CA2437933A1 - Predictive caching and highlighting of web pages - Google Patents
Predictive caching and highlighting of web pages Download PDFInfo
- Publication number
- CA2437933A1 CA2437933A1 CA002437933A CA2437933A CA2437933A1 CA 2437933 A1 CA2437933 A1 CA 2437933A1 CA 002437933 A CA002437933 A CA 002437933A CA 2437933 A CA2437933 A CA 2437933A CA 2437933 A1 CA2437933 A1 CA 2437933A1
- Authority
- CA
- Canada
- Prior art keywords
- web
- interest
- user
- document
- browser
- Prior art date
- Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
- Abandoned
Links
- 238000000034 method Methods 0.000 claims description 36
- 230000002085 persistent effect Effects 0.000 claims description 7
- 238000004590 computer program Methods 0.000 claims description 2
- 238000005516 engineering process Methods 0.000 description 11
- 230000008569 process Effects 0.000 description 10
- 238000004891 communication Methods 0.000 description 8
- 230000006870 function Effects 0.000 description 4
- 230000005540 biological transmission Effects 0.000 description 3
- 238000013515 script Methods 0.000 description 3
- 235000008694 Humulus lupulus Nutrition 0.000 description 2
- 210000001072 colon Anatomy 0.000 description 2
- 238000012552 review Methods 0.000 description 2
- 101100127285 Drosophila melanogaster unc-104 gene Proteins 0.000 description 1
- 235000019227 E-number Nutrition 0.000 description 1
- 239000004243 E-number Substances 0.000 description 1
- 230000009471 action Effects 0.000 description 1
- 239000003795 chemical substances by application Substances 0.000 description 1
- 239000003086 colorant Substances 0.000 description 1
- 239000000470 constituent Substances 0.000 description 1
- 238000010276 construction Methods 0.000 description 1
- 235000014510 cooky Nutrition 0.000 description 1
- 238000011161 development Methods 0.000 description 1
- 238000010586 diagram Methods 0.000 description 1
- 238000005553 drilling Methods 0.000 description 1
- 238000001914 filtration Methods 0.000 description 1
- 229910000078 germane Inorganic materials 0.000 description 1
- 230000006872 improvement Effects 0.000 description 1
- 230000002452 interceptive effect Effects 0.000 description 1
- 238000012423 maintenance Methods 0.000 description 1
- 230000008520 organization Effects 0.000 description 1
- 238000004091 panning Methods 0.000 description 1
- 238000012545 processing Methods 0.000 description 1
- 230000001960 triggered effect Effects 0.000 description 1
Classifications
-
- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F16/00—Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
- G06F16/90—Details of database functions independent of the retrieved data types
- G06F16/95—Retrieval from the web
- G06F16/957—Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
- G06F16/9574—Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation of access to content, e.g. by caching
Abstract
A web browser predictively and automatically searches for web documents linked to a currently displayed web page which contain terms of interest to a web browser user. Linked documents containing terms of interest are automatically retrieved and stored while the user views the current document such that if the user selects the link to stored document, it will be displayed without waiting for it to download. To further assist the user in finding the documents containing the user's interest terms, links in the current page leading to the documents of interest are highlighted, and special fast links to those pages may be created and displayed for even greater noticeability and usability by the user
Description
PREDICTIVE CACHING AND HIGHLIGHTING OF WEB PAGES
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Field of the Invention This invention relates to the technology of web browsers and servers, and especially to the web browsing technologies which provide browsing capabilities prioritized and keyed to a user's personal interests.
Description of the Related Art The Internet and the World Wide Web have become critical, integral parts of commercial operations, personal lives, and the education process.
At the heart of Internet is web browser technology and Internet server technology.
An Internet server contains "content" such as documents, image or graphics files, forms, audio clips, etc., all of which is available to systems and browsers which have Internet connectivity.
Web browser or "client" computers may request documents from web addresses, to which appropriate web servers respond by transmitting one or more web documents, image or graphics files, forms, audio clips, etc. The most common protocol for transmission of web documents and contents from servers to browsers is Hyper Text Transmission Protocol ("HTTP").
FIGURE 1 shows the fundamental client-server arrangement of Internet and intranet communications. A client browser computer (1) is provided with Internet access (2) to the World Wide Web (3) through common means such as a dial-up telephone line and modem, cable modem, or local area network ("LAN"). The web browser computer (1) is also provided with appropriate web browsing software, such as Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Explorer. A web server computer (5) is likewise provided with Internet access (4) to the World Wide Web (3) using similar means, or higher-bandwidth means such as Tl and T3 data lines, and a web server suite of software. Alternatively, client and servers may be interconnected via an Intranet (6), such as a corporate LAN. These u'. y.
arrangements are well known within the art.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Field of the Invention This invention relates to the technology of web browsers and servers, and especially to the web browsing technologies which provide browsing capabilities prioritized and keyed to a user's personal interests.
Description of the Related Art The Internet and the World Wide Web have become critical, integral parts of commercial operations, personal lives, and the education process.
At the heart of Internet is web browser technology and Internet server technology.
An Internet server contains "content" such as documents, image or graphics files, forms, audio clips, etc., all of which is available to systems and browsers which have Internet connectivity.
Web browser or "client" computers may request documents from web addresses, to which appropriate web servers respond by transmitting one or more web documents, image or graphics files, forms, audio clips, etc. The most common protocol for transmission of web documents and contents from servers to browsers is Hyper Text Transmission Protocol ("HTTP").
FIGURE 1 shows the fundamental client-server arrangement of Internet and intranet communications. A client browser computer (1) is provided with Internet access (2) to the World Wide Web (3) through common means such as a dial-up telephone line and modem, cable modem, or local area network ("LAN"). The web browser computer (1) is also provided with appropriate web browsing software, such as Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Explorer. A web server computer (5) is likewise provided with Internet access (4) to the World Wide Web (3) using similar means, or higher-bandwidth means such as Tl and T3 data lines, and a web server suite of software. Alternatively, client and servers may be interconnected via an Intranet (6), such as a corporate LAN. These u'. y.
arrangements are well known within the art.
The most common type of Internet content or document is Hyper Text Markup Language ("HTML") documents, but other formats are equally well known in the art, such as Adobe Portable Document Format ("PDF"). HTML, PDF and other web documents provide "hyperlinks" within the document, which allow a user to select another document or web site to view.
Hyperlinks are specially marked text or areas in the document which when selected by the user commands the browser software to retrieve or fetch the indicated document.
Ordinarily, when the user selects a plain hyperlink, the current page being displayed in the web browser's graphical user interface ("GUI") window disappears and the newly received page is displayed. If the parent page is an index, for example the IHM web site www:patents.ibm.com, and the user wishes to visit each descending link (e. g. read the document with tips on how to use the site), then the parent or index page disappears and the new page is displayed (such as the help page).
As the computing capacity of web browser computers increase and the communications bandwidth to the web browser computer increase dramatically, one challenge for organizations who provide Internet web sites and content is to deliver and filter such content in anticipation of these greater processing and throughput speeds.
This is particularly true in the realm of web-based applications, and in the development of better and more efficient ways to move user-pertinent information to the desktop or client.
However, today's web browsers are in general unintelligent software packages. As they currently exist, they require the user to manually search for any articles or documents of interest to him or her, and are often cumbersome in that they frequently require download of many documents before one of germane interest is found.
Search engines provide some level of "intelligence" to the browsing experience, wherein a user may point his unintelligent web browser to a search engine address, enter some keywords for a search, and then review each of the returned documents one at a time by selecting hyperlinks in the search results, or by re-pointing the web browser manually to provided web addresses. However, search engines do not really search the entire Internet, rather they search their own indices of Internet content which has been built by the search engine operator, usually through a process of reviewing manual submissions from other web site operators. Thus, it is common for a user to use several search engines while looking for information on a particular subject, because each search engine will return different results based on their own index content.
To partially address this problem, two other technologies have been developed and are well-known in the art. The first technology is known as a "metasearch engine" which is a search engine of search engines. A
metasearch engine does not keep its own index, but rather submits a query to multiple search engines simultaneously, and returns to the user the highest ranked returns from each of the search engines. While this is more useful than manually serially visiting each of the queried search engines, the results are typically less satisfying than would be expected.
Commonly, the top few returns on a list of ranked matches to the search keywords are not the most interesting, and so more often than not, a user visits the sites listed towards the middle or end of the return list. The metasearch engine may, though, return the top 5 of listings from 4 search engines, which may filter out the more likely interesting information.
The second attempt at solving this problem is known as web "crawler"
engines. These servers periodically contact other servers to "re-index"
previously indexed web site content, which tends to keep them more up-to-date and incorporates into their index any newly available information a web site. However, since thousands of new web sites are brought on-line each day, it is practically impossible for a crawler to visit new sites. So, even web crawlers may not provide full coverage of Internet content.
Other attempts, including creating a "community of intelligent agents", use of server-based interactive sorting and filtering, a client-side "intelligent assistant" triggered by encountering special tags within a web document, and automatic "bookmark" functions, have been proposed in various US patents. In general, all of these proposed technologies and methods require some amount of server-side and client-side cooperation, making it difficult to deploy these technologies on a wide scale.
Several years ago, client-side technology was introduced to download all web pages within one hyperlink of the web page currently loaded by the browser. By gathering all the directly linked documents from the currently visited page, whichever one the user next selected would be immediately available from a cache in local memory, thereby eliminating the wait for the newly selected page to be transmitted from the server to a the web browser. By the time the user finished reading the next page (now the current page) and selected a subsequent document, the subsequent document had already been cached so that it, too, could be displayed without transmission delay. However, this process has shortcomings when visiting a "link-rich" web page. For example, a web page of a popular news site may have over 60 directly linked documents from the new service's home page. Thus, the communications network serving the web browser computer may pose a bottleneck or time-limiting factor for loading all 60 directly linked documents while the user reads the home page, and before the user selects a hyperlink on the home page. As such, only a few of these directly linked pages might be successfully downloaded in the time that it takes the reader to peruse the home page and to make a decision on the next document to view. Unfortunately, the pages that were successfully downloaded~during the review of.the home page may be of no interest to the user as the downloading function has no means for sorting or determining which pages may or may not be of interest.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention accordingly provides, in a first aspect, a method for predictively browsing for web documents of potential interest to a user of a web browser system, said web browser system having a user display, a user input device, and a persistent storage device, said web documents containing words and being accessible through a linked address from said web browser system, said method comprising the steps of:
receiving a portion of a web document from a linked address; determining if said portion of a web document contains one or more predetermined words of interest to said user; and responsive to determining one or more words of interest are present in said document portion, receiving and storing an entirety of said web document.
The method of the first aspect preferably further comprises repeating said steps of receiving a portion of a web document, determining if said portion contains interest words, and receiving and storing an entirety of a web document for a plurality of web dopuments accessible within a predetermined number of linked addresses from a first web document.
The method of the first aspect preferably further comprises the step of providing special user highlighting of a link to a web document on said web browser display.
The method of the first aspect preferably further comprises creating a fast link to said stored web document on said web browser display.
In a second aspect, the present invention provides a computer program comprising program code to, when loaded into a computer system and executed, cause said computer system to perform all the steps of a method of the first aspect.
In a third aspect, the present invention provides an enhanced web browser system capable of predictively browsing for web documents of potential interest to a user of a web browser system, said web documents containing words and being accessible through a linked address from said web browser system, said system comprising:~a processor for executing program code; a user display for presenting information to a user; a user input device for receiving user input; a persistent storage device for storing data and information, including a user interest term list stored therein, said interest term list containing words of interest to the user;
and a predictive interest-based browser program executable by said processor, said browser program adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
Preferably the predictive interest-based browser program of the system of the third aspect further comprises a standard web browser program with a browser plug-in, said browser plug-in being adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
Preferably said web documents comprise HTMZ documents.
Preferably the system of the third aspect further comprises a link highlighter for highlighting a link to a stored web document on said web browser display.
Preferably the system of the third aspect further comprises a fast link creator, said fast link on said web browser display pointing to said stored web document.
The present invention thus suitably and preferably allows the web browser to predictively and automatically search for web documents linked to a currently displayed web page which contain terms of interest to the web browser user. Linked documents containing terms of interest are suitably automatically retrieved and stored while the user views the current document such that if the user selects the link to stored document, it will be displayed without waiting for it to download. To further assist the user in finding the documents containing the user's interest terms, links in the current page leading to the documents of interest may be highlighted, and special fast links to those pages may be created and displayed for even greater noticeability and usability by the user.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention thus advantageously provide a web browsing method and system which predictively retrieves information from computer network servers and distributed databases, such as the World Wide Web, based upon a user's list of interest terms or keywords. Further, it is advantageous for this new system and method to be compatible with widely-used web browser technologies, such as personal computers, web-enabled telephones, Internet appliances, personal digital assistants, and pocket PCs, with minimal or no server-side support or cooperating technology. Additionally, it is advantageous for this new system and method to highlight predictively cached information, or links to such information, on a user's display such that the user may easily and quickly view the predictively cached information.
Preferred embodiments further preferably provide a system and method fox configuring a web browser system to include a list of interest terms for a user. This method provided a list of the user's most sought-after keywords, the list being available to other software programs on the same client web browser computer.
BRTEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
A preferred embodiment of the present invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIGURE 1 shows the well-known arrangement between Internet clients or web browser systems, web server systems, and communications networks.
FIGURE 2 illustrates the well-known architecture of web browser and web server systems, FIGURE 3 shows a typical tree-like structure of hyperlinked documents on a web site.
FIGURE 4 discloses the arrangement of the preferred embodiment of the invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
For the purposes of this disclosure, it is assumed that all tasks associated with seeking out and loading web pages are conducted by a web browser application, such as Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Explorer.
In practice, embodiments of the invention described herein may be realized in web-browser associated software, which may or may not be part of the browser itself, such as a cooperating stand-alone software application or a web browser plug-in module. As such, it will be recognized by those skilled in the art that the construction of interest term lists, as described herein, can be accomplished by any piece of software, the results of which can be made available to other browser-related functions and software.
FIGURE 2 shows the general hardware and software architectures of typical web servers and web browser computer systems. A web browser computer (20) is communicatively interconnected via an Internet or intranet (21) to a web server computer (22). The web browser system comprises standard user interface devices (23) such as a computer display or monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The web browser computer (20) hardware platform comprises a central processor ("CPU") (24), disk drives (25), user interface device I/O (26), and network interface card ("NIC") (27).
The NIC may be one of several varieties well known within the art, including a dial-up modem, local area network ("LAN") card, or cable modem interface. The software executed by the web browser computer (20) may include device drivers and a basic input/output system ("BIOS") (28), and operating system (203), application programs (202), and an applet interpreter (29) and applets (201). A web browser program, such as Netscape's Navigator, is an application program which can be executed by the CPU (24). This architecture and arrangement with a web server computer is well known within the art.
In the preferred embodiment, a standard web browser application software program is modified to include certain logical and functional enhancements. The functional enhancements utilize several existing capabilities of the existing web browser, such as the abilities to:
(1) interpret received web documents;
(2) cause all or part of a web document to be displayed in the current web browser display window;
(3) display user option icons, drop down lists or other mode control indicators in the web browser display window;
Hyperlinks are specially marked text or areas in the document which when selected by the user commands the browser software to retrieve or fetch the indicated document.
Ordinarily, when the user selects a plain hyperlink, the current page being displayed in the web browser's graphical user interface ("GUI") window disappears and the newly received page is displayed. If the parent page is an index, for example the IHM web site www:patents.ibm.com, and the user wishes to visit each descending link (e. g. read the document with tips on how to use the site), then the parent or index page disappears and the new page is displayed (such as the help page).
As the computing capacity of web browser computers increase and the communications bandwidth to the web browser computer increase dramatically, one challenge for organizations who provide Internet web sites and content is to deliver and filter such content in anticipation of these greater processing and throughput speeds.
This is particularly true in the realm of web-based applications, and in the development of better and more efficient ways to move user-pertinent information to the desktop or client.
However, today's web browsers are in general unintelligent software packages. As they currently exist, they require the user to manually search for any articles or documents of interest to him or her, and are often cumbersome in that they frequently require download of many documents before one of germane interest is found.
Search engines provide some level of "intelligence" to the browsing experience, wherein a user may point his unintelligent web browser to a search engine address, enter some keywords for a search, and then review each of the returned documents one at a time by selecting hyperlinks in the search results, or by re-pointing the web browser manually to provided web addresses. However, search engines do not really search the entire Internet, rather they search their own indices of Internet content which has been built by the search engine operator, usually through a process of reviewing manual submissions from other web site operators. Thus, it is common for a user to use several search engines while looking for information on a particular subject, because each search engine will return different results based on their own index content.
To partially address this problem, two other technologies have been developed and are well-known in the art. The first technology is known as a "metasearch engine" which is a search engine of search engines. A
metasearch engine does not keep its own index, but rather submits a query to multiple search engines simultaneously, and returns to the user the highest ranked returns from each of the search engines. While this is more useful than manually serially visiting each of the queried search engines, the results are typically less satisfying than would be expected.
Commonly, the top few returns on a list of ranked matches to the search keywords are not the most interesting, and so more often than not, a user visits the sites listed towards the middle or end of the return list. The metasearch engine may, though, return the top 5 of listings from 4 search engines, which may filter out the more likely interesting information.
The second attempt at solving this problem is known as web "crawler"
engines. These servers periodically contact other servers to "re-index"
previously indexed web site content, which tends to keep them more up-to-date and incorporates into their index any newly available information a web site. However, since thousands of new web sites are brought on-line each day, it is practically impossible for a crawler to visit new sites. So, even web crawlers may not provide full coverage of Internet content.
Other attempts, including creating a "community of intelligent agents", use of server-based interactive sorting and filtering, a client-side "intelligent assistant" triggered by encountering special tags within a web document, and automatic "bookmark" functions, have been proposed in various US patents. In general, all of these proposed technologies and methods require some amount of server-side and client-side cooperation, making it difficult to deploy these technologies on a wide scale.
Several years ago, client-side technology was introduced to download all web pages within one hyperlink of the web page currently loaded by the browser. By gathering all the directly linked documents from the currently visited page, whichever one the user next selected would be immediately available from a cache in local memory, thereby eliminating the wait for the newly selected page to be transmitted from the server to a the web browser. By the time the user finished reading the next page (now the current page) and selected a subsequent document, the subsequent document had already been cached so that it, too, could be displayed without transmission delay. However, this process has shortcomings when visiting a "link-rich" web page. For example, a web page of a popular news site may have over 60 directly linked documents from the new service's home page. Thus, the communications network serving the web browser computer may pose a bottleneck or time-limiting factor for loading all 60 directly linked documents while the user reads the home page, and before the user selects a hyperlink on the home page. As such, only a few of these directly linked pages might be successfully downloaded in the time that it takes the reader to peruse the home page and to make a decision on the next document to view. Unfortunately, the pages that were successfully downloaded~during the review of.the home page may be of no interest to the user as the downloading function has no means for sorting or determining which pages may or may not be of interest.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention accordingly provides, in a first aspect, a method for predictively browsing for web documents of potential interest to a user of a web browser system, said web browser system having a user display, a user input device, and a persistent storage device, said web documents containing words and being accessible through a linked address from said web browser system, said method comprising the steps of:
receiving a portion of a web document from a linked address; determining if said portion of a web document contains one or more predetermined words of interest to said user; and responsive to determining one or more words of interest are present in said document portion, receiving and storing an entirety of said web document.
The method of the first aspect preferably further comprises repeating said steps of receiving a portion of a web document, determining if said portion contains interest words, and receiving and storing an entirety of a web document for a plurality of web dopuments accessible within a predetermined number of linked addresses from a first web document.
The method of the first aspect preferably further comprises the step of providing special user highlighting of a link to a web document on said web browser display.
The method of the first aspect preferably further comprises creating a fast link to said stored web document on said web browser display.
In a second aspect, the present invention provides a computer program comprising program code to, when loaded into a computer system and executed, cause said computer system to perform all the steps of a method of the first aspect.
In a third aspect, the present invention provides an enhanced web browser system capable of predictively browsing for web documents of potential interest to a user of a web browser system, said web documents containing words and being accessible through a linked address from said web browser system, said system comprising:~a processor for executing program code; a user display for presenting information to a user; a user input device for receiving user input; a persistent storage device for storing data and information, including a user interest term list stored therein, said interest term list containing words of interest to the user;
and a predictive interest-based browser program executable by said processor, said browser program adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
Preferably the predictive interest-based browser program of the system of the third aspect further comprises a standard web browser program with a browser plug-in, said browser plug-in being adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
Preferably said web documents comprise HTMZ documents.
Preferably the system of the third aspect further comprises a link highlighter for highlighting a link to a stored web document on said web browser display.
Preferably the system of the third aspect further comprises a fast link creator, said fast link on said web browser display pointing to said stored web document.
The present invention thus suitably and preferably allows the web browser to predictively and automatically search for web documents linked to a currently displayed web page which contain terms of interest to the web browser user. Linked documents containing terms of interest are suitably automatically retrieved and stored while the user views the current document such that if the user selects the link to stored document, it will be displayed without waiting for it to download. To further assist the user in finding the documents containing the user's interest terms, links in the current page leading to the documents of interest may be highlighted, and special fast links to those pages may be created and displayed for even greater noticeability and usability by the user.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention thus advantageously provide a web browsing method and system which predictively retrieves information from computer network servers and distributed databases, such as the World Wide Web, based upon a user's list of interest terms or keywords. Further, it is advantageous for this new system and method to be compatible with widely-used web browser technologies, such as personal computers, web-enabled telephones, Internet appliances, personal digital assistants, and pocket PCs, with minimal or no server-side support or cooperating technology. Additionally, it is advantageous for this new system and method to highlight predictively cached information, or links to such information, on a user's display such that the user may easily and quickly view the predictively cached information.
Preferred embodiments further preferably provide a system and method fox configuring a web browser system to include a list of interest terms for a user. This method provided a list of the user's most sought-after keywords, the list being available to other software programs on the same client web browser computer.
BRTEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
A preferred embodiment of the present invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIGURE 1 shows the well-known arrangement between Internet clients or web browser systems, web server systems, and communications networks.
FIGURE 2 illustrates the well-known architecture of web browser and web server systems, FIGURE 3 shows a typical tree-like structure of hyperlinked documents on a web site.
FIGURE 4 discloses the arrangement of the preferred embodiment of the invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
For the purposes of this disclosure, it is assumed that all tasks associated with seeking out and loading web pages are conducted by a web browser application, such as Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Explorer.
In practice, embodiments of the invention described herein may be realized in web-browser associated software, which may or may not be part of the browser itself, such as a cooperating stand-alone software application or a web browser plug-in module. As such, it will be recognized by those skilled in the art that the construction of interest term lists, as described herein, can be accomplished by any piece of software, the results of which can be made available to other browser-related functions and software.
FIGURE 2 shows the general hardware and software architectures of typical web servers and web browser computer systems. A web browser computer (20) is communicatively interconnected via an Internet or intranet (21) to a web server computer (22). The web browser system comprises standard user interface devices (23) such as a computer display or monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The web browser computer (20) hardware platform comprises a central processor ("CPU") (24), disk drives (25), user interface device I/O (26), and network interface card ("NIC") (27).
The NIC may be one of several varieties well known within the art, including a dial-up modem, local area network ("LAN") card, or cable modem interface. The software executed by the web browser computer (20) may include device drivers and a basic input/output system ("BIOS") (28), and operating system (203), application programs (202), and an applet interpreter (29) and applets (201). A web browser program, such as Netscape's Navigator, is an application program which can be executed by the CPU (24). This architecture and arrangement with a web server computer is well known within the art.
In the preferred embodiment, a standard web browser application software program is modified to include certain logical and functional enhancements. The functional enhancements utilize several existing capabilities of the existing web browser, such as the abilities to:
(1) interpret received web documents;
(2) cause all or part of a web document to be displayed in the current web browser display window;
(3) display user option icons, drop down lists or other mode control indicators in the web browser display window;
(4) receive user selections of user option icons, drop down lists and other mode control indicators in the web browser display window; and (5) create, store and access data items such as files, records, and cookies in system memory, especially persistent memory such as hard disk drives and non-volatile RAM or ROM.
As the foregoing general arrangement and architecture of a web browser system is well-known in the art, the remaining description of the preferred embodiment of the invention is given relative to steps and functions preferably implemented as a browser plug-in for Netscape's Navigator running under Microsoft's Windows[TM] operating system on an IBM-compatible computer. However, it will be recognized by those skilled in the relevant arts that alternate operating systems, such as UNIX , Zinux and Sun Microsystems Solaris, alternate computer hardware such as IBM's RS6000, Apple's iMac (TM), personal digital assistants and web-enabled telephones, as well as alternate software embodiments such as Java scripts or compiled programs may be adopted without departing from the scope of the present invention. In still other embodiments, web server servelets or programs may maintain the interest term list, making that list available to client-side programs and plug-ins upon request.
Preferred embodiments of the invention improve on this original concept and functionality of web browsers in general. It is preferred that the web browser determine what keywords may be of interest to the web browser user. These interest terms are preferably stored in system persistent memory and are accessible as a flat text file by the present invention. Alternative embodiments of the interest term list, such as records in a database, may be used, all of which are readily accessible by other programs including the browser plug-in of the preferred embodiments of the invention.
Other methods or systems for creating the interest term list may be utilized in conjunction with preferred embodiments of the invention, however the system and method describede above provides several useful methodologies for generating the interest term list.
Table 1 shows an example of the interest term list embodiment after it is generated. This example user's interest term list is provided in a comma-separated variable ("CSV") format wherein a colon ":" is defined to indicate a general category for which sub-categories are specified. If no colon follows a category or term, it is assumed that all sub-categories and terms available under that category are of interest.
TABLE 1: Example User's Interest Term List File Politics <CR>
Sports: Baseball, Professional Basketball, Motor Sports <CR>
<EOF>
The user's interest term list is preferably directly user-editable so that if a user wishes to delete an interest term which may have been added earlier, he or~she may do so easily with a common text file editor or database program. Similarly, if a user wishes to add an interest term at a later time, he or she should have the option of re-invoking the menus or directly editing a file to do so.
The preferred embodiments of the invention provide two user-selectable processes for predictively retrieving and caching information from web servers based upon a user's interest term list. In the first process, only "interest-term" specific hyperlinked information will be preemptively cached, providing an improvement over the well-known process of caching all "1 hop" web pages by web browsers. The second process disclosed herein highlights any hyperlinks which lead to information containing the user's interest terms in order to bring these links to the user's attention, such as by highlighting text or images on the web browser display, panning within a separate web browser window, or within a special frame in the primary web browser window.
For better clarity and specificity in the following detailed disclosure, the following terminology is used:
~ "interest terms" are those words or phrases, in a self-explanatory fashion, in which the end-user has an interest;
~ "N hop scan" signifies the link space within which the web browser will attempt to predictively load and examine web pages and associated ~ text;
~ "interest links" are those hyperlinks accessible within an "N hop scan"
which contain interest. terms;
~ "fast link" is a highly visible link, removed from the clutter of a display of a normal web page which contains a direct link to a discovered page containing interest terms;
~ "deep-linking" is a commonly accepted term which refers to pulling web content from deep within an organization's website, or otherwise retrieving data through a series of URLs, without necessarily loading or visiting the intermediate web pages;
~ "contemplation time" is defined as the time spent by the user on a given web page, which is the time available for the web browser system to determine and highlight any interest links branching off of the currently loaded web page; and ~ "TB" is the size of text, such as in bytes, downloaded as the browser scans a page for interest terms.
An N-hop scan, as discussed above, is a predictive scan or retrieval of documents which are reached within "N" hyperlinks from the starting point. A typical tree-like structure or representation of a web site content is shown in FIGURE 3. Each page has hyperlinked pages from it, the hyperlinks being shown as the arrow lines from a page to another page or pages. The variable "N" describes the depth or space within which information is found relative to a starting point.
For example, a 1-hop scan (e. g. N=1) (51) retrieves all hyperlinked documents accessible via a single "click" or hyperlink from the current web page (50), namely pages 2, 3, and 4 in this example, and the web page contents of these documents are scanned for occurrences of the user's interest terms.
Likewise, a 2-hop scan (N=2) (52) will retrieve all documents hyperlinked and accessible via two "clicks" from the current web page, such as all the pages of the 1-hop scan plus pages 2a, 3a, 3b, 4a, and 4b in this example.
From the tree-like expansion of this diagram, it can be seen that the amount of data to be considered may grow exponentially relative to the value of N, and higher order scans will be more practical with further increases in computer network communications bandwidth and web browser computer processor speed.
Turning to FIGURE 4, the realized structure of the preferred embodiment is shown. The interest term predictive scanner plug-in (43) runs within the environment of the web browser program (40) on a web browser computer (20), using the web browser computer's user I/~ (23) facilities to display to the user highlighted links, fast links, and spawned display frames, as discussed in the following description. A
user's interest term list (42) in a simple text file or database records, is accessed from it's storage medium (41), such as on a hard drive or in persistent memory of the web browser system (20). Alternatively, the user's interest term list (42) may be accessed from a web or network server where it is accessible by the web browser system (20).
The interest term predictive scanner plug-in (43) also uses the communications capabilities of the web-browser computer (20), such as its network interface card and communications protocol (TCP/IP), and the web browses program's (40) communications and display capabilities, such as HTTP, to selectively retrieve portions of web documents from the Internet (3) or other computer network.
Preferred embodiments of the invention operate during the contemplation time for a current web page to predictively retrieve hyperlinked documents within a N-hop scan space based upon the user's interest terms. It assumes that interest keywords can be stored within the web browses system and/or associated software. Subsequently, knowledge of such interest terms is exploited by "read-ahead" predictive downloads.
The predictive caching process commences as soon as a web browses loads any web page following a user's selection of that page or other action to select a page, such as selection of a bookmark, navigation button, etc. The currently loaded and viewed web page is set to the starting point, or "current page", of the N-hop scan.
The preferred embodiments of the invention then parse the current page source, such as the HTML of the current page, and begin downloading of all web pages directly linked to the current page, referred to as the 1-hop pages. Downloading of each page is interrupted after successful receipt of a predetermined amount of data, such as th:e number of bytes or kilobytes defined by TB.
Next, the downloaded portion of each page is scanned to determine if they contain any occurrences of any of the user's interest terms. If, after the predetermined number of bytes are downloaded, any of the user's interest terms are not found within either the plain text or metawords of the web page, the download is aborted. By aborting the full page download, the browser preserves both network bandwidth and time; these preserved resources are then used instead to scan at the next possible interesting page. If interest terms are found, the download is resumed and completed and the entire linked page is stored in cache.
While the user continues contemplating the currently loaded page, the browser looks at the next 1-hop page, and the next, until all l-hop pages are scanned and cached as necessary.
If all 1-hop pages are scanned before the user finishes reviewing the current page, the hop level is incremented, and subsequent levels of depth of the web site content are scanned by downloading portions of each 2=-hop, then 3-hop, etc., page, scanning for keywords, and caching tYve entire page if interest terms are found, as previously described.
The predictive scanning process may be described by the pseudocode of TABLE 2.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ TABLE 2: Pseudocode for Predictive Scanning Process UNTIL (user selects a link in current page):
FOR hop = 1 to N:
scan page = current page catalog all referenced links from current~page randomly order from first to last all referenced links FROM first TO last referenced link:
download document portion at referenced link scan portion for occurrences of interest terms IF occurrences found, THEN:
complete download of document store document in cache highlight referenced link create "fast link" to cached document (optional) ELSE discard portion of document NEXT referenced link /* scan next portion of linked document in this hop */
NEXT hop /* scan next set of documents one hop further from current pg */
As one-hop pages are discovered to contain the user's interest terms, they are then brought to the user's attention by any one of several methods. First, the hyperlink or links leading to the page containing the interest terms may be highlighted in the display of the current page, such as by changing the color, font or size of the display of the hyperlink.
In an enhanced embodiment of the invention, a "fast link" may be created within a separate frame on the current window, either along one side, the top, or the bottom, of the current page or within a separate web browser window.
This provides the user a modified web browser display which highlights links which are more likely to lead to documents of interest to the user, according to his or her interest term list, and allows the user to more efficiently browse the current web site.
It should be noted that if fast link display is used, mufti-hop interest links can be one-hopped, that is, the next step in the path to the interest link is shown, after which the next step in the path is shown, etc., or they can be "deep linked." In this latter case, the first link shown in the frame, window, etc., deep links to the interest item, even if it is accessible only through multiple hops, and the display of that top level first link may be highlighted. In a further refined embodiment of the invention, one highlighting method may be used to highlight one-hop links to interesting documents, while another highlighting method can be used to highlight mufti-hop links to interesting documents. For example, one-hop interesting links could be set to blink in red text, while mufti-hop links to interesting documents may be shown or highlighted in steady red text. HTML code to set colors, font, and blink attributes are well known, so the browser plug-in of the preferred embodiment must simply changes these attributes for the web browser display of that portion of the current web page.
Also note that the preferred embodiments of the invention undertake a "breadth-first search," rather than drilling down through "N
hops" from one given starting point. Alternatively, a "depth-first search" could also be undertaken, although it is deemed less practical and efficient from the inventor's viewpoint as links not contained in the initially-downloaded document portions may be missed or skipped. Either search technique may be used with general applicability of the concepts disclosed here.
It should also be recognized that a common list of interest page "fast -links" can be maintained in the separate window or frame, if desired, even if a user progresses down one particular path. Consider, for instance, a user at web page "A" who is given a list of interest links "B" and "C". It may be readily observed that the user would progress to interest link "B" while still maintaining a fast-link to web page "C" in the separate frame or window. After reading "B," and presuming that interest links arrived while doing so, maintenance of "C" in a fast-link window would permit him or her to immediately jump back to the other path, not previously taken.
By incorporating the preferred embodiments of the invention into a web browsing system or product, a more intelligent means of browsing the vast total content of the World Wide Web and its constituent web sites based upon the user's interests is enabled.
While specific examples and details related to a preferred embodiment have been set forth herein, it will be recognized by those skilled in the art that various alternatives and engineering choices may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention, including but not limited to realization of the method as an application program, portable language script, server-side program or script, or browser enhancement; use of a different web browser computer such as a web-enabled telephone, Internet appliance, or personal digital assistant;
and use of an alternative operating system such as Windows[TM] CE.
As the foregoing general arrangement and architecture of a web browser system is well-known in the art, the remaining description of the preferred embodiment of the invention is given relative to steps and functions preferably implemented as a browser plug-in for Netscape's Navigator running under Microsoft's Windows[TM] operating system on an IBM-compatible computer. However, it will be recognized by those skilled in the relevant arts that alternate operating systems, such as UNIX , Zinux and Sun Microsystems Solaris, alternate computer hardware such as IBM's RS6000, Apple's iMac (TM), personal digital assistants and web-enabled telephones, as well as alternate software embodiments such as Java scripts or compiled programs may be adopted without departing from the scope of the present invention. In still other embodiments, web server servelets or programs may maintain the interest term list, making that list available to client-side programs and plug-ins upon request.
Preferred embodiments of the invention improve on this original concept and functionality of web browsers in general. It is preferred that the web browser determine what keywords may be of interest to the web browser user. These interest terms are preferably stored in system persistent memory and are accessible as a flat text file by the present invention. Alternative embodiments of the interest term list, such as records in a database, may be used, all of which are readily accessible by other programs including the browser plug-in of the preferred embodiments of the invention.
Other methods or systems for creating the interest term list may be utilized in conjunction with preferred embodiments of the invention, however the system and method describede above provides several useful methodologies for generating the interest term list.
Table 1 shows an example of the interest term list embodiment after it is generated. This example user's interest term list is provided in a comma-separated variable ("CSV") format wherein a colon ":" is defined to indicate a general category for which sub-categories are specified. If no colon follows a category or term, it is assumed that all sub-categories and terms available under that category are of interest.
TABLE 1: Example User's Interest Term List File Politics <CR>
Sports: Baseball, Professional Basketball, Motor Sports <CR>
<EOF>
The user's interest term list is preferably directly user-editable so that if a user wishes to delete an interest term which may have been added earlier, he or~she may do so easily with a common text file editor or database program. Similarly, if a user wishes to add an interest term at a later time, he or she should have the option of re-invoking the menus or directly editing a file to do so.
The preferred embodiments of the invention provide two user-selectable processes for predictively retrieving and caching information from web servers based upon a user's interest term list. In the first process, only "interest-term" specific hyperlinked information will be preemptively cached, providing an improvement over the well-known process of caching all "1 hop" web pages by web browsers. The second process disclosed herein highlights any hyperlinks which lead to information containing the user's interest terms in order to bring these links to the user's attention, such as by highlighting text or images on the web browser display, panning within a separate web browser window, or within a special frame in the primary web browser window.
For better clarity and specificity in the following detailed disclosure, the following terminology is used:
~ "interest terms" are those words or phrases, in a self-explanatory fashion, in which the end-user has an interest;
~ "N hop scan" signifies the link space within which the web browser will attempt to predictively load and examine web pages and associated ~ text;
~ "interest links" are those hyperlinks accessible within an "N hop scan"
which contain interest. terms;
~ "fast link" is a highly visible link, removed from the clutter of a display of a normal web page which contains a direct link to a discovered page containing interest terms;
~ "deep-linking" is a commonly accepted term which refers to pulling web content from deep within an organization's website, or otherwise retrieving data through a series of URLs, without necessarily loading or visiting the intermediate web pages;
~ "contemplation time" is defined as the time spent by the user on a given web page, which is the time available for the web browser system to determine and highlight any interest links branching off of the currently loaded web page; and ~ "TB" is the size of text, such as in bytes, downloaded as the browser scans a page for interest terms.
An N-hop scan, as discussed above, is a predictive scan or retrieval of documents which are reached within "N" hyperlinks from the starting point. A typical tree-like structure or representation of a web site content is shown in FIGURE 3. Each page has hyperlinked pages from it, the hyperlinks being shown as the arrow lines from a page to another page or pages. The variable "N" describes the depth or space within which information is found relative to a starting point.
For example, a 1-hop scan (e. g. N=1) (51) retrieves all hyperlinked documents accessible via a single "click" or hyperlink from the current web page (50), namely pages 2, 3, and 4 in this example, and the web page contents of these documents are scanned for occurrences of the user's interest terms.
Likewise, a 2-hop scan (N=2) (52) will retrieve all documents hyperlinked and accessible via two "clicks" from the current web page, such as all the pages of the 1-hop scan plus pages 2a, 3a, 3b, 4a, and 4b in this example.
From the tree-like expansion of this diagram, it can be seen that the amount of data to be considered may grow exponentially relative to the value of N, and higher order scans will be more practical with further increases in computer network communications bandwidth and web browser computer processor speed.
Turning to FIGURE 4, the realized structure of the preferred embodiment is shown. The interest term predictive scanner plug-in (43) runs within the environment of the web browser program (40) on a web browser computer (20), using the web browser computer's user I/~ (23) facilities to display to the user highlighted links, fast links, and spawned display frames, as discussed in the following description. A
user's interest term list (42) in a simple text file or database records, is accessed from it's storage medium (41), such as on a hard drive or in persistent memory of the web browser system (20). Alternatively, the user's interest term list (42) may be accessed from a web or network server where it is accessible by the web browser system (20).
The interest term predictive scanner plug-in (43) also uses the communications capabilities of the web-browser computer (20), such as its network interface card and communications protocol (TCP/IP), and the web browses program's (40) communications and display capabilities, such as HTTP, to selectively retrieve portions of web documents from the Internet (3) or other computer network.
Preferred embodiments of the invention operate during the contemplation time for a current web page to predictively retrieve hyperlinked documents within a N-hop scan space based upon the user's interest terms. It assumes that interest keywords can be stored within the web browses system and/or associated software. Subsequently, knowledge of such interest terms is exploited by "read-ahead" predictive downloads.
The predictive caching process commences as soon as a web browses loads any web page following a user's selection of that page or other action to select a page, such as selection of a bookmark, navigation button, etc. The currently loaded and viewed web page is set to the starting point, or "current page", of the N-hop scan.
The preferred embodiments of the invention then parse the current page source, such as the HTML of the current page, and begin downloading of all web pages directly linked to the current page, referred to as the 1-hop pages. Downloading of each page is interrupted after successful receipt of a predetermined amount of data, such as th:e number of bytes or kilobytes defined by TB.
Next, the downloaded portion of each page is scanned to determine if they contain any occurrences of any of the user's interest terms. If, after the predetermined number of bytes are downloaded, any of the user's interest terms are not found within either the plain text or metawords of the web page, the download is aborted. By aborting the full page download, the browser preserves both network bandwidth and time; these preserved resources are then used instead to scan at the next possible interesting page. If interest terms are found, the download is resumed and completed and the entire linked page is stored in cache.
While the user continues contemplating the currently loaded page, the browser looks at the next 1-hop page, and the next, until all l-hop pages are scanned and cached as necessary.
If all 1-hop pages are scanned before the user finishes reviewing the current page, the hop level is incremented, and subsequent levels of depth of the web site content are scanned by downloading portions of each 2=-hop, then 3-hop, etc., page, scanning for keywords, and caching tYve entire page if interest terms are found, as previously described.
The predictive scanning process may be described by the pseudocode of TABLE 2.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ TABLE 2: Pseudocode for Predictive Scanning Process UNTIL (user selects a link in current page):
FOR hop = 1 to N:
scan page = current page catalog all referenced links from current~page randomly order from first to last all referenced links FROM first TO last referenced link:
download document portion at referenced link scan portion for occurrences of interest terms IF occurrences found, THEN:
complete download of document store document in cache highlight referenced link create "fast link" to cached document (optional) ELSE discard portion of document NEXT referenced link /* scan next portion of linked document in this hop */
NEXT hop /* scan next set of documents one hop further from current pg */
As one-hop pages are discovered to contain the user's interest terms, they are then brought to the user's attention by any one of several methods. First, the hyperlink or links leading to the page containing the interest terms may be highlighted in the display of the current page, such as by changing the color, font or size of the display of the hyperlink.
In an enhanced embodiment of the invention, a "fast link" may be created within a separate frame on the current window, either along one side, the top, or the bottom, of the current page or within a separate web browser window.
This provides the user a modified web browser display which highlights links which are more likely to lead to documents of interest to the user, according to his or her interest term list, and allows the user to more efficiently browse the current web site.
It should be noted that if fast link display is used, mufti-hop interest links can be one-hopped, that is, the next step in the path to the interest link is shown, after which the next step in the path is shown, etc., or they can be "deep linked." In this latter case, the first link shown in the frame, window, etc., deep links to the interest item, even if it is accessible only through multiple hops, and the display of that top level first link may be highlighted. In a further refined embodiment of the invention, one highlighting method may be used to highlight one-hop links to interesting documents, while another highlighting method can be used to highlight mufti-hop links to interesting documents. For example, one-hop interesting links could be set to blink in red text, while mufti-hop links to interesting documents may be shown or highlighted in steady red text. HTML code to set colors, font, and blink attributes are well known, so the browser plug-in of the preferred embodiment must simply changes these attributes for the web browser display of that portion of the current web page.
Also note that the preferred embodiments of the invention undertake a "breadth-first search," rather than drilling down through "N
hops" from one given starting point. Alternatively, a "depth-first search" could also be undertaken, although it is deemed less practical and efficient from the inventor's viewpoint as links not contained in the initially-downloaded document portions may be missed or skipped. Either search technique may be used with general applicability of the concepts disclosed here.
It should also be recognized that a common list of interest page "fast -links" can be maintained in the separate window or frame, if desired, even if a user progresses down one particular path. Consider, for instance, a user at web page "A" who is given a list of interest links "B" and "C". It may be readily observed that the user would progress to interest link "B" while still maintaining a fast-link to web page "C" in the separate frame or window. After reading "B," and presuming that interest links arrived while doing so, maintenance of "C" in a fast-link window would permit him or her to immediately jump back to the other path, not previously taken.
By incorporating the preferred embodiments of the invention into a web browsing system or product, a more intelligent means of browsing the vast total content of the World Wide Web and its constituent web sites based upon the user's interests is enabled.
While specific examples and details related to a preferred embodiment have been set forth herein, it will be recognized by those skilled in the art that various alternatives and engineering choices may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention, including but not limited to realization of the method as an application program, portable language script, server-side program or script, or browser enhancement; use of a different web browser computer such as a web-enabled telephone, Internet appliance, or personal digital assistant;
and use of an alternative operating system such as Windows[TM] CE.
Claims (10)
1. A method for predictively browsing for web documents of potential interest to a user of a web browser system, said web browser system having a user display, a user input device, and a persistent storage device, said web documents containing words and being accessible through a linked address from said web browser system, said method comprising the steps of:
receiving a portion of a web document from a linked address;
determining if said portion of a web document contains one or more predetermined words of interest to said users and responsive to determining one or more words of interest axe present in said document portion, receiving and storing an entirety of said web document.
receiving a portion of a web document from a linked address;
determining if said portion of a web document contains one or more predetermined words of interest to said users and responsive to determining one or more words of interest axe present in said document portion, receiving and storing an entirety of said web document.
2. A method as claimed in Claim 1 further comprising repeating said steps of receiving a portion of a web document, determining if said portion contains interest words, and receiving and storing an entirety of a web document for a plurality of web documents accessible within a predetermined number of linked addresses from a first web document.
3. A method as claimed in Claim 1 further comprising the step of providing special user highlighting of a link to a web document on said web browser display.
4. A method as claimed in Claim 1 further comprising creating a fast link to said stored web document on said web browser display.
5. A computer program comprising program code to, when loaded into a computer system and executed, cause said computer system to perform all the steps of a method as claimed in any of claims 1 to 4.
6. An enhanced web browser system capable of predictively browsing for web documents of potential interest to a user of a web browser system, said web documents containing words and being accessible through a linked address from said web browser system, said system comprising:
a processor for executing program code a user display for presenting information to a user;
a user input device for receiving user input;
a persistent storage device for storing data and information, including a user interest term list stored therein, said interest term list containing words of interest to the user;
and a predictive interest-based browser program executable by said processor, said browser program adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
a processor for executing program code a user display for presenting information to a user;
a user input device for receiving user input;
a persistent storage device for storing data and information, including a user interest term list stored therein, said interest term list containing words of interest to the user;
and a predictive interest-based browser program executable by said processor, said browser program adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
7. A system as claimed in Claim 6 wherein said predictive interest-based browser program comprises a standard web browser program with a browser plug-in, said browser plug-in being adapted to receive a portion of a web document from a linked address, determine if said portion of a web document contains one or more interest term words, receive and store an entirety of said web document responsive to determining one or more interest term words are found in said document portion.
8. A system as claimed in Claim 6 or Claim 7 wherein said web documents comprise HTML documents.
9. A system as claimed in any of Claims 6 to 8 further comprising a link highlighter for highlighting a link to a stored web document on said web browser display.
10. A system as claimed in any of Claims 6 to 9 further comprising a fast link creator, said fast link on said web browser display pointing to said stored web document.
Applications Claiming Priority (3)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| US09/801,590 | 2001-03-08 | ||
| US09/801,590 US6874019B2 (en) | 2001-03-08 | 2001-03-08 | Predictive caching and highlighting of web pages |
| PCT/GB2002/001000 WO2002073460A2 (en) | 2001-03-08 | 2002-03-06 | Predictive caching and highlighting of web pages |
Publications (1)
| Publication Number | Publication Date |
|---|---|
| CA2437933A1 true CA2437933A1 (en) | 2002-09-19 |
Family
ID=25181534
Family Applications (1)
| Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA002437933A Abandoned CA2437933A1 (en) | 2001-03-08 | 2002-03-06 | Predictive caching and highlighting of web pages |
Country Status (9)
| Country | Link |
|---|---|
| US (1) | US6874019B2 (en) |
| EP (1) | EP1368752A2 (en) |
| JP (1) | JP2004531797A (en) |
| KR (1) | KR100583874B1 (en) |
| CN (1) | CN1296853C (en) |
| CA (1) | CA2437933A1 (en) |
| IL (1) | IL157679A0 (en) |
| TW (1) | TW552521B (en) |
| WO (1) | WO2002073460A2 (en) |
Families Citing this family (71)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US6981040B1 (en) * | 1999-12-28 | 2005-12-27 | Utopy, Inc. | Automatic, personalized online information and product services |
| US7747611B1 (en) | 2000-05-25 | 2010-06-29 | Microsoft Corporation | Systems and methods for enhancing search query results |
| US6968332B1 (en) * | 2000-05-25 | 2005-11-22 | Microsoft Corporation | Facility for highlighting documents accessed through search or browsing |
| US7113935B2 (en) | 2000-12-06 | 2006-09-26 | Epicrealm Operating Inc. | Method and system for adaptive prefetching |
| US20030074635A1 (en) * | 2001-10-11 | 2003-04-17 | International Business Machines Corporation | Method, apparatus, and program for finding and navigating to items in a set of web pages |
| JP2002351736A (en) * | 2001-03-23 | 2002-12-06 | Matsushita Electric Ind Co Ltd | Document data processor, server device, terminal device and document data processing system |
| US6877136B2 (en) * | 2001-10-26 | 2005-04-05 | United Services Automobile Association (Usaa) | System and method of providing electronic access to one or more documents |
| US20050108322A1 (en) * | 2002-03-11 | 2005-05-19 | Robert Kline | System and method for pushing data to a mobile device |
| US20030225855A1 (en) * | 2002-05-30 | 2003-12-04 | International Business Machines Corporation | Method and apparatus for realtime provision of related subject matter across internet content providers |
| US7360210B1 (en) | 2002-07-03 | 2008-04-15 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Method and system for dynamically varying intermediation functions in a communication path between a content server and a client station |
| US7801945B1 (en) | 2002-07-03 | 2010-09-21 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Method and system for inserting web content through intermediation between a content server and a client station |
| US7568002B1 (en) | 2002-07-03 | 2009-07-28 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Method and system for embellishing web content during transmission between a content server and a client station |
| GB2393802A (en) * | 2002-10-01 | 2004-04-07 | Hewlett Packard Co | Establishment of network connections |
| EP1400903A1 (en) * | 2002-09-19 | 2004-03-24 | Sony United Kingdom Limited | Information storage and retrieval |
| US20050177564A1 (en) * | 2003-03-13 | 2005-08-11 | Fujitsu Limited | Server, method, computer product, and terminal device for searching item data |
| US20040221232A1 (en) * | 2003-04-30 | 2004-11-04 | International Business Machines Corporation | Method for readily storing and accessing information in electronic documents |
| US7904585B1 (en) * | 2003-09-05 | 2011-03-08 | Skyware, Inc. | Predictive browser and protocol package |
| US7949960B2 (en) * | 2003-09-30 | 2011-05-24 | Sap Ag | Predictive rendering of user interfaces |
| US8234373B1 (en) | 2003-10-27 | 2012-07-31 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Method and system for managing payment for web content based on size of the web content |
| US7873537B2 (en) * | 2003-12-04 | 2011-01-18 | International Business Machines Corporation | Providing deep linking functions with digital rights management |
| US7853782B1 (en) | 2004-04-14 | 2010-12-14 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Secure intermediation system and method |
| US8522131B1 (en) | 2004-04-14 | 2013-08-27 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Intermediation system and method for enhanced rendering of data pages |
| US9172679B1 (en) | 2004-04-14 | 2015-10-27 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Secure intermediation system and method |
| GB2415063A (en) * | 2004-06-09 | 2005-12-14 | Oracle Int Corp | Data retrieval method |
| GB2416221A (en) * | 2004-07-10 | 2006-01-18 | Hewlett Packard Development Co | Analysing a multi stage process |
| US7590631B2 (en) * | 2004-09-02 | 2009-09-15 | Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. | System and method for guiding navigation through a hypertext system |
| US7512973B1 (en) | 2004-09-08 | 2009-03-31 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Wireless-access-provider intermediation to facilliate digital rights management for third party hosted content |
| US20060069617A1 (en) * | 2004-09-27 | 2006-03-30 | Scott Milener | Method and apparatus for prefetching electronic data for enhanced browsing |
| US8327440B2 (en) | 2004-11-08 | 2012-12-04 | Bt Web Solutions, Llc | Method and apparatus for enhanced browsing with security scanning |
| US8732610B2 (en) * | 2004-11-10 | 2014-05-20 | Bt Web Solutions, Llc | Method and apparatus for enhanced browsing, using icons to indicate status of content and/or content retrieval |
| US7600011B1 (en) | 2004-11-04 | 2009-10-06 | Sprint Spectrum L.P. | Use of a domain name server to direct web communications to an intermediation platform |
| US7496600B2 (en) * | 2004-12-02 | 2009-02-24 | Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. | System and method for accessing web-based search services |
| US20070183493A1 (en) * | 2005-02-04 | 2007-08-09 | Tom Kimpe | Method and device for image and video transmission over low-bandwidth and high-latency transmission channels |
| US20060294223A1 (en) * | 2005-06-24 | 2006-12-28 | Microsoft Corporation | Pre-fetching and DNS resolution of hyperlinked content |
| CN101455057A (en) * | 2006-06-30 | 2009-06-10 | 国际商业机器公司 | A method and apparatus for caching broadcasting information |
| US7660787B2 (en) * | 2006-07-19 | 2010-02-09 | International Business Machines Corporation | Customized, personalized, integrated client-side search indexing of the web |
| US20080097979A1 (en) * | 2006-10-19 | 2008-04-24 | International Business Machines Corporation | System and method of finding related documents based on activity specific meta data and users' interest profiles |
| JP4915219B2 (en) * | 2006-11-24 | 2012-04-11 | 富士通株式会社 | Hypertext conversion program, method and apparatus |
| US9021352B2 (en) * | 2007-05-17 | 2015-04-28 | Adobe Systems Incorporated | Methods and apparatus for predictive document rendering |
| US20080301573A1 (en) * | 2007-05-30 | 2008-12-04 | Liang-Yu Chi | System and method for indicating page component focus |
| US20080301300A1 (en) * | 2007-06-01 | 2008-12-04 | Microsoft Corporation | Predictive asynchronous web pre-fetch |
| US7877368B2 (en) * | 2007-11-02 | 2011-01-25 | Paglo Labs, Inc. | Hosted searching of private local area network information with support for add-on applications |
| US7877369B2 (en) * | 2007-11-02 | 2011-01-25 | Paglo Labs, Inc. | Hosted searching of private local area network information |
| US20100162126A1 (en) * | 2008-12-23 | 2010-06-24 | Palm, Inc. | Predictive cache techniques |
| KR101132220B1 (en) * | 2008-12-30 | 2012-04-26 | 엔에이치엔(주) | Method, system and computer-readable recording medium for providing web page using cache |
| US8250053B2 (en) * | 2009-02-24 | 2012-08-21 | Microsoft Corporation | Intelligent enhancement of a search result snippet |
| ES2454765T3 (en) * | 2009-04-14 | 2014-04-11 | Freedom Scientific Inc. | Document navigation method |
| US20110022945A1 (en) * | 2009-07-24 | 2011-01-27 | Nokia Corporation | Method and apparatus of browsing modeling |
| US8365064B2 (en) * | 2009-08-19 | 2013-01-29 | Yahoo! Inc. | Hyperlinking web content |
| US20110209040A1 (en) * | 2010-02-24 | 2011-08-25 | Microsoft Corporation | Explicit and non-explicit links in document |
| CN101777081A (en) * | 2010-03-08 | 2010-07-14 | 中兴通讯股份有限公司 | Method and device for improving webpage access speed |
| CN102238204A (en) * | 2010-04-23 | 2011-11-09 | 腾讯科技（深圳）有限公司 | Network data acquisition method and system |
| US8706854B2 (en) | 2010-06-30 | 2014-04-22 | Raytheon Company | System and method for organizing, managing and running enterprise-wide scans |
| US8788762B2 (en) | 2010-09-30 | 2014-07-22 | Nokia Corporation | Methods and apparatuses for data resource provision |
| US8924873B2 (en) | 2010-11-23 | 2014-12-30 | International Business Machines Corporation | Optimizing a user interface for a computing device |
| US20120137201A1 (en) * | 2010-11-30 | 2012-05-31 | Alcatel-Lucent Usa Inc. | Enabling predictive web browsing |
| US9454607B1 (en) * | 2010-12-10 | 2016-09-27 | A9.Com, Inc. | Image as database |
| US8948794B2 (en) | 2011-03-14 | 2015-02-03 | Nokia Corporation | Methods and apparatuses for facilitating provision of a map resource |
| US8687840B2 (en) | 2011-05-10 | 2014-04-01 | Qualcomm Incorporated | Smart backlights to minimize display power consumption based on desktop configurations and user eye gaze |
| US8612418B2 (en) * | 2011-07-14 | 2013-12-17 | Google Inc. | Mobile web browser for pre-loading web pages |
| US9146909B2 (en) | 2011-07-27 | 2015-09-29 | Qualcomm Incorporated | Web browsing enhanced by cloud computing |
| US10127314B2 (en) * | 2012-03-21 | 2018-11-13 | Apple Inc. | Systems and methods for optimizing search engine performance |
| CN103067908A (en) * | 2012-12-27 | 2013-04-24 | 北京小米科技有限责任公司 | Data processing method, device and terminal |
| CN103118081B (en) * | 2013-01-18 | 2016-01-13 | 北京奇虎科技有限公司 | Server, client, the system and method for browsing pages in prestrain browser |
| US20150113093A1 (en) * | 2013-10-21 | 2015-04-23 | Frank Brunswig | Application-aware browser |
| US20160127497A1 (en) * | 2014-11-03 | 2016-05-05 | Evgeny Himmelreich | Smart site preloading |
| US10169481B2 (en) * | 2015-02-18 | 2019-01-01 | Adobe Systems Incorporated | Method for intelligent web reference preloading based on user behavior prediction |
| CN110191229B (en) * | 2019-05-29 | 2021-05-04 | Oppo（重庆）智能科技有限公司 | Display method and related device |
| FR3097070B1 (en) * | 2019-06-05 | 2022-06-10 | Amadeus Sas | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR BROWSER-BASED TARGET DATA EXTRACTION |
| US20220318491A1 (en) * | 2021-04-02 | 2022-10-06 | Relativity Oda Llc | Systems and methods for contextual highlighting of a document |
| US11314928B1 (en) | 2021-08-03 | 2022-04-26 | Oracle International Corporation | System and method for configuring related information links and controlling a display |
Family Cites Families (17)
| Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US6131085A (en) * | 1993-05-21 | 2000-10-10 | Rossides; Michael T | Answer collection and retrieval system governed by a pay-off meter |
| US5867799A (en) * | 1996-04-04 | 1999-02-02 | Lang; Andrew K. | Information system and method for filtering a massive flow of information entities to meet user information classification needs |
| JPH1063679A (en) | 1996-08-23 | 1998-03-06 | Nippon Telegr & Teleph Corp <Ntt> | Information presentation device |
| JPH10207901A (en) | 1997-01-22 | 1998-08-07 | Nippon Telegr & Teleph Corp <Ntt> | Method and system for providing information |
| US6282542B1 (en) * | 1997-08-06 | 2001-08-28 | Tachyon, Inc. | Distributed system and method for prefetching objects |
| US5848410A (en) * | 1997-10-08 | 1998-12-08 | Hewlett Packard Company | System and method for selective and continuous index generation |
| US6009410A (en) * | 1997-10-16 | 1999-12-28 | At&T Corporation | Method and system for presenting customized advertising to a user on the world wide web |
| US6009429A (en) * | 1997-11-13 | 1999-12-28 | International Business Machines Corporation | HTML guided web tour |
| US6078928A (en) * | 1997-12-12 | 2000-06-20 | Missouri Botanical Garden | Site-specific interest profiling system |
| US6094649A (en) * | 1997-12-22 | 2000-07-25 | Partnet, Inc. | Keyword searches of structured databases |
| US6085226A (en) * | 1998-01-15 | 2000-07-04 | Microsoft Corporation | Method and apparatus for utility-directed prefetching of web pages into local cache using continual computation and user models |
| US6182133B1 (en) * | 1998-02-06 | 2001-01-30 | Microsoft Corporation | Method and apparatus for display of information prefetching and cache status having variable visual indication based on a period of time since prefetching |
| US6088731A (en) * | 1998-04-24 | 2000-07-11 | Associative Computing, Inc. | Intelligent assistant for use with a local computer and with the internet |
| US6151630A (en) * | 1998-05-15 | 2000-11-21 | Avaya Technology Corp. | Non-redundant browsing of a sequencing of web pages |
| JP2000215138A (en) * | 1999-01-22 | 2000-08-04 | Casio Comput Co Ltd | Information searching device and storage medium which stores program |
| US20010051927A1 (en) * | 2000-06-08 | 2001-12-13 | Blinkspeed, Inc. | Increasing web page browsing efficiency by periodically physically distributing memory media on which web page data are cached |
| JP2002259544A (en) * | 2001-03-02 | 2002-09-13 | Willone Corp | System of electronic exhibition |
-
2001
- 2001-03-08 US US09/801,590 patent/US6874019B2/en not_active Expired - Fee Related
-
2002
- 2002-03-05 TW TW091104051A patent/TW552521B/en not_active IP Right Cessation
- 2002-03-06 JP JP2002572047A patent/JP2004531797A/en active Pending
- 2002-03-06 CN CNB028061012A patent/CN1296853C/en not_active Expired - Fee Related
- 2002-03-06 IL IL15767902A patent/IL157679A0/en unknown
- 2002-03-06 WO PCT/GB2002/001000 patent/WO2002073460A2/en active IP Right Grant
- 2002-03-06 KR KR1020037011153A patent/KR100583874B1/en not_active IP Right Cessation
- 2002-03-06 CA CA002437933A patent/CA2437933A1/en not_active Abandoned
- 2002-03-06 EP EP02703742A patent/EP1368752A2/en not_active Withdrawn
Also Published As
| Publication number | Publication date |
|---|---|
| EP1368752A2 (en) | 2003-12-10 |
| TW552521B (en) | 2003-09-11 |
| US6874019B2 (en) | 2005-03-29 |
| KR100583874B1 (en) | 2006-05-26 |
| JP2004531797A (en) | 2004-10-14 |
| CN1522418A (en) | 2004-08-18 |
| WO2002073460A3 (en) | 2003-09-18 |
| IL157679A0 (en) | 2004-03-28 |
| KR20030082607A (en) | 2003-10-22 |
| CN1296853C (en) | 2007-01-24 |
| WO2002073460A2 (en) | 2002-09-19 |
| US20020165925A1 (en) | 2002-11-07 |
Similar Documents
| Publication | Publication Date | Title |
|---|---|---|
| US6874019B2 (en) | Predictive caching and highlighting of web pages | |
| US11238117B2 (en) | Customizable ordering of search results and predictive query generation | |
| USRE42527E1 (en) | Virtual directory | |
| US8041701B2 (en) | Enhanced graphical interfaces for displaying visual data | |
| US5727129A (en) | Network system for profiling and actively facilitating user activities | |
| US7933917B2 (en) | Personalized search method and system for enabling the method | |
| US7353246B1 (en) | System and method for enabling information associations | |
| US6366906B1 (en) | Method and apparatus for implementing a search selection tool on a browser | |
| CA2346156C (en) | Method and system for website overview | |
| US6178460B1 (en) | Method of efficiently retrieving data on a computer network by monitoring performance of mirrored network locations | |
| US6035325A (en) | Retrieval, saving and printing in a computer network system environment | |
| WO2002054273A1 (en) | Method and apparatus for processing web documents using multi-browse function | |
| US8806060B2 (en) | Information retrieval system | |
| US8522128B1 (en) | Systems and methods for modifying the order of links presented in a document | |
| KR100359233B1 (en) | Method for extracing web information and the apparatus therefor | |
| US6314432B1 (en) | System and method for retrieval, saving and printing of using hyperlinks | |
| US6067560A (en) | Retrieval saving and printing in a computer network system environment | |
| EP1039396A2 (en) | Information access system and method for providing a personal portal | |
| US20030023624A1 (en) | Web browser interest terms | |
| US20030120779A1 (en) | Method for performing a search, and computer program product and user interface for same | |
| US6026432A (en) | Retrieval, saving and printing in a computer network system environment | |
| WO2001075668A2 (en) | Search systems | |
| US8495247B2 (en) | Linking a user selected sequence of received World Wide Web documents into a stored document string available to the user at a receiving web station | |
| GB2386440A (en) | Searching and navigating an information source | |
| Hwang | A Scheme for Personalized Bookmark Services in a Mobile Agent Environment |
Legal Events
| Date | Code | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| EEER | Examination request | ||
| FZDE | Discontinued | ||
| FZDE | Discontinued |
Effective date: 20080306 |