Patent Application
20070094280
The present invention generally relates to mobile terminals and more particularly to saving data shown on the display of a mobile terminal.
Mobile terminals, or mobile (cellular) telephones, for mobile telecommunications systems like GSM, UMTS, D-AMPS and CDMA2000 have been used for many years now. In the older days, mobile terminals were used almost only for voice communication with other mobile terminals or stationary telephones. More recently, the use of modern terminals has been broadened to include not just voice communication, but also various other services and applications such as www/wap browsing, video telephony, electronic messaging (e.g. SMS, MMS, email, instant messaging), digital image or video recording, FM radio, music playback, electronic games, calendar/organizer/time planner, word processing, etc.
Using web browsers in mobile terminals presents users with a particular problem. A user may find information in a web document, for instance an address or a map, that the user wishes to save to be accessed easily at a later point in time.
One alternative for the user to save the information is to save the currently viewed document as a bookmark, allowing the user to navigate back to the document to view the desired information. However, the position of the desired information in the document is not saved, resulting in the user having to perform a tedious scroll to the correct position to view the desired information. Additionally, to view the desired information, the browser may need to access the web document from the server once again, leading to a frustrating time delay.
Another alternative is, similar to what a user might do to perform a similar task in a computer, for the user to select the desired data, copy that data into a temporary buffer, paste the data from the buffer to a document in some type of editor and save the document. A problem with this alternative is that it is cumbersome to select the desired information in the limited user interface provided in a mobile terminal. Another problem is the number of actions the user has to perform to save the desired data, resulting in a procedure which is not very user friendly.
Consequently, there is a need to provide a convenient and efficient way for a user to save data currently shown on a display of a mobile terminal.
In view of the above, an objective of the invention is to solve or at least reduce the problems discussed above.
Generally, the above objectives are achieved by the attached independent patent claims.
According to a first aspect of the invention there has been provided a method for saving data shown on a display of a mobile terminal, comprising the steps of: receiving an input indicating that currently shown data is to be saved; determining save data, the save data comprising a part of a document shown on the display; and saving the save data in a user-accessible memory. This way, the user is provided with a way to save data which may have taken a substantial amount of time to get to, for easy retrieval at a later stage.
The part of the document may comprise data of the document shown on the display and data of the document located after data shown on the display. This allows a user to scroll down and view part of the document below where the screen view is located at the time of the save.
The step of saving the data may include saving at least one parameter indicating a position of a currently shown view in the document. Saving the position simplifies viewing of the document later.
The step of saving the save data may involve: saving a copy of the document; and saving at least one parameter indicating a position of a currently shown view in the document. In other words, when the user later retrieves the data, it will be presented in the same way that it is presented at the time of saving the data, including the position in the document. Moreover, the time to present the data is relatively small, as all data is stored locally in the mobile terminal.
The step of saving the save data may involve: saving a reference to a copy of the document, the copy being previously stored in the mobile terminal; and saving at least one parameter indicating a position of a currently shown view in the document. Sometimes, a copy of the document may already exist in a memory of the mobile terminal. If that is the case, it is unnecessary to create another copy; a reference to the existing copy is sufficient. This embodiment may have a reference counter on the document, such that every use of the document increases the counter and a dereference decreases the counter, whereby the document is erased when the counter reaches 0, i.e. no application needs the document anymore.
The document may be an original document, and the step of saving the save data may involve: creating a modified document being a modification of the original document, such that content items of the original document currently visible on the display are copied to produce the modified document; and saving the modified document in a user-accessible memory. In this way, the memory required to save the data is reduced, as the number of content items are reduced compared to a full copy.
The document may be rendered by a browser application. Additionally, the document may comply with a markup language selected from a group consisting of hypertext markup language, wireless markup language and extensible markup language. As finding particular information using a web browser may take quite some time, the invention is applicable for use with a web browser.
The save data may include text data and image data. Both these types of data are useful to save for later easy access.
The user-accessible memory may be a local non-volatile memory in the mobile terminal. Consequently, data is not lost if the mobile terminal is switched off or the battery runs out of power.
The method may comprise the further steps of: receiving an input indicating that the saved data is to be presented; retrieving the saved data from the user-accessible memory; and presenting the saved data on the display. This provides a way for the user to easily access and display the saved data.
A second aspect of the invention is a method for saving a reference to document currently rendered on a display of a mobile terminal by a browser application, comprising the steps of: receiving an input indicating that a reference to currently shown data is to be saved; saving, in a user-accessible memory, an identifier to the document and at least one parameter indicating a position of a currently shown view in the document. In this embodiment, a link is saved, whereby the actual text and binary data does not have to be saved, reducing the memory space required, while still providing the user with an easy way to display the data the way it is displayed.
A third aspect of the invention is a method for saving data shown on a display of a mobile terminal, the method comprising the steps of: receiving an input indicating that currently shown data is to be saved; saving an image copy of an entire document, at least part of the document currently being rendered on the display by a browser application; and saving at least one parameter indicating a position of a currently shown view in the document. Saving the data as image data allows fast rendering when the data is later displayed. Saving the entire document with positioning data also allows the user to, if desired, scroll through the document when it is presented.
The user-accessible memory may be a local non-volatile memory in the mobile terminal. Consequently, data is not lost if the mobile terminal is switched off or the battery runs out of power.
A fourth aspect of the invention is a mobile terminal capable of saving data shown on a display of the mobile terminal, the mobile terminal comprising: means for receiving an input indicating that currently shown data should be saved; means for determining data to be saved, the data comprising a part of a document shown on the display; and means for saving save the data in a user-accessible memory. This way, the user is provided with a way to save data which may have taken a substantial amount of time to get to, for easy retrieval at a later stage.
The data shown on the display may be rendered by a browser application. As finding particular information using a web browser may take quite some time, the invention is applicable for use with a web browser.
The document complies with a markup language selected from a group consisting of hypertext markup language, wireless markup language and extensible markup language.
A fifth aspect of the invention is a computer program comprising software instructions that, when executed in a mobile communication terminal, performs the method according to the first aspect of the invention. This way, the user is provided with a way to save data which may have taken a substantial amount of time to get to, for easy retrieval at a later stage.
Other objectives, features and advantages of the present invention will appear from the following detailed disclosure, from the attached dependent claims as well as from the drawings.
Generally, all terms used in the claims are to be interpreted according to their ordinary meaning in the technical field, unless explicitly defined otherwise herein. All references to “a/an/the [element, device, component, means, step, etc]” are to be interpreted openly as referring to at least one instance of the element, device, component, means, step, etc., unless explicitly stated otherwise. The steps of any method disclosed herein do not have to be performed in the exact order disclosed, unless explicitly stated.
Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in more detail, reference being made to the enclosed drawings, in which:
The mobile terminals 100, 106 are connected to a mobile telecommunications network 110 through RF links 102, 108 via base stations 104, 109. The mobile telecommunications network 110 may be in compliance with any commercially available mobile telecommunications standard, such as GSM, UMTS, D-AMPS, CDMA2000, FOMA and TD-SCDMA.
The mobile telecommunications network 110 is operatively connected to a wide area network 120, which may be Internet or a part thereof. An Internet server 122 has a data storage 124 and is connected to the wide area network 120, as is an Internet client computer 126. The server 122 may host a www/wap server capable of serving www/wap content to the mobile terminal 100.
A public switched telephone network (PSTN) 130 is connected to the mobile telecommunications network 110 in a familiar manner. Various telephone terminals, including the stationary telephone 132, are connected to the PSTN 130.
An embodiment 200 of the mobile terminal 100 is illustrated in more detail in
The internal component, software and protocol structure of the mobile terminal 200 will now be described with reference to
The MMI 334 also includes one or more hardware controllers, which together with the MMI drivers cooperate with the display 336/203, keypad 338/204 as well as various other I/O devices such as microphone, speaker, vibrator, ringtone generator, LED indicator, etc. As is commonly known, the user may operate the mobile terminal through the man-machine interface thus formed.
The software also includes various modules, protocol stacks, drivers, etc., which are commonly designated as 330 and which provide communication services (such as transport, network and connectivity) for an RF interface 306, and optionally a Bluetooth interface 308 and/or an IrDA interface 310. The RF interface 306 comprises an internal or external antenna as well as appropriate radio circuitry for establishing and maintaining a wireless link to a base station (e.g. the link 102 and base station 104 in
The mobile terminal also has a SIM card 304 and an associated reader. As is commonly known, the SIM card 304 comprises a processor as well as local work and data memory.
In
In
Once the name has been submitted, a confirmation message 419 is shown in
With reference to
In step 500, a user input is detected, indicating that the user wishes to save the data currently shown on the display 203 of the mobile terminal 200. This input may be detecting the use of soft keys as discussed in conjunction with
In step 502, data to be saved is determined. In one embodiment, it is determined that the entire document should be saved. In this case data related to the scroll position, and optionally zoom level or other presentation parameters, is determined to be part of the data to be saved. This embodiment gives the user the advantage that he/she may scroll up or down from the position at the time the data was captured.
In another embodiment, it is determined that only data related to what is visible on the screen is to be saved. In this case, in this step a copy is made of the currently viewed document and any content items in the document that are not in the current view are removed. The amount of space required to save the currently viewed data is thereby reduced.
In yet another embodiment, it is determined that only an identifier, such as a URL, related to the currently viewed document is to be saved, along with data related to the scroll position, and optionally zoom level or other presentation parameters. This embodiment requires the least amount of space to save the current view. In effect, this embodiment saves an extended bookmark, containing the URL and additional parameters. This data can either be considered a multi-part parameter or a multiple parameters.
In step 504, the data is saved in memory, such as memory 302 in
Time may then pass, as indicated by the dashed arrow between steps 504 and 506.
In step 506, a user input is detected, indicating that the user wishes to view the saved data. This input may for example be effected by navigating in a content browser and selecting the content item corresponding to the saved data.
In step 508, the saved data is then retrieved from the non-volatile user-accessible memory, where it was previously saved in step 504.
Finally, in step 510, the saved data is presented on the display to be viewed by the user. If the data is stored as a web document, the browser application is advantageously used to again render the data on the display.
It is to be noted that although the term web documents has been used herein to reference content being shown on the display to be saved, any type of content may be shown and saved in the present invention, including, but not limited to, hypertext markup language (HTML), wireless markup language (WML) and extensible markup language (XML).
The invention has mainly been described above with reference to a few embodiments. However, as is readily appreciated by a person skilled in the art, other embodiments than the ones disclosed above are equally possible within the scope of the invention, as defined by the appended patent claims.
