Method and system for generating materials for presentation on a non-frame capable web browser

• US 6,178,433 B1
• Filed: 07/15/1997
• Issued: 01/23/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 07/15/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nakamura, Lee Evan, Tate, Stewart Eugene
• Primary Examiner(s): Feild, Joseph H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Bourque, Robert D.
• Application Number:
  US08/892,842
• Time in Patent Office: 1,288 Days
• Field of Search: 707/513, 707/501, 709/203, 709/219, 345/357
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

A method and system are disclosed for managing Internet presentation materials in a single file format for ease of administration while presenting to an Internet requestor only those portions of the file requested, for maximum performance. Also disclosed is a system and method for presenting Internet materials using borderless presentation areas, where the background specification is decoupled from the presentation area specification. The invention also relates to a system and method for using a dynamic web page builder to generate and manage multiple instances of information to be simultaneously displayed in multiple presentation areas, in which one of the presentation areas contains table of contents information listing various selectable web pages stored in a single file. The table of contents information is continuously displayed on-screen when any of the items listed in the table of contents is selected for ease of navigation through a web site.

Claims

1. A method for generating network presentation materials, comprising:

dynamically generating first presentation materials containing an item; and

dynamically generating second presentation materials based on selection of the item in said first presentation materials.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

downloading to a client said dynamically generated first and second presentation materials as a single web page.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first and second presentation materials are portions of a hypertext markup language (HTML) document.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the first and second presentation materials are presented by a web browser to a user.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first and second presentation materials are recorded in a single computer file.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein said dynamically generating second presentation materials comprises:

selecting one of a plurality of presentation portions of a program in response to selection of the item contained in the first presentation materials; and

executing said one of the plurality of presentation portions of the program, thereby dynamically generating said second presentation materials.

7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

outputting the dynamically generated first and second presentation materials.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the first and second presentation materials are output for presentation to a user.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first presentation materials are dynamically generated by interpreting a macro having a first variable containing data for generating the first presentation materials, and the second presentation materials are dynamically generated by interpreting a macro having a second variable containing data for generating the second presentation materials.

10. A method for using a dynamic presentation page builder, comprising:

receiving a request for one of a plurality of presentation information, based on selection of an item in a dynamically generated list presented to a requester;

causing the dynamic presentation page builder to dynamically build, in response to said request, a presentation page including said requested presentation information for display in a first presentation area and said list for display in a second presentation area, wherein said list indicates other selectable items relating to other presentation information; and

sending the generated presentation page to a presentation page display unit, for simultaneously displaying said requested presentation information in said first presentation area and the list in the second presentation area, thereby continuously maintaining presentation of the list for ease of navigation by the requester.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein said presentation page is a web page and said presentation display unit is a web browser which does not recognize an HTML frame tag.

12. The method according to claim 10, wherein said list is a table of contents identifying presentation information maintained in a single computer-readable file.

13. The method according to claim 10, wherein the list and the requested presentation information are contained in variables, and the dynamic presentation page builder dynamically builds the presentation page by interpreting a macro that contains the variables.

14. A system for using a dynamic presentation page builder, comprising:

a computer-readable file having recorded therein data for generating first and second presentation information, and being coupled to the dynamic presentation page builder; and

a server connected to the dynamic presentation page builder and to a client, said server receiving a request from a client based on selection of an item in said first presentation information dynamically generated and presented at the client;

wherein in response to the request said dynamic page builder is controlled by said computer-readable file to dynamically generate a presentation page including the first presentation information in a first presentation area and the second presentation information in a second presentation area, whereby a client receiving the generated presentation page simultaneously displays said first and second presentation information.

15. The system according to claim 14, wherein said first presentation information is a table of contents listing content recorded in said computer-readable file, whereby the table of contents is displayed substantially continuously at the client whenever an item in the table of contents is selected.

16. The system according to claim 14, wherein the first and second presentation information are contained in first and second variables, respectively, and the dynamic presentation page builder dynamically generates the presentation page by interpreting a macro that contains the first and second variables.