Content browser system using multiple layers of graphics commands

• US 10,248,633 B2
• Filed: 09/26/2016
• Issued: 04/02/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/2014
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Jain, Saral
• Primary Examiner(s): Kells, Asher D
• Application Number:
  US15/276,665
• Publication Number:
  US 20170011017A1
• Time in Patent Office: 918 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/14 Tree-structured documents parsing G06F40/205; validation G06F40/226
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/543 User-generated data transfer, e.g. clipboards, dynamic data exchange [DDE], object linking and embedding [OLE]
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/224 of printed characters having additional code marks or containing code marks

Abstract

Server systems are disclosed that receive content requests and respond with hardware-independent graphics commands instead of, or in addition to, unprocessed content items. The server systems can also generate text information regarding text in the requested content items, and provide the text information to user devices so that the user devices can have knowledge of the text in the content item. The user device can use the text information to handle user interactions with the content item, including copy, paste and search commands and other similar commands. Accordingly, the hardware-independent graphics commands-based representation may provide text interactivity and effects not otherwise available to content representations based on graphics commands or images of content.

Claims

1. A system configured to act as an intermediary between user devices and content servers, the system comprising one or more hardware computing devices, wherein the system is programmed to at least:

receive a request for a content page hosted by a content server;

obtain a base file of the content page and a resource referenced by the base file;

generate, using a server-side browser application executing on the one or more computing devices, a first set of hardware-independent graphics commands, wherein the first set of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs a client-side browser application to display a first layer comprising a representation of at least a first text portion of the content page;

generate, using the server-side browser application, a second set of hardware-independent graphics commands, wherein the second set of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs the client-side browser application to display a second layer comprising a representation of at least a second text portion of the content page;

generate, using the server-side browser application, text data regarding text to be graphically represented by at least one of the first or second sets of hardware independent graphics commands, wherein the text data enables a user device to process a user interaction with the first layer independently of the second layer; and

transmit the text data and the first and second sets of hardware-independent graphics commands to the user device over a network.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first set of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs the client-side browser application to display a representation of at least a portion of the base file without the client-side browser application receiving the portion of the base file, and without the client-side browser application receiving an image of the portion of the base file.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the first text portion corresponds to a first markup language element of the content page, and wherein the second text portion corresponds to a second markup language element of the content page.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the second layer at least partly overlaps the first layer.

5. The system of claim 1, further programmed to at least generate location information indicating a display location of each of one or more glyphs corresponding to the text, wherein the first set of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs the client-computing device to display at least a portion of the one or more glyphs.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the first layer is updateable independently of the second layer.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the user interaction comprises a text selection action that extends across at least a portion of the first layer and at least a portion of the second layer, and wherein the text data enables the user device to select only text associated with the first layer.

8. Non-transitory computer storage having stored thereon a browser module configured to execute a process on a user computing device, the process comprising:

transmitting a request for a content page to a server system;

receiving from the server system;

a plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands generated by the server system; and

text data generated by the server system regarding text to be graphically represented by at least one of the plurality of sets of hardware independent graphics commands;

executing the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands to display a representation of the content page, wherein executing a first set of the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands causes the user computing device to display a first layer comprising a representation of at least a first text portion of the content page, and wherein executing a second set of the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands causes the user computing device to display a second layer comprising a representation of at least a second text portion of the content page; and

processing a user interaction with the first layer independently of the second layer based at least partly on the text data.

9. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 8, wherein the first layer comprises a representation of a markup file of the content page, and wherein the second layer comprises a representation of an emended resource referenced by the markup file.

10. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 9, wherein executing the first set of hardware-independent graphics commands causes display of a representation of a portion of the markup file without the user computing device receiving the portion of the markup file.

11. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 8, the process further comprising identifying a text character using the text data, wherein the text data identifies the text character as corresponding to a glyph displayed at a location associated with the user interaction.

12. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 11, the process further comprising processing applying highlighting to one or more glyphs displayed at the location associated with the user interaction.

13. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 8, the process further comprising identifying a text character corresponding to a location associated with the user interaction, wherein the text character is identified using a function that returns the text character based at least partly on an identifier of a glyph displayed at the location associated with the user interaction.

14. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, the process further comprising adding the text character to a clipboard.

15. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 8, wherein the browser module comprises one of:

an application;

a browser plug-in, or a browser extension.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the user interaction comprises a text selection action that extends across at least a portion of the first layer and at least a portion of the second layer, and wherein processing the user interaction using the text data comprises selecting only text associated with first layer.

17. A computer-implemented method comprising:

as implemented by one or more server computing devices configured to execute specific instructions,

obtaining a content page in response to a request from a user device;

generating, based at least partly on the content page, a plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands,

wherein a first set of the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs the user device to display a representation of a first portion of the content page comprising a first text region,

wherein the first text region corresponds to a first markup language element of the content page,

wherein a second set of the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs the user device to display a representation of a second portion of the content page comprising a second text region, and

wherein the second text region corresponds to a second markup language element of the content page;

generating text data regarding text to be graphically represented by the first set of hardware independent graphics commands, wherein the text data enables the user device to process an interaction with the first text region independently of the second text region; and

transmitting the text data and the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands to the user device.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, wherein the one or more server computing devices are part of a system that acts as an intermediary between user devices and content servers.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, wherein the text data corresponds to at least (1) a first set of glyphs in the representation of the first portion of the content page, and (2) a second set of glyphs in the representation of the second portion of the content page.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, wherein the first set of the plurality of sets of hardware-independent graphics commands instructs a client-side browser application executing on the user device to display the representation of the first portion of the content page without receiving a markup file of the content page, and wherein the first set of the plurality of sets of graphics commands are generated using the markup file.