Method and system for importing HTML forms

• US 20020152234A1
• Filed: 12/29/2000
• Published: 10/17/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Estrada, Julio, Shore, Maurice B.
• Granted Patent: US 7,222,291 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/501.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging

Abstract

Collaboration space object model provides for a place consisting of rooms created by users interacting with a client browser. A skin (i.e., theme) may be used as template for creating places. PlaceBots (i.e., agents) provide for accessing, processing and managing data in a place. HTML may be dragged and dropped into a place, where it is parsed and corresponding place fields created. MS Excel or Word documents may be dragged and dropped into a place, which creates a corresponding form, and users may create new documents using that form. A place type comprising a template of an entire place, or collaboration space, may be used to create new places. Changes made to a place may be reported, subject to security controls, by selecting what'"'"'s new. Task fields are provided allowing web browser creation of forms for work flow. Place enabled objects are provided for synchronous communications. A quick browse feature provides a simplified format for browser windows based on selection of HTML links. MS Office documents may launched within a place for in place editing and importing the resulting document into the place.

Claims

1. Method for integrating forms into collaboration space, comprising the steps of:

preparing at a browser using a legacy editor a form containing hyperlinks that point to web pages;

saving said form to local storage at said browser; and

dragging and dropping said form from local storage into an upload control panel in a user interface to said collaboration space.

2. The method of claim 1, said hyperlinks providing access to files including text, graphics, images, sound, and video files.

3. The method of claim 1, said web pages residing on servers remote from the server for said collaboration space.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising the steps of:

responsive to user selection of a said hyperlink, downloading linked code; and

rendering said linked code into a display at said browser.

5. The method of claim 1, said collaboration space being implemented within an object model selectively including place, room, folder, page, member, form, field, placetype, roomtype, skin, and placebot objects.

6. The method of claim 5, with said room object visible as a unique identifier in uniform resource locators (urls).

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising the step of using said field object to construct html formatted input fields in forms.

8. The method of claim 5, further comprising the step of defining said form object using said form including imported hyperlinks.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

parsing said form, finding linked files and processing uniform resource locators to generate a form object;

saving to a page object said form, said linked files, and said form object; and

displaying at said browser said page with said form object in read mode and said form in edit mode.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

responsive to creation of a valid link to an image within an html page or skin, creating a uniform resource locator (url) by;

downloading said images into a local directory in the same folder as said html page or skin; and

uploading said linked and download images from said local directory automatically when said page or skin is uploaded.

11. A method for incorporating a hypertext markup language (html) form into a collaboration space place, comprising the steps of:

creating a form in html separate from said place;

dragging and dropping said form into said place;

parsing said form to identify each html field and process uniform resource locators;

creating a field for each html tag; and

saving on a page said html in read mode and said form in edit mode.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising the steps of:

downloading said html and linked images for loading to client storage in its original form by

importing an original html file which contains an image tag and the related image files into collaboration space;

parsing said original html file to find linked images;

creating a modified html file by modifying said image tag in said html file to refer to the copy of the image file attached to document on the server;

saving said original html file and said modified html file on a collaboration space page object; and

displaying said page object with said original html file in edit mode and said modified html file in read mode.

13. Method for creating and uploading a form into a place in collaboration space, comprising the steps of:

using an hypertext markup language (html) editor, prepare a document containing custom code as a manually created html form, with all said custom code within a body tag of said document;

uploading said document to said place by dragging and dropping said document to an upload control in a browser user interface to said place; and

at said place, replacing head and title tags in said document with place tags.

14. System for creating and uploading a form into a place in collaboration space, comprising:

a hypertext markup language (html) editor for preparing a document containing custom code as a manually created html form with all said custom code within a body tag of said document;

a browser;

a window at said browser for providing a user interface to said place, said user interface including an upload control;

said upload control uploading said document to said place upon said document being dragged and dropped into said upload control.

15. A system for integrating forms into collaboration space, comprising:

a client browser;

a legacy editor for preparing a form containing hyperlinks that point to web pages;

a local storage for saving said form at said browser; and

an upload control panel receiving said form from said local storage and uploading said form to said collaboration space.

16. A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform method steps for integrating forms into collaboration space, said method steps comprising:

preparing at a browser using a legacy editor a form containing hyperlinks that point to web pages;

saving said form to local storage at said browser; and

dragging and dropping said form from local storage into an upload control panel in a user interface to said collaboration space.

17. A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform method steps for incorporating a hypertext markup language (html) form into a collaboration space place, said method steps comprising:

creating a form in html separate from said place;

dragging and dropping said form into said place;

parsing said form to identify each html field and process uniform resource locators;

creating a field for each html tag; and

saving on a page said html in read mode and said form in edit mode.

18. A computer program product or computer program element for incorporating a hypertext markup language (html) form into a collaboration space place by creating a form in html separate from said place;

dragging and dropping said form into said place;

parsing said form to identify each html field and process uniform resource locators;

creating a field for each html tag; and

saving on a page said html in read mode and said form in edit mode.

19. A computer program product for integrating forms into collaboration space according to steps comprising:

preparing at a browser using a legacy editor a form containing hyperlinks that point to web pages;

saving said form to local storage at said browser; and

dragging and dropping said form from local storage into an upload control panel in a user interface to said collaboration space.