Partial Loading and Editing of Documents from a Server

• US 20120117481A1
• Filed: 11/09/2010
• Published: 05/10/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/09/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Stevens, Jeremy Max, Rolnick, Robert, Zhu (Alex), Zhenjun
• Granted Patent: US 10,911,550 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/738
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal

Abstract

On a client computer a request is sent to a server computer to open a first portion of a document. The document is stored at the server computer. The first portion of the document is smaller than the entire document. The request includes information used by the server computer to determine a size of the first portion of the document. The first portion of the document is received from the server computer. A second portion of the document is rendered on a display screen on the client computer. The second portion of the document is a subset of the first portion of the document. When the client computer determines that the user has scrolled a third portion of the document and that more of the document is available at the server computer, a second request is sent to the server computer to open an additional portion of the document.

Claims

1. A method for accessing a document at a client computer, the method comprising:

at the client computer, sending a first request to a server computer to open a first portion of the document, the document being stored at the server computer, the first portion of the document being smaller than the entire document, the request including information that is used by the server computer to determine a size of the first portion of the document;

at the client computer, receiving the first portion of the document from the server computer;

at the client computer, after the first portion of the document is received from the server computer, rendering a second portion of the document on a display screen on the client computer, the second portion of the document being a subset of the first portion of the document;

at the client computer, determining that more of the document is available at the server computer;

at the client computer, determining that a user has scrolled a third portion of the document on a display screen at the client computer; and

when the client computer determines that the user has scrolled the third portion of the document and when the client computer determines that more of the document is available at the server computer, sending a second request to the server computer to open an additional portion of the document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional portion of the document is similar in size to the scrolled third portion of the document.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining at the client computer that at least one more additional portion of the document is available at the server computer further comprises receiving a message from the server computer indicating that more of the document is available.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining that the user has scrolled a third portion of the document on the display screen further comprises determining that the user has scrolled a predetermined number of objects on the display screen.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein each object in the predetermined number of objects is a top-level object, each of the top-level objects being one of a paragraph, a table, a list or a picture.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein when the client computer requests the additional portion of the document from the server computer, the client computer unloads a similar sized portion of the document from the client computer.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving the additional portion of the document from the server computer, and when the additional portion of the document is received from the server computer unloading a portion of the document from the client computer.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the information included in the first request includes one or more of a size of the display screen on the client computer, a size of a font used on the display screen and a pixel resolution of the display screen.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the information included in the first request includes a hint as to the number of objects to be included in the first portion of the document.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the first portion of the document includes a plurality of objects, one or more of the plurality of objects being top-level objects, each top-level object comprising one or more of the plurality of objects, each of the top-level objects being one of a paragraph, a table, a list or a picture.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

editing the first portion of the document; and

sending a request to the server computer to save the edited first portion of the document, the edited first portion of the document being saved while the document is partially open.

12. A method implemented on a server computer for partially opening a document stored on the server computer, the method comprising:

on the server computer, receiving a first message from a client computer, the first message being a request to open a first portion of the document, the first portion of the document comprising one or more objects, the request including information for determining a size of the first portion of the document;

on the server computer, determining the size of the first portion of the document, the determination of the size of the first portion of the document comprising determining an object threshold for the first portion of the document, the object threshold corresponding to a minimum number of objects to be included in the first portion of the document; and

on the server computer, sending to the client computer one or more objects from the document, the one or more objects comprising objects starting from a beginning of the document up until a number of objects being sent to the client computer is equal to the object threshold.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

on the server computer, determining whether the object that corresponds to the object threshold is a top-level object; and

when it is determined that the object that corresponds to the object threshold is not a top-level object;

identifying a top-level object that includes the object that corresponds to the object threshold; and

sending one or more additional objects from the identified top-level object to the client computer until an end of the identified top-level object is reached.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

determining whether the size of the first portion of the document is smaller than a size of the entire document, and

when it is determined that the size of the first portion of the document is smaller than the size of the entire document, sending a message to the client computer, the message informing the client computer that more of the document is available to be sent to the client computer.

15. The method of claim 12, further comprising receiving a second message from the client computer, the second message including a second portion of the document, the second portion of the document including one or more edited objects from the first portion of the document or one or more objects not included in the first portion of the document.

16. The method of claim 15, further including saving the second portion of the document in memory on the server computer, the second portion of the document being saved while the first portion of the document is partially opened at the server computer.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein determining the size of the object threshold further comprises determining a number of objects that will fit in the size of a display screen on the client computer.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein determining the size of the object threshold further comprises multiplying the number of objects that will fit in the size of the display screen on the client computer by a multiplying factor and designating a result of the multiplication as the object threshold.

19. The method of claim 12, wherein the information for determining the size of the first portion of the document includes a hint as to the number of objects to be included in the first portion of the document.

20. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to:

send a first request to a server computer to open a first portion of the document, the document being stored at the server computer, the first portion of the document being smaller than the entire document, the request including information that is used by the server computer to determine a size of the first portion of the document;

receive the first portion of the document from the server computer;

after the first portion of the document is received from the server computer, rendering a second portion of the document on a display screen on the client computer, the second portion of the document being a subset of the first portion of the document;

determine that more of the document is available at the server computer;

determine that a user has scrolled a third portion of the document on a display screen at the client computer, the third portion of the document comprising a predetermined number of objects, each of the objects being one of a paragraph, a table, a list or a picture; and

when a determination is made that the user has scrolled the third portion of the document and when a determination is made that more of the document is available at the server computer, sending a second request to the server computer to open an additional portion of the document, the additional portion of the document being similar in size to the scrolled third portion of the document.