unretrievable document becomes “stale” and unusable. A user often cannot recognize a stale link without first attempting to access its target, and then, if unsuccessful, attempting to locate the information by accessing other targets. This “wait and see” approach can often cause a great deal of user frustration and waste a significant amount of the user's time.
Attempts have been made to enable different documents to be retrieved in different circumstances in response to user selection of a single-target link. For example, some conventional web servers detect the brand of browser that a particular user is using, and then send back a particular version of a document optimized for that browser. Often, this requires that the servers obtain information from the user, typically in the form of “cookies” that may be requested by the servers. However, server-side document selection suffers from the drawback that additional processing is required to process each user request, which reduces the workload capacity of a server. Furthermore, users can disable the transmission of cookies and prevent a server from learning specific information about a user, thereby inhibiting a server from selecting from different documents in response to a particular request.
Consequently, the limitation of conventional hypertext links and bookmarks to single targets can adversely impact user productivity and lead to user frustration.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention addresses these and other problems associated with the prior art by providing an apparatus, program product, and method that utilize a multi-target link to selectively access data located at one or more of a plurality of storage locations associated with the link. Thus, when a user activates a particular multi-target link, a request may be forwarded to different storage locations in diff
Bates Cary Lee
Day Paul Reuben
Hong Stephen S.
Wood Herron & Evans LLP
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