Site navigation and site navigation data source

• US 20050278351A1
• Filed: 05/28/2004
• Published: 12/15/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/28/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Croney, Joseph K., Yang, Ting-Hao, Niyogi, Shanku Shivabrata, Gibbs, Matthew E., Schackow, Stefan
• Granted Patent: US 8,156,448 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

A concept for providing hierarchical navigation information relative to one or more databases within a distributed computer system is described. In one aspect, this includes a process for hierarchically organizing bodies of information that includes: receiving a query from a user, abstracting a list of descriptors from one or more sources of information selected based on the query, organizing the list according to an hierarchy of nodes referenced in the one or more sources of information and providing information configured to facilitate displaying a graphical user interface illustrating the hierarchy and having user programmable server control classes for accession of nodes in the hierarchy.

Claims

1. A process for hierarchically organizing bodies of information comprising:

receiving a query from a user;

abstracting a summary from one or more bodies of the bodies of information selected based on the query;

organizing the summary according to an hierarchy of nodes referenced in the one or more bodies of information; and

providing information configured to facilitate displaying a graphical user interface illustrating the hierarchy and having user controls for accession of nodes in the hierarchy.

2. The process of claim 1, wherein abstracting comprises abstracting from multiple linked datastores, and further comprising providing information from these multiple linked datastores as a single and seamless set of navigational information to developers and controls for users.

3. The process of claim 1, wherein abstracting a summary comprises abstracting a table of contents.

4. The process of claim 1, further comprising customizing textual portions of information returned from the bodies of information via localization mechanisms configured to be responsive to culture, language or locale of a user, or a piece of executing code.

5. The process of claim 1, further comprising providing the user controls according to where the user is classified in a predetermined role-based access list.

6. The process of claim 1, wherein abstracting comprises selecting one or more universal resource locators based on the query.

7. The process of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface includes one or more controls for user selection among displays chosen from a group consisting of:

tree view, SiteMapPath, SiteMapDataSource or menu control.

8. The process of claim 1, wherein providing information comprises providing information configured to facilitate displaying a graphical user interface via a mobile device that is capable of facilitating illustrating the hierarchy via nodes rendered as a set of links coupled with user controls for accession/traversal of nodes in the hierarchy.

9. The process of claim 1, wherein abstracting a summary from one or more bodies of the bodies of information selected based on the query comprises abstracting a summary from one or more bodies of information stored in a memory coupled to a computer.

10. Computer readable code embodied on a computer readable medium that is configured to cause one or more processors to construct and provide navigational controls for a user of a distributed computer system, wherein the code is configured to cause the one or more processors to:

instantiate an hierarchical site map as a user interface, wherein the site map provides data abstractions conditioned for human intelligibility and references associated computer-intelligible data;

receive user input via the user interface; and

respond to the user input by providing content as indicated by the user via the user interface.

11. The computer readable medium of claim 10, wherein the computer readable code is configured to facilitate web site development, and wherein the computer readable code is further configured to effectuate a choice of user interfaces chosen from a group consisting of:

tree view, SiteMapPath, SiteMapDataSource or menu control.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the computer readable code is configured for data store navigation and accession and includes computer readable instructions configured to:

abstract a series of nodes including a root node, one or more parent nodes and one or more child nodes from a datastore;

sort the series of nodes in an hierarchy; and

provide the hierarchy to the user.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the computer readable code configured to cause the one or more processors to provide content includes computer readable instructions configured to customize portions of information derived from the data abstractions via localization mechanisms configured to be responsive to culture, language or locale of a user, or a piece of executing code.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, further comprising the computer readable code configured to cause the one or more processors to provide user controls according to where the user is classified in a predetermined role-based access list.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the computer-readable code configured to cause one or more processors to instantiate the hierarchical site map comprises computer-readable code configured to cause one or more processors to select one or more universal resource locators based on the user input.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 10, wherein the computer readable code is configured to adapt to modification of a datastore from which the hierarchical site map is abstracted.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 10, wherein the computer readable code configured instantiate the hierarchical site map comprises computer readable code configured to provide data abstractions conditioned for human intelligibility and references associated computer-intelligible data stored in a memory that is coupled to a personal computer.

18. A system for navigation of one or more data sources, comprising:

an abstraction engine configured to provide a summary from the one or more data sources;

an organization engine configured to provide an hierarchy of nodes referenced in the one or more data sources; and

an information provision engine configured to render the hierarchy.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the information provision engine is configured to provide a web site development tool having capacities for organization of dynamically-reconfigurable summaries from the one or more data sources as data contained therein undergoes modification.

20. The system of claim 18 wherein the information provision engine is configured to provide a user interface capable of rendering an hierarchical navigation aid to a user.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the information provision engine is configured to provide a memory organization, accession and traversal tool for a memory coupled to a computer.

22. The system of claim 18, wherein the information provision engine is configured to provide a user interface capable of rendering an hierarchical navigation aid to a user, the hierarchical navigation aide including localization mechanisms configured to be responsive to culture, language or locale of the user, or a piece of executing code.

23. The system of claim 18, wherein the information provision engine is configured to provide a user interface capable of rendering an hierarchical navigation aid to a user that includes user controls delimited according to where the user is classified in a predetermined role-based access list.

24. A process for deploying a web page, comprising:

receiving, from a client process, a request for a web page; and

providing, from a server process, an hierarchical navigation control interface.

25. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises providing a user interface chosen from a group consisting of:

tree view, SiteMapPath, SiteMapDataSource or menu control.

26. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises providing a graphical user interface chosen from a group consisting of:

tree view, SiteMapPath, SiteMapDataSource or menu control.

27. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises providing access to an hierarchy of nodes including one or more parent nodes and at least one child node, the nodes corresponding to different portions of a datastore.

28. The process of claim 24, wherein receiving comprises receiving the request via a graphical user interface chosen from a group consisting of:

tree view, SiteMapPath, SiteMapDataSource or menu control.

29. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises providing portions of the hierarchical navigation control interface via localization mechanisms configured to be adaptive to culture, language or locale of a user.

30. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises:

providing access to an hierarchy of nodes including one or more parent nodes and at least one child node, the nodes corresponding to different portions of a datastore; and

including an element within the hierarchical navigation control that is configured to permit the user to skip portions of the hierarchy.

31. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises providing access to an hierarchy of nodes extracted from multiple datastores.

32. The process of claim 24, wherein providing comprises providing access to an hierarchy of nodes including one or more parent nodes and at least one child node in accordance with a role-based accession list.