Device specific pagination of dynamically rendered data

• US 20030236917A1
• Filed: 06/17/2002
• Published: 12/25/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Schechter, Greg D., Gibbs, Matthew E., Nye, Kristen Nilsen, Niyogi, Shanku S.
• Granted Patent: US 7,441,047 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/248
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology that provides for adjusting content that is to be received and displayed by a device so that the content is meaningful to a recipient. The invention provides for rendering of variable-sized pages of dynamic content based at least in part on user interface (UI) characteristics of a receiving device (e.g., client program). One particular aspect of the invention provides for an abstraction layer that permits a content developer to specify what content is to be displayed to an end user without requiring the developer to delineate markup tags that are to be employed by different browsers of respective mobile devices. Thus, for example, such aspect of the invention provides for automatically adjusting (e.g., paginating) content into variable-sized pages appropriate for a requesting device. A content analyzer receives and analyzes content to be rendered at a plurality of recipient devices against display capabilities of the respective devices. An abstraction layer accesses information relating to capabilities of the devices, and maps attributes relating to the content to the device capabilities, the abstraction layer provides the mapping to the content analyzer. A content distributor parses the content into subsets coincident with the display capabilities of the respective devices, and sequentially distributes respective subsets to the devices for rendering thereof.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates rendering of dynamically generated content, comprising:

a content analyzer that analyzes content to be rendered at a recipient device against at least capabilities of the device and modifies the content in accordance with the analysis; and

a content distributor that facilitates rendering of the modified dynamically generated content by the recipient device.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a device capabilities store that holds information relating to capabilities of recipient devices.

3. The system of claim 2, the capabilities including at least one of display space, display capabilities, processing capabilities, cookie handling capabilities, mark up language employed and web browser employed.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising an abstraction layer that maps content characteristics with capabilities of the recipient device.

5. The system of claim 1, the content modification comprising pagination of the content.

6. The system of claim 1, the content modification comprising chunking of the content.

7. The system of claim 1, the content modification comprising truncating of the content.

8. The system of claim 1, the content modification comprising trimming of the content.

9. The system of claim 1 residing at a server.

10. The system of claim 1 residing at the recipient device.

11. The system of claim 1 residing at a sending device.

12. The system of claim 10, the recipient device being a portable computing device.

13. The system of claim 1, the content being modified and rendered coincident with a markup language suitable for the recipient device.

14. The system of claim 1, the content distributor providing the content in subsets coincident with content consumption capabilities of the recipient device.

15. The system of claim 1, the content being rendered on a plurality of recipient device types, and the content analyzer modifying the content for rendering on each device type in accordance with capabilities of the device types.

16. The system of claim 1, rendering the content such that certain portions are static and other portions are modified in accordance with capabilities of the recipient device.

17. The system of claim 1, the content analyzer optimizing content modification based at least in part on scrolling capabilities of the recipient device.

18. The system of claim 1, the content analyzer optimizing content modification based at least in part on user preferences for content rendering.

30. A computer readable medium storing computer executable components for effecting the functionality of claim 1.

19. A method for rendering dynamically generated content, comprising:

determining whether the dynamically generated content to be rendered exceeds capabilities of a receiving device; and

modifying the dynamically generated content for suitable rendering on the receiving device if the original dynamically generated content exceeds the receiving device capabilities.

20. The method of claim 19 further comprising identifying the recipient device and related capabilities.

21. The method of claim 19 further comprising dividing the content into subsets suitable for rendering on the receiving device.

22. The method of claim 21 further comprising rendering the subsets sequentially in accordance with consumption capabilities of the receiving device.

23. The method of claim 19, further comprising ascertaining an optimal page weight relating to content rendering by the receiving device.

24. The method of claim 23 further comprising comparing total content weight to the optimal page weight for the receiving device, and rendering subsets of the content in accordance with the comparison.

25. The method of claim 24 further comprising assigning controls for rendering the content to virtual pages, and displaying the controls in accordance with a virtual page protocol.

31. A computer readable medium storing computer executable components for performing the method of claim 19.

26. A system that facilitates rendering of dynamically generated content, comprising:

means for identifying capabilities associated with a device that will be rendering the dynamically generated content;

means for modifying the content in accordance with the device capabilities; and

means for distributing the modified content to the device for rendering.

27. The system of claim 26 further comprising means for storing information relating to capabilities of a plurality of device types.

28. The system of claim 27, the means for storing further storing information relating to user preferences for content rendering.

29. The system of claim 28 further comprising means for mapping content attributes to the device capabilities.

32. A system that facilitates rendering of dynamically generated content, comprising:

a content analyzer that receives and analyzes content to be rendered at a plurality of recipient devices against display capabilities of the respective devices;

an abstraction layer that accesses a data store holding information relating to capabilities of the devices, and maps attributes relating to the content to the capabilities, the abstraction layer providing the mapping to the content analyzer; and

a content distributor that parses the content into subsets coincident with the display capabilities of the respective devices, and sequentially distributes respective subsets to the devices for rendering thereof.

33. The system of claim 32, the content modification comprising paginating the content in accordance with display capabilities of the receiving devices.

34. The system of claim 32, further comprising an inference system that infers a most suitable modification of the content given various uncertainty regarding capabilities of at least one of the receiving devices.

35. The system of claim 33, the inference also considering user preferences for content rendering.

36. The system of claim 32, further comprising a classifier that classifies at least one of the content and device capabilities.

37. The system of claim 36, employing at least one of:

Support Vector Machines (SVM), Bayesian networks, decision trees, and probabilistic classification models.

38. A data packet that is transmitted between at least two computer processes, comprising:

a data field comprising code for rendering dynamically generated content automatically modified from its original form for rendering on a recipient device in accordance with capabilities of the recipient device.