ASSIGNING A HOT SPOT IN AN ELECTRONIC ARTWORK

• US 20020052891A1
• Filed: 04/10/1998
• Published: 05/02/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 04/10/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: MICHAUD, JEFFREY H., OLSON, DOUGLAS K.
• Granted Patent: US 7,139,970 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/501.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

Apparatus and methods implementing a technique for creating an electronic artwork with a hot area. For a selected layer of the artwork, a non-transparent region is identified and an action is assigned to an area corresponding to the non-transparent region, the action defining a function that will be activated when the area is selected. The technique is advantageous in computer application programs that composite images from layers and for producing HTML (HyperText Markup Language) output that refers to a corresponding composited image, where the action is a URL and the area is defined by an image map.

Claims

1. A method for creating electronic artwork with a hot area, comprising:

for a selected layer of the artwork, identifying a non-transparent region of the layer, calculating a definition of an area corresponding to a boundary of the region, and assigning an action to the area, the action defining a function that is activated when the area is selected.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the action is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

compositing the layers of the artwork; and

converting the area and the action to a target output format.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein:

the target output format is HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

5. A computer program, tangibly stored on a computer-readable medium, comprising instructions for causing a computer to:

identify a non-transparent region of a layer of an electronic artwork; and

assign an action to an area corresponding to the non-transparent region, the action defining a function that will be activated when the area is selected.

6. The computer program of claim 5, further comprising instructions to:

calculate a boundary of the non-transparent region; and

calculate a definition of the area from the boundary.

7. The computer program of claim 5, further comprising instructions to:

composite the layers of the artwork; and

convert the area and the action to a target output format.

8. The computer program of claim 7, wherein the target output format for the area and the action is HTML.

9. The computer program of claim 8, further comprising instructions to:

write out the composited artwork as an image file and write out an HTML file containing an image map for the area and a URL for the action, the HTML file referring to the image file.