AUTOMATIC PAGE LAYOUT VALIDATION

• US 20100220923A1
• Filed: 02/27/2009
• Published: 09/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/27/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chap, Sassda, Davan, Patrice
• Granted Patent: US 8,340,408 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/164
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/414 Extracting the geometrical structure, e.g. layout tree; Block segmentation, e.g. bounding boxes for graphics or text

Abstract

A method for validating the layout of webpages comprises receiving a webpage, transforming the webpage into a color-coded page, and determining based at least in part on detecting a color on the color-coded page that a layout of the webpage contains an error. The transforming can comprise identifying a block of content in the webpage, identifying a size and a location of the block, creating a new block with the size and the location of the block, and assigning a new color to the new block. The determining can comprise storing an image snapshot of the color-coded page and comparing the image snapshot to a reference image.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a webpage;

transforming the webpage into a color-coded page;

determining, based at least in part on a color added to the color-coded page during the transforming, that a layout of the webpage contains an error;

wherein the step of transforming is performed by one or more special-purpose computing devices.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the webpage comprises a first set of blocks and the color-coded page comprises a second set of blocks, and each block from the first set of blocks has a corresponding block of a same size and a same location in the second set of blocks.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of determining comprises:

identifying a first block from the second set of blocks that overlaps with a second block from the second set of blocks.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of transforming comprises:

identifying a block of content in the webpage;

identifying a size and a location of the block

creating a new block with the size and the location of the block;

assigning a new color to the new block.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining comprises:

storing an image snapshot of the color-coded page;

comparing the image snapshot to a reference image.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the step of comparing comprises:

determining an amount of difference between the image snapshot and the reference image.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the step of comparing comprises:

subtracting a first pixel value of a pixel in the image snapshot from a second pixel value of a corresponding pixel in the reference image to determine a difference value;

detecting an error in the layout of the webpage based at least in part on the difference value.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining comprises:

detecting a color on the color-coded page, the color to be indicative of an error in the layout of the live webpage.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining comprises:

detecting a color on the color-coded page, the color to be indicative of a correct layout of the live webpage.

10. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 1.

11. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 2.

12. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 3.

13. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 4.

14. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 5.

15. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 6.

16. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 7.

17. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 8.

18. One or more machine-readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of the method recited in claim 9.