SEARCH QUERY USER INTERFACE

• US 20080256457A1
• Filed: 06/24/2008
• Published: 10/16/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/13/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yahoo Assets LLC
• Original Assignee: Oath Inc. (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Inventors: Chu, Jack, Morrisroe, Lawrence, Mancini, Chris
• Granted Patent: US 9,836,550 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/739
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/048 Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04845 for image manipulation, e.g. dragging, rotation, expansion or change of colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1438 using more than one graphics controller
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 5/10 having a sequence of storage locations each being individually accessible for both enqueue and dequeue operations, e.g. using random access memory G06F5/065 takes precedence

Abstract

In a client-server system where a client system presents a browser for user interaction, a browser user interface includes functionality for handling dynamic interface elements received by the browser in connection with received pages, presented as part of the browser user interface and modified in response to selected user input without requiring farther interaction with a server. In addition to, or in place of, dynamic interface elements such as slide sheets, the browser user interface might also include a rotation display area, tool displays that can overlay a page, opaquely or semi-transparently, menu structures, and an ability for the user to modify a page layout without requiring server interaction. The browser might comprise storage for a plurality of rotation display items for storing a summary and a primary presentation for each rotation display item, logic for displaying, by the browser, primary presentations for less all of the plurality of rotation display items in the rotation display area, logic for displaying, by the browser, summaries for items wherein the number of summaries is greater than the number of primary presentations presented at one time, logic for highlighting, among the summaries displayed, the ones of the summaries that correspond to the primary presentations displayed in the rotation display area; and logic for rotating the plurality of rotation display items to display primary presentations for a different subsets of the rotation display items and for updating highlighting of summaries to correspond to the different subsets of rotation display items.

Claims

1. A browser user interface, wherein a browser executes on a client system coupled to a server over a network and provides a browser user interface to server resources and wherein the browser includes functionality to request pages from servers over the network and to process received pages for presentation to a browser user, the browser user interface comprising:

a graphical display for presenting presented portions of browser pages to the user;

a user input device for accepting user input related to a page displayed in the browser; and

storage for dynamic interface elements received by the browser in connection with received pages, wherein a dynamic interface element is able to be presented and modified in response to selected user input without requiring further interaction with a server.

2. The browser user interface of claim 1, wherein the dynamic interface elements include slide sheets, wherein a slide sheet opens in an opening a direction on the display in response to the selected user input.

3. The browser user interface of claim 2, wherein a slide sheet includes a plurality of tabs each representing a subset of the browser user interface elements presented on the slide sheet and logic for switching among tabs in response to user input for presenting corresponding browser user interface elements without requiring further interaction with a server.

4. The browser user interface of claim 2, wherein a slide sheet includes a scroll user interface elements for scrolling user interface elements of the slide sheet within a display area smaller than the presentation of all user interface elements of the slide sheet.

5. The browser user interface of claim 2, further comprising the user interface elements for allowing the user to resize the slide sheet in one or more directions without requiring further interaction with the server.

6. The browser user interface of claim 2, wherein the slide sheet is semi-transparent.

7. The browser user interface of claim 2, wherein the slide sheet is associated with a topic specific page, wherein topics include news, sports, weather, commentary, commerce, music, movies, games or local information.

8. The browser user interface of claim 7, wherein the slide sheet is associated with a finance page and the slide sheet present a ticker lookup interface.

9. The browser user interface of claim 1, the browser further comprising:

logic to track user interface interactions with the dynamic interface elements; and

logic for generating messages to a server corresponding with the dynamic interface elements, wherein a message to the server indicates user interactions and wherein such interactions are effected independent of whether the server receives the message.

10. The browser user interface of claim 1, wherein pages with dynamic interface elements received from a server include substitute presentations for presentation by browsers that do not support dynamic interface elements.

11. The browser user interface of claim 1, wherein the dynamic interface elements include a menu bar, wherein the menu bar is a user interface elements for providing navigation among a hierarchy of selection stored as such that a user can navigate within the menu bar without requiring further interaction with the server.

12. The browser user interface of claim 11, wherein the browser further comprises:

logic to track user interface interactions with the menu bar; and

logic for generating messages to a server corresponding with the menu bar, wherein a message to the server indicates user interactions with the menu bar and wherein such interactions are effected independent of whether the server receives the message.

13. The browser user interface of claim 1, further comprising a cache for caching dynamic interface elements at the client.

14. A browser user interface, wherein a browser executes on a client system to present the browser user interface on a graphical display to a user of the client system and accept user input from the user, and wherein the browser includes functionality to request pages from servers over a network and to process received pages for presentation to the user, the browser user interface comprising:

a page display, wherein elements of a received page are presented according to browser interpretation of data from the received page;

a rotation display area comprising some or all of a display area used for that page display;

storage for a plurality of rotation display items, a rotation display items storage comprising storage for a summary and a primary presentation for each rotation display item;

logic for displaying, by the browser, primary presentations for less all of the plurality of rotation display items in the rotation display area;

logic for displaying, by the browser, summaries for items wherein the number of summaries is greater than the number of primary presentations presented at one time;

logic for highlighting, among the summaries displayed, the ones of the summaries that correspond to the primary presentations displayed in the rotation display area; and

logic for rotating, the plurality of rotation that display items to display primary presentations for a different subsets of the rotation display items and for updating highlighting of summaries to correspond to the different subsets of rotation display items.

15. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the number of primary presentations presented at one time is one primary presentation.

16. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the number of summaries displayed are all of the summaries in the storage for rotation display items.

17. The browser user interface of claim 14, further comprising:

logic to designate an order of presentation of the rotation display items;

logic to modify the order of presentation based on user input such that a user indication of interest in a summary for one item results in the primary presentation for the item of interest being presented earlier in the order than if no user indication of interest was input.

18. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the logic for rotating includes logic for fading out a current primary presentation and fading in a next primary presentation.

19. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the logic for rotating includes logic for rotating out primary presentations at the differing times when multiple primary presentations are presented at any one time.

20. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the storage for the plurality of rotation display items is stored entirely within the client system.

21. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the highlighting is one or more of bolding, underlining, presenting in a distinct font, presenting in a distinct color, or animating.

22. The browser user interface of claim 14, further comprising:

a transition indicator indicating an imminent transition from a current set of one or more primary presentations to a next set of one or more primary presentations; and

logic to interrupt the imminent transition upon receipt of an interrupting user input, whereby the current set of one or more primary presentations remains presented.

23. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein the rotation display area is associated with a topic specific page, wherein topics include news, sports, weather, commentary, commerce, music, movies, games or local information.

24. The browser user interface of claim 23, wherein the rotation display area is associated with a news page and the rotation display area displays news headlines has item the summaries and additional details related to the news headlines as the primary presentations.

25. The browser user interface of claim 24, wherein the news headlines presented as the primary presentations comprise one or more of text, image, audio or video presentations.

26. The browser user interface of claim 14, the browser further comprising:

logic to track user interface interactions with the rotation display area; and

logic for generating messages to a server corresponding with the rotation display area, wherein a message to the server indicates user interactions and wherein such interactions are effected independent of whether the server receives the message.

27. The browser user interface of claim 14, wherein pages with received from a server include substitute presentations for presentation by browsers that do not support a rotation display area.

28. A browser user interface, wherein a browser executes on a client system to present the browser user interface on a graphical display to a user of the client system and accept user input from the user, and wherein the browser includes functionality to request pages from servers over a network and to process received pages for presentation to the user, the browser user interface comprising:

storage for a plurality of layer datasets for a received page;

a page display layer, wherein elements of a main layer dataset of a received page are presented according to browser interpretation of data from the received page;

a tool layer having elements related to an activity;

logic to optionally display the tool layer over the page display layer; and

logic to accept input from the user related to the activity and removing the tool layer display when complete.

29. The browser user interface of claim 28, wherein the two layer is semi-transparent.

30. The browser user interface of claim 28, the browser further comprising:

logic to track user interface interactions with the tool layer; and

logic for generating messages to a server corresponding with the tool layer, wherein a message to the server indicates user interactions and wherein such interactions are effected independent of whether the server receives the message.

31. The browser user interface of claim 28, wherein pages with received from a server include substitute presentations for presentation by browsers that do not support multiple layers.

32. A browser user interface, wherein a browser executes on a client system to present the browser user interface on a graphical display to a user of the client system and accept user input from the user, and wherein the browser includes functionality to request pages from servers over a network and to process received pages for presentation to the user, the browser user interface comprising:

storage, at the client system, for a plurality of page components, wherein a page received from a server is displayable as a collection of page components each having a display position;

logic for accepting user input for modifying page component display positions; and

logic for revising a page display according to user input for modifying page component display positions without requiring further interactions with the server.

33. The browser user interface of claim 32, further comprising logic for generating a message from the client system to the server representing modified page component display positions to allow subsequent presentations of pages from the server to be modified according to the modified page component display positions.

34. A method of user interaction with a browser user interface browser user interface, wherein a browser executes on a client system coupled to a server over a network and provides a browser user interface to server resources and wherein the browser includes functionality to request pages from servers over the network and to process received pages for presentation to a browser user, the browser user interface comprising:

requesting a page, using the browser, from a target server;

receiving the requested page at the client system from the target server, wherein the received requested page comprises a plurality of layers, where at least one of the plurality of layers is a page display layer and at least one of the plurality of layers other than the page display layer is an optional display layer comprising at least one dynamic interface element corresponding to possible user input;

generating a user display corresponding to the received requested page;

displaying the user display and accepting user input corresponding to the user display of the received requested page;

when a user input corresponding to a request for display of the optional display layer, modifying the display to present the optional display layer;

when the optional display layer is presented, accepting user input corresponding to dynamic interface elements of the optional display layer;

storage for recording the accepted user input; and

taking an action corresponding to the recorded accepted user input.

35. The method of claim 34, wherein the plurality of layers comprises one or more of a slide sheet, a rotation display area, a tool layer with user inputs, and a menu bar.

36. The method of claim 34, wherein the plurality of layers is structured within the received requested page according to DHTML.

37. The method of claim 34, wherein modifying the display to present the optional display layer comprises semi-transparently overlaying the page display layer with the optional display layer.

38. The method of claim 34, further comprising a step of transmitting the recorded accepted user input asynchronously to the target server.

39. The method of claim 34, further comprising a step of transmitting the recorded accepted user input asynchronously to a recording server referenced in the received requested page.

40. The method of claim 34, wherein the optional display layer comprises at least one of a tool layer, an e-mail entry layer, a calendar entry layer, a photo review layer, a news layer, an instant messaging layer, and a voice chat layer.

41. The method of claim 34, wherein the dynamic interface elements include at least one of one or more button, one or more entry field or one or more form.