ACCELERATION OF RENDERING OF WEB-BASED CONTENT

• US 20090228782A1
• Filed: 03/03/2009
• Published: 09/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Fraser, Simon
• Granted Patent: US 9,418,171 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

Systems and methods for hardware accelerated presentation of web pages on mobile computing devices are presented. A plurality of web pages may be received by a computing device capable of processing and displaying web pages using layout engines, hardware accelerated graphics application programming interfaces (APIs). Upon receipt of the web pages, the web pages may be divided into a plurality of rendering layers, based upon stylesheets of the web pages. An algorithm walks through rendering layers so as to select a plurality of layers that may receive compositing layers so as to take advantage of hardware acceleration when rendered. The web pages may be subsequently presented on a display of the mobile computing devices using remaining rendering layers and compositing layers. In this manner, visual representation of web content remains intact even when content which may not have been originally designed for use with layout engine may be displayed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining, by a computer, a tree of nodes that describes relations of elements to be displayed for a page of content;

determining a visual representation for the page, based on a standard rendered appearance for the elements;

determining changes to the standard rendered appearance based on style rules in style descriptions referred to by the page of content;

generating rendered content for the rendering layer using hardware compositing support;

determining that an upper layer renders on top of the rendering layer;

generating rendered content for a rendered upper layer using the hardware compositing support, wherein the rendered content for the rendered upper layer comprises content of the upper layer.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining hierarchy of rendering layers based on styles specified in the style descriptions that affect the front-to-back ordering of the page elements.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, for at least one rendering layer, whether that layer uses the hardware compositing support.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising downloading files that describe the page of content.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising downloading the style descriptions referred to by the page of content.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

minimizing a number and size of hardware compositing layers generated using hardware compositing support.

7. A machine readable storage medium storing executable instructions which when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

determining, by a computer, a tree of nodes that describes relations of elements to be displayed for a page of content;

determining a visual representation for the page, based on a standard rendered appearance for the elements;

determining changes to the standard rendered appearance based on style rules in style descriptions referred to by the page of content;

generating rendered content for the rendering layer using hardware compositing support;

determining that an upper layer renders on top of the rendering layer;

generating rendered content for a rendered upper layer using the hardware compositing support, wherein the rendered content for the rendered upper layer comprises content of the upper layer.

8. The machine readable storage medium of claim 7, the operations further comprising determining hierarchy of rendering layers based on styles specified in the style descriptions that affect the front-to-back ordering of the page elements.

9. The machine readable storage medium of claim 7, the operations further comprising determining, for at least one rendering layer, whether that layer uses hardware compositing support.

10. The machine readable storage medium of claim 7, the operations further comprising downloading files that describe the page of content.

11. The machine readable storage medium of claim 7, the operations further comprising downloading the style descriptions referred to by the page of content.

12. The machine readable storage medium of claim 7, the operations further comprising:

minimizing a number and size of hardware compositing layers generated using hardware compositing support.

13. A data processing system comprising:

means for determining, by a computer, a tree of nodes that describes relations of elements to be displayed for a page of content;

means for determining a visual representation for the page, based on a standard rendered appearance for the elements;

means for determining changes to the standard rendered appearance based on style rules in style descriptions referred to by the page of content;

means for generating rendered content for the rendering layer using hardware compositing support;

means for determining that an upper layer renders on top of the rendering layer;

means for generating rendered content for a rendered upper layer using the hardware compositing support wherein the rendered content for the rendered upper layer comprises content of the upper layer.

14. The data processing system of claim 13, further comprising means for determining hierarchy of rendering layers based on styles specified in the style descriptions that affect the front-to-back ordering of the page elements.

15. The data processing system of claim 13, further comprising means for determining, for at least one rendering layer, whether that layer uses hardware compositing support.

16. The data processing system of claim 13, further comprising means for downloading files that describe the page of content.

17. The data processing system of claim 13, further comprising means for downloading the style descriptions referred to by the page of content.

18. The data processing system of claim 13, further comprising:

means for minimizing a number and size of hardware compositing layers generated using hardware compositing support.