Patent Application
20060212806
The present invention generally relates to organization and presentation of content on a web page. More particularly, the present invention relates to application of presentation styles to items on a web page.
With the advent of the computer age, computer and software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help them write, calculate, organize, prepare presentations, send and receive electronic mail, make music, and the like. For example, modem electronic word processing applications allow users to prepare a variety of useful documents. Modem spreadsheet applications allow users to enter, manipulate, and organize data. Modem electronic slide presentation applications allow users to create a variety of slide presentations containing text, pictures, data or other useful objects. Internet and intranet browsing applications allow users to navigate to a variety of useful pages for viewing or interacting with information on numerous topics.
Typical web pages often include information such as text, images, music, and the like associated with one or more topics. In addition, many web pages include links to various resources either contained on the same web page as a given link or contained on a different web page that may be navigated to by selection of the given link. Web page authors and editors strive to present web page content and links in presentation styles and formats that are appealing to users and that make navigation of the content and links on the web page more efficient and user-friendly. According to prior methods and systems, web page authors/editors, desiring to edit the presentation styles applied to one or more web page items, must launch some type of web page editing application that allows edits to the entire web page. Once in such an edit mode, the web page author/editor is typically stuck with a small set of “out-of-the-box” style properties that may be applied to the web page content. Adding additional style properties involves manually writing a custom server control to affect the desired property.
According to such prior methods and systems, web page authors/editors may not apply style properties to a single item in a web page control that is different from style properties applied to neighboring items in the same control. For example, if a given web page control or part includes four links to web page resources, prior methods and systems do not allow for efficiently applying one style (e.g., bold text) to one link while maintaining a different style (e.g., italicized text) for the other links in the control. In addition, prior methods and systems do not allow an author to quickly and easily apply the same look and feel to a group of items and enforce that look and feel on new items—the author must do this manually.
Accordingly, there is a need for a more efficient and user-friendly method of applying style properties to web page content. There is further a need for methods and systems for allowing both per-item and all-item style editing for web page content through an edit menu that allows for the application and preview of a desired style to a given item or set of items before actually making changes to the web page presentation. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.
Embodiments of the present invention solve the above and other problems by providing methods and systems for applying various style properties to web page content on a per-item or all-item basis via an edit menu. A preview of applied style properties is provided in the edit menu prior to actually making a given style property change to one or more web page items.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, an edit menu allows a web page author/editor to apply a desired style property to a given web page item apart from neighboring items. The edit menu provides a preview of a presentation view of the item if the selected style property is actually applied to the selected item. Style properties applied to a given web page item may be shared and/or reused across web page controls on a given web site. The available set of styles for items on a web page can be controlled by a web site administrator, giving a page author the ability to choose only one of an approved set of available styles for a page element.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, web page content is formatted according to the Extensible Markup Language (XML). Each available style property that may be applied to a given web page item is implemented as an Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) transformation that may be used to transform a given web page item to a web page presentation format, for example, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), while applying one or more selected style properties to the web page item during the transformation.
These and other features and advantages, which characterize the present invention, will be apparent from a reading of the following detailed description and a review of the associated drawings. It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention as claimed.
As briefly described above, embodiments of the present invention are directed to application of style properties to web page items on a per-item or all-item basis. An edit menu may be utilized for applying a style property to one or more web page items. The edit menu provides a preview of a presentation view of a given web page item according to a selected style property before actually committing to the application of the selected style property. In addition, style properties may be applied to a given web page item by dragging the web page item from one location in a web page to a second location in a web page where the second location in a web page is associated with one or more different style properties. These embodiments may be combined, other embodiments may be utilized, and structural changes may be made without departing from the spirit or scope of the present invention. The following detailed description is therefore not to be taken in a limiting sense and the scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.
Referring now to the drawings, in which like numerals refer to like elements through the several figures, aspects of the present invention and an exemplary operating environment will be described.
Generally, program modules include routines, programs, components, data structures, and other types of structures that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. The invention may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
Embodiments of the invention may be implemented as a computer process (method), a computing system, or as an article of manufacture, such as a computer program product or computer readable media. The computer program product may be a computer storage media readable by a computer system and encoding a computer program of instructions for executing a computer process. The computer program product may also be a propagated signal on a carrier readable by a computing system and encoding a computer program of instructions for executing a computer process.
With reference to
The computing device 100 may have additional features or functionality. For example, computing device 100 may also include additional data storage devices (removable and/or non-removable) such as, for example, magnetic disks, optical disks, or tape. Such additional storage is illustrated in
Computing device 100 may also contain communication connections 116 that allow the device to communicate with other computing devices 118, such as over a network in a distributed computing environment, for example, an intranet or the Internet. Communication connection 116 is one example of communication media. Communication media may typically be embodied by computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signal, such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism, and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” means a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation, communication media includes wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared and other wireless media. The term computer readable media as used herein includes both storage media and communication media.
A number of program modules and data files may be stored in the system memory 104 of the computing device 100, including an operating system 105 suitable for controlling the operation of a networked personal computer, such as the WINDOWS operating systems from MICROSOFT CORPORATION of Redmond, Washington. System memory 104 may also store one or more program modules, such as word processor application 120, and others described below. The web browsing application 120 is operative to provide functionality for viewing, editing, and processing electronic information via one or more Internet-based or other network-based web pages. In addition, as described herein, web page content is edited in a web page editing mode. Web page editing may be performed via an editing mode of the web browsing application 120, or via another suitable web page editing application or tool may be programmed for allowing editing of a web page via a drag and drop operation described herein. Other applications 106 that may be used in accordance with embodiments of the present invention include electronic mail and contacts applications, word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, database applications, slide presentation applications, drawing or computer-aided application programs, etc.
According to embodiments of the present invention, display styles or style properties that may be applied to various web page items such as web page content, including web page links, are defined as Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) definitions. According to this embodiment of the present invention, web page content, including web page links, is structured according to the Extensible Markup Language (XML). Thus, each available style property that may be applied to a given web page item is implemented as an XSL transformation that may be used to transform a given XML-formatted web page item to a web page presentation format, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) while applying one or more selected style properties to the web page item during the transformation.
Each XSL transformation file can define one or more XSL templates. The XSL templates define a “style ” for an item, including the fonts, colors, and layout of the content associated with the web page item. According to one embodiment, styles are available on a per web site basis which means that styles for a given web portal site may be centrally defined and available for all areas of the web site. For example, a “headline” style may be used for a first area of a web site and the same “headline” style may be used for a second area of the same web site. According to one embodiment, the XSL files may be stored in a top-level document library for access by a given web site or web page during an editing mode.
According to embodiments of the present invention, the operation of setting a style property on a given web page item within a group of web page items may accomplish a number of operations. The display of the affected web page item may be changed, including what properties are shown, how the properties are shown, and how the properties are laid out relative to each other. The operation of setting a style property on a web page item may remove any styling associated with a group of web page items where the group has set a particular styling property on all listings or items in the group. In other words, applying a style property to one web page item in a group of web page items may disable group-level styles applied to all items in the group. However, other items in the group may remain as-is with existing style properties as previously applied by the group-level style properties.
Referring to
According to an embodiment of the present invention, a web page author/editor may select an entire web page element listing (title, description, image, URL, etc.) and style the selected element with one of a set of available style templates having a set of properties, for example, bold, title only, centered, blue. Referring to
Referring still to
Referring to
Before selecting a desired style property, the author/editor first selects a web page item for application of a selected style property. Once a web page item is selected for style application, the window 310 is populated with available style names that may be applied to the selected web page item. For example, “a title only” style, “a bullet and title” style, “a title and description” style, “a title and image” style, “a heading” style, and “a summary” style are available for selection by the author/editor for applying a selected style property to a desired portion of the web page item. As should be understood, a variety of different web page styles may be provided in the style selection window 310. According to this embodiment the provided styles are XSL templates for structuring a selected web page item according to a variety of styles, for example, outline style, bullet style, and the like.
According to embodiments of the present invention, selection of certain style properties may allow for a customization of style properties to be applied to one or more portions of a given web page item, for example, varying font sizes, colors, font types, text positions (justified versus centered), and the like. As described above, each potential style property that may be applied to one or more portions of the selected web page item is associated with an XSL definition that will be utilized for transforming the selected web page item or portion thereof into a web page presentation format bearing a style associated with the selected style property.
As illustrated in
According to embodiments of the present invention, once the author/editor selects a given style property for application to a selected web page item, the preview displayed in the preview pane 320 is dynamically updated to show how the selected web page item will appear in the web page if the selected style property is committed to the selected web page item. Thus, an author/editor may try a number of different style properties and receive a preview of each different style property before actually committing a change to the web page containing the web page item selected by the author/editor. Once the author/editor decides on a particular style property to be applied to one or more portions of a given web page item, the author/editor may accept changes, and the accepted changes will be applied to the selected web page item in the selected web page.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, once the author/editor selects application of a particular style property to a particular portion of a given web page item, for example, the “title” of a web page item, the XSL style definitions may be updated in the top-level document library, described above, such that all “titles” for all web page items in the selected web page or on a selected web site containing the selected web page may be subsequently styled according to the updated style property for “titles” when the XML-formatted web page content is transformed for presentation in the web page. Alternatively, style properties selectively applied to a given portion of a given web page item, for example, the “title” of a given web page item, may be applied on an individual web page item basis without affecting style properties applied to other similar web page item portions in a given web page.
If the web page item is part of a group of web page items having group-level style properties applied to all items in the group, selectively changing a style property for an individual style property in the group disables the group-level style properties for the group to allow the selected change to be made to the selected web page item. However, according to embodiments of the present invention, style properties applied to other items of the associated group of items are maintained as dictated by the group-level style properties prior to disabling the group-level style properties. That is, selectively changing a style property for one item in the group of web page items does not cause that style property to be applied to all items in the group. On the other hand, if desired, a web page author/editor may apply a group-level style property to a group of web page items according to embodiments of the present invention by highlighting a group of web page items prior to selecting application of a style property as described herein.
As described with reference to
Upon selecting an edit mode, the web user interface 500 is provided as illustrated in
If a portion of a web page item, such as the description 515, is dragged from its present location to a second location, according to embodiments of the present invention, the presentation level information, including the dragged text, and all underlying information, such as metadata and coding associated with the operability of the dragged item are moved to the drop location. If a style property is applied to the dragged web page item, as described above with reference to
According to one embodiment, if the dragged web page item is dropped into a group of web page items bearing a group-level style setting, the group-level style setting controls, and the XSL style definitions applied to the group-level web page items are automatically applied to the dropped item. For example, if a dragged item having a title formatted according to a bold text formatting style is dropped in a group of web page items having titles formatted according to an italicized formatting style, the dropped item will be automatically reformatted according to the XSL style definition applied to the group-level web page items, and the dropped item will be reformatted according to the example italicized formatting style.
According to an alternative embodiment, if a web page item is dragged to a group of web page items having an applied group-level style setting (e.g., one or more style properties), the group-level style setting may be broken, and the dropped item may retain the style properties applied to the dropped item from its starting location. According to this alternative embodiment, all other items in the group of web page items retain style properties applied to those items as a part of the original group-level style properties. If the author/editor then desires to edit the style properties associated with the dropped item, the author/editor may utilize the edit menu 300 described above with respect to
Having described an exemplary operating environment and various embodiments and aspects of the present invention,
At block 625, the edit menu 300 is deployed for application of a desired style property to the selected web page item. At block 635, a web page style property is selected for application of a selected style property. For example, from the style window 310, a style property, such as “title,” “bullet and title,” or the like may be selected for application of a selected style property. At block 640, a selected style property, for example, “bullet and title” may be selected for application to the selected web item.
At block 645, if the selected style property is being applied to a web page item that is part of a group of web items, any group-level style settings applied to the group of web page items is disabled, and the selected style setting is applied to the selected web item, but style settings previously applied to other web items in the group by the group-level setting are maintained by the other web part items.
At block 650, a preview of application of the selected style property is provided in the preview window 320 to allow the author/editor, to preview the result of application of the selected style property to the selected web item. If the author/editor approves of the style property preview, the author/editor may accept the applied style property at block 655, and the applied style property will be applied to the associated web item in the web page 200. Alternatively, if the author/editor does not approve of the previewed style property application, the author/editor may repeat the operations described with respect to blocks 635 through 650 until the author/editor is satisfied with the application of one or more selected style properties. The routine ends at block 690.
At block 720, a determination is made as to whether the target group or target location or control has an explicit style setting previously applied to the target location, target group, or target control. At block 725, if the target group, target control or target location has an explicit style setting, the explicit style setting is applied to the dropped web item. At block 730, if the target group, control, or location does not have an explicit style setting, then application of the style setting presently applied to the dropped link or other web item is maintained in the target control, group, or location. The routine ends at block 790.
As described herein, methods and systems provide for application of style properties/settings to one or more web page items, components, links, or other web page content. Use of an edit menu allows for the application of a selected style setting on a per-item basis or on an all-item basis and allows for the provision of a preview of the application of a selected style setting to a selected web page item. Through the use of a web page editing user interface, style settings may be applied to web page items through drag and drop operations and through application via conventional style setting application methods such as highlighting a selected web page item, followed by selection of a desired style setting. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications or variations may be made in the present invention without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention. Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the invention disclosed here.
