Patent Application
20110126113
Web pages that are built for a desktop display often do not display well when a smaller display is used. On the smaller display, a user may need to scroll vertically and/or horizontally to view the content of a larger Web page. This may be time consuming and frustrating for the user.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.
Briefly, aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to displaying content on multiple pages. In aspects, a request for content is received from a browsing component. The content is divided into pages suitable for displaying on a display associated with the browsing component. Navigation elements may be embedded in the pages to allow a user using the browsing component to navigate between pages corresponding to the content. The actions of dividing the content into multiple pages may occur on a content server, an entity intermediate to the content server and a client hosting the browsing component, or a component of the client.
This Summary is provided to briefly identify some aspects of the subject matter that is further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
The phrase “subject matter described herein” refers to subject matter described in the Detailed Description unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The term “aspects” is to be read as “at least one aspect.” Identifying aspects of the subject matter described in the Detailed Description is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter.
The aspects described above and other aspects of the subject matter described herein are illustrated by way of example and not limited in the accompanying figures in which like reference numerals indicate similar elements and in which:
As used herein, the term “includes” and its variants are to be read as open-ended terms that mean “includes, but is not limited to.” The term “or” is to be read as “and/or” unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. The term “based on” is to be read as “based at least in part on.” The terms “one embodiment” and “an embodiment” are to be read as “at least one embodiment.” The term “another embodiment” is to be read as “at least one other embodiment.” Other definitions, explicit and implicit, may be included below.
Aspects of the subject matter described herein are operational with numerous other general purpose or special purpose computing system environments or configurations. Examples of well known computing systems, environments, or configurations that may be suitable for use with aspects of the subject matter described herein comprise personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microcontroller-based systems, set-top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), gaming devices, printers, appliances including set-top, media center, or other appliances, automobile-embedded or attached computing devices, other mobile devices, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.
Aspects of the subject matter described herein may be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, being executed by a computer. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, and so forth, which perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Aspects of the subject matter described herein 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 computer storage media including memory storage devices.
With reference to
The computer 110 typically includes a variety of computer-readable media. Computer-readable media can be any available media that can be accessed by the computer 110 and includes both volatile and nonvolatile media, and removable and non-removable media. By way of example, and not limitation, computer-readable media may comprise computer storage media and communication media.
Computer storage media includes both volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data. Computer storage media includes RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile discs (DVDs) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and which can be accessed by the computer 110.
Communication media typically embodies 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. Combinations of any of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.
The system memory 130 includes computer storage media in the form of volatile and/or nonvolatile memory such as read only memory (ROM) 131 and random access memory (RAM) 132. A basic input/output system 133 (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within computer 110, such as during start-up, is typically stored in ROM 131. RAM 132 typically contains data and/or program modules that are immediately accessible to and/or presently being operated on by processing unit 120. By way of example, and not limitation,
The computer 110 may also include other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storage media. By way of example only,
The drives and their associated computer storage media, discussed above and illustrated in
A user may enter commands and information into the computer 110 through input devices such as a keyboard 162 and pointing device 161, commonly referred to as a mouse, trackball, or touch pad. Other input devices (not shown) may include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, a touch-sensitive screen, a writing tablet, or the like. These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit 120 through a user input interface 160 that is coupled to the system bus, but may be connected by other interface and bus structures, such as a parallel port, game port or a universal serial bus (USB).
A monitor 191 or other type of display device is also connected to the system bus 121 via an interface, such as a video interface 190. In addition to the monitor, computers may also include other peripheral output devices such as speakers 197 and printer 196, which may be connected through an output peripheral interface 195.
The computer 110 may operate in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more remote computers, such as a remote computer 180. The remote computer 180 may be a personal computer, a server, a router, a network PC, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described above relative to the computer 110, although only a memory storage device 181 has been illustrated in
When used in a LAN networking environment, the computer 110 is connected to the LAN 171 through a network interface or adapter 170. When used in a WAN networking environment, the computer 110 may include a modem 172 or other means for establishing communications over the WAN 173, such as the Internet. The modem 172, which may be internal or external, may be connected to the system bus 121 via the user input interface 160 or other appropriate mechanism. In a networked environment, program modules depicted relative to the computer 110, or portions thereof, may be stored in the remote memory storage device. By way of example, and not limitation,
As mentioned previously, web pages that are built for a desktop display often do not display well when a smaller display is used.
In an embodiment, the network 235 may comprise the Internet. In an embodiment, the network 235 may comprise one or more local area networks, wide area networks, direct connections, virtual connections, private networks, virtual private networks, some combination of the above, and the like.
The content server 205, the content service 206, the clients 207-210, and the web page development tool 211 may comprise or reside on one or more computing devices. Such devices may include, for example, personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microcontroller-based systems, set-top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), gaming devices, printers, appliances including set-top, media center, or other appliances, automobile-embedded or attached computing devices, other mobile devices, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like. An exemplary device that may be configured to act as one of the above comprises the computer 110 of
Although the terms “client” and “server” are sometimes used herein, it is to be understood, that a client may be implemented on a machine that has hardware and/or software that is typically associated with a server and that likewise, a server may be implemented on a machine that has hardware and/or software that is typically associated with a desktop, personal, or mobile computer. Furthermore, a client may at times act as a server and vice versa. At times, two or more entities that more frequently act as a client or server may concurrently be peers, servers, or clients. In an embodiment, a client and server may be implemented on the same physical machine.
Furthermore, as used herein, each of the terms “server” and “client” may refer to one or more physical or virtual entities, one or more processes executing on one or more physical or virtual entities, and the like. Thus, a server may include an actual physical node upon which one or more processes execute, a virtual node upon which one or more processes execute, a service executing on one or more nodes, a group of nodes that together provide a service, and the like. A service may include one or more processes executing on one or more physical or virtual entities. Furthermore, a single process may implement one or more servers.
The term “process” and its variants as used herein may include one or more traditional processes, threads, components, libraries, objects that perform tasks, and the like. A process may be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. In an embodiment, a process is any mechanism, however called, capable of or used in performing an action. A process may be distributed over multiple devices or located on a single device.
The content server 205 may include one or more programs that provide Web pages and associated content to entities that request the Web pages. A Web page may include text, graphics, objects, links to other content, and the like.
The content service 206 may include pagination components 220 that interact with the content server 205 to provide Web pages to the clients 207-210. The pagination components may be implemented using one or more processes. In one embodiment, the pagination components 220 may implement an application programming interface (API) that allows the clients 207-210 to call the content service 206 to request content. In calling the content service 206, a client may indicate a URL and the client's display characteristics. The pagination components 220 may obtain the content indicated by the URL, identify data that is to be displayed on different pages on the client's display, divide the content into the pages, and provide the pages to the client.
In one embodiment, to assist in dividing the content into pages, the pagination components 220 may render the content into a single page on a virtual or physical display, capture a screen shot of the page, and identify the multiple pages by identifying elements in the screen shot. In another embodiment, the pagination components 220 may identify elements in the content without capturing a screen shot of the page. This may be done, for example, by parsing the HTML or other code of the page and finding the elements therein. In addition, the pagination components 220 may create a navigation page and/or navigation elements that allow a user to browse the different pages. For example, the pagination components 220 may create browser tabs that allow a user to browse the different pages.
As user herein, a virtual display may include a driver that can be used to render images to memory without displaying the images on a physical display. A virtual display may have configurable display characteristics including width and height.
The pagination components 220 may cache content from the content server 205. After the pagination components 220 have divided the content into pages, the pagination components may provide one of the pages (or a navigation page) to the requesting client. When the client navigates to another one of the pages, the pagination components 220 may access the cached content to obtain the other page and provide that to the client. When the client requests different content (e.g., from another content server), the pagination components 220 may repeat the process above with the new content.
In this embodiment, the client may include no “intelligence” regarding dividing content into multiple pages. Instead, the client may simply call the content service 206 and request content. The pagination components 220 of the content service 206 may seamlessly provide the content to the client via multiple pages that are linked together.
In another embodiment, pages may be annotated with page break markers. In this embodiment, the client may have a component that recognizes these page break markers and displays pages and navigation elements between pages accordingly as described in more detail below.
In yet other embodiments, a client may include pagination components (not shown) that perform the functions of the content service 206 and the pagination components 220. In such embodiments, the content service 206 may be omitted and a client may browse to the content server 205 via the client's pagination components without going through the content service 206. In these embodiments, the pagination components on the client may be responsible for obtaining content from the content server 205, dividing the content into Web pages, providing navigation elements, if any, between Web pages, and displaying the Web pages on a display of the client.
In one embodiment, the content server 205 may include pagination components 221 that perform the functions of the content service 206 and the pagination components 220. In such embodiments, the content service 206 may be omitted and a client may browse directly to the content server 205 without going through the content service 206.
The clients 207-210 may include browsing components 216-219, respectively. A browsing component may comprise a Web browser that is capable of requesting content from the content service 206 and rendering the content for display on a client.
The clients 207-210 may have varying display capabilities. For example, a client may have a desktop display, a laptop display, a PDA display, a cell phone display, or some other sized display.
In one embodiment, to accommodate different sized displays, a Web page may be annotated to include tags or other “markers” that indicate page breaks for various sized displays. For example, a Web page may include markers that indicate page breaks for a browser of a cell phone. In conjunction with rending Web content, the cell phone browser may scan for page breaks in the content. If the Web content includes page breaks, the cell phone browser may display content corresponding to one of the Web pages with an indication that other Web pages are also available.
A client may be configured to recognize page break markers that apply to its display while ignoring page break markers that apply to other displays. For example, when a cell phone comes across a page break marker that does not apply to the cell phone display, the cell phone may ignore the page break marker.
With the diversity of clients and their varying display capabilities, the markers may indicate page breaks for displays having certain characteristics rather than being tied to a certain type of device (e.g., laptop, cell phone, etc.). For example, markers may indicate page breaks for “small,” “medium,” and “large” displays. How to classify a particular display may be determined by one or more characteristics of the display including width, height, number of pixels, spacing of pixels, whether device can display color or not, whether the display is touch sensitive, other characteristics about the display, a combination of two or more of the above, and the like.
The naming and number of different sizes indicated above is exemplary only. In other examples, the number of sizes may be more or less than the number given above. Furthermore, their associated names, if any, may also be varied from that described above.
The content development tool 211 may allow a user, Web page developer, or the like (hereinafter developer) to develop Web pages. The content development tool 211 may allow the developer to indicate page breaks for different types of devices. These page breaks may be embedded as page break marks within the Web pages as described previously.
Although the environment described above includes various numbers of the entities and related infrastructure, it will be recognized that more, fewer, or a different combination of these entities and others may be employed without departing from the spirit or scope of aspects of the subject matter described herein. Furthermore, the entities and communication networks included in the environment may be configured in a variety of ways as will be understood by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit or scope of aspects of the subject matter described herein.
Turning to
The pagination components 410 correspond to the pagination components that may be found on various of the entities of
The communications mechanism 450 allows the apparatus 405 to communicate with other entities. For example, the communications mechanism 450 allows the apparatus to communicate with other entities reachable via the network 235 of
The store 445 is any storage media capable of provide access to content and associated data (e.g., pagination information). The store 445 may be used to store rendering data from a virtual driver in preparation for capturing a screen shot. The store 445 may comprise a file system, database, volatile memory such as RAM, other storage, some combination of the above, and the like and may be distributed across multiple devices. The store 445 may be external, internal, or include components that are both internal and external to the apparatus 405.
The display detector 415 may be operable to obtain the characteristics of the display. As mentioned previously, the characteristics may include one or more of width, height, number of pixels, spacing of pixels, color capabilities, touch sensitivity capabilities, and the like.
The display classifier 420 may be operable to determine a type of display of a client hosting the browser component. The type may indicate characteristics (e.g., small, medium, large, other characteristics, and the like) of the display.
The screen shot manager 425 may be operable to capture a screen shot of the content. The screen shot may be rendered on a virtual or physical display.
The graphic element identifier 430 is operable to locate graphic elements in the content. The graphic element identifier 430 may utilize a screen shot provided by the screen shot manager 425 or may locate graphic elements directly from the content. Machine vision or other techniques may be used to identify the graphic elements. In cases where the graphic element identifier 430 is able to locate graphic elements directly from the content, the screen shot manager 425 may be omitted.
Graphic elements may include bar charts, line charts, other charts, tables, graphs, images, or any other elements that may be represented via one or more pixels. Graphic elements may be resized (e.g., made larger or smaller), but may not be capable of being re-paragraphed or re-formatted to flow around other items in the way text can.
The page break manager 435 may be operable to determine page breaks for dividing content into multiple pages for rendering on a display. The page break manager 435 may determine the page breaks using the type of display and the graphic elements previously identified in the content.
The page provider 440 may be operable to send one or more pages to a rendering component of a client. The page provider 440 may embed links in a page that refer to other pages into which content has been divided. When a client requests content associated with one of these links, the page provider 440 may obtain another one of the pages, embed a link therein, and provide the page to the client.
Turning to
At block 510, a request for content is received. The request may come from a browser component of a client. The request may be received at the content server or at a component that is “logically” between the content server and the browser component. The term logically in this context indicates a component that receives the request before the request (or a request derived from the request) is sent to the content server. For example, referring to
At block 515, the content is obtained from the server. For example, referring to
At block 520, page breaks are determined for dividing the content into multiple pages for display on a target display (e.g., a display of a client). For example, referring to
In determining page breaks, different mechanisms may be used. For example, in one mechanisms, determining page breaks may include:
1. Rendering the content to a virtual display;
2. Capturing a screen shot of the virtual display;
3. Identifying graphic elements of the screen shot; and
4. Dividing the content into multiple pages based on the graphic elements and one or more characteristics of the target display.
As another example, determining page breaks that divide the content into multiple pages may include:
1. Parsing code included in the content;
2. Identifying graphic elements represented by the code; and
3. Dividing the content into multiple pages based on the graphic elements and one or more characteristics of the target display.
As yet another example, determining page breaks that divide the content into multiple pages may include parsing the content to locate page break markers that are applicable to the target display and ignoring other page break markers that are inapplicable to the target display.
The examples of determining page breaks above are not intended to be all-inclusive or exhaustive. Indeed, based on the teachings herein, those skilled in the art may recognize other methods for determining page breaks that may be used without departing from aspects of the subject matter described herein.
At block 525, one or more navigation elements may be added to the pages before providing the pages to the browser component. As indicated previously, a navigation element may indicate another page of the content that is reachable from a currently displayed page. For example, referring to
At block 530, the pages are provided to the browser component. This may be done page at a time as requested by the browser component or in the case of pages that include page break markers, all pages corresponding to the requested content may be provided to the browser component. For example, referring to
At block 535, other actions, if any, may be performed.
Turning to
At block 610, a request for content is received. For example, referring to
At block 615, one or more characteristics of a target display are received. For example, referring to
At block 620, the type of the target display is determined based on the one or more characteristics. For example, referring to
In one embodiment, instead of sending the display characteristics, the client may simply send the type. In this example, the actions associated with blocks 615 and 620 may be omitted.
At block 625, based on the type of display, page breaks are determined for dividing the content into multiple pages for display on the target display. For example, referring to
At block 630, in one embodiment, page break markers may be added so that the client browser may know how to divide the content into pages. For example, referring to
At block 635, navigation elements may be added. For example, referring to
At block 640, the pages are provided to the client. For example, referring to
At block 645, other actions, if any, may be performed.
As can be seen from the foregoing detailed description, aspects have been described related to displaying content on multiple pages. While aspects of the subject matter described herein are susceptible to various modifications and alternative constructions, certain illustrated embodiments thereof are shown in the drawings and have been described above in detail. It should be understood, however, that there is no intention to limit aspects of the claimed subject matter to the specific forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, alternative constructions, and equivalents falling within the spirit and scope of various aspects of the subject matter described herein.
