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

• US 7,103,836 B1
• Filed: 01/10/2000
• Issued: 09/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/15/1997
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nakamura, Lee Evan, Tate, Stewart Eugene
• Primary Examiner(s): HUYNH, CONG LAC T
• Application Number:
  US09/479,999
• Time in Patent Office: 2,430 Days
• Field of Search: 707/513, 707/501.1, 707/517, 707/526, 715/513, 715/501.1, 715/517, 715/526, 715/500
• US Class Current: 715/207
• 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 managing internet presentation materials in a single file format for ease of administration while presenting to a requestor only those portions of a file requested, comprising:

defining, in a first portion of the file, a first variable for first information and a second variable for second information, where said first information and said second information are in the file;

defining, in a second portion of the file, first and second presentation layouts, wherein said first presentation layout includes said first variable and said second presentation layout includes said second variable; and

dynamically generating a page of presentation material in response to a request for said first information by using the first variable to extract said first information from the file and placing the first information in the page of presentation material, wherein the page is generated based on the first presentation layout and includes said first information and does not contain said second information.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein said page is a World Wide Web page for display on a web browser and wherein the browser is the web browser.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein said web browser does not support a hypertext markup language (HTML) frame tag.

4. The method according to claim 1, where said request includes a uniform resource locator (URL).

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the browser requests a page based on a user selection, and wherein the request is transmitted to a server that dynamically generates the page based only on the single file and the request.

6. The method according to claim 1, further comprising loading the dynamically generated page into a browser for display.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first presentation comprises the first variable and instructions for dynamically generating the page.

8. A system for managing internet presentation materials in a single file format for ease of administration while presenting to a requestor only those portions of a file requested, comprising:

a server for communicating with a client;

a dynamic presentation page generating unit, coupled with said server;

a macro program, coupled with said dynamic presentation page generation unit, having first and second presentation material stored therein,

wherein said dynamic presentation page generating unit, in response to a message received by said server requesting said first presentation material, dynamically generates a page of presentation material based on the macro program by using the first variable to extract said first information from the file and placing the first information in the page of presentation material, the generated page including said first presentation material and not including said second presentation material.

9. The system according to claim 8, wherein said dynamic presentation page unit generates said page of presentation material in the form of hypertext markup language (HTML) for presentation on a non-frame-capable web browser.

10. The system according to claim 8, wherein the dynamically generated page of the presentation material is transmitted to the client from the server and is displayed at the client by a browser.

11. The system according to claim 10, wherein the page is created at the server based on instructions for dynamically generating the page stored in the second portion of the file.

12. A computer-readable medium encoded with a computer program, comprising:

a definition area having presentation information stored therein, wherein the presentation information defines a presentation layout of the presentation information when displayed on a display unit;

a presentation page area having a plurality of presentation definition sections defined therein, wherein in response to a request from a client said presentation information of said definition area is combined with a selected one of the presentation definition sections of said presentation page area to dynamically generate a presentation page for display at the client by using a first variable to extract first information from a file including the definition area and the presentation page area and placing the first information in the presentation page.

13. The computer-readable medium according to claim 12, wherein said presentation information is stored as a value of a variable.

14. The computer-readable medium according to claim 12, wherein a background is stored in the definition area and is combined with the selected presentation definition section for uniform display across the presentation areas displayed on a web browser.

15. The computer-readable medium according to claim 12, wherein the display unit is a web browser.

16. The computer-readable medium according to claim 12, wherein the computer-readable program is a web macro.

17. The computer-readable medium encoded with the computer program according to claim 12, wherein the dynamically generated page of the presentation material is transmitted to the client and are loaded for display by the display unit at the client.

18. The computer-readable medium encoded with the computer program according to claim 12, wherein the page is created at the server based on instructions for dynamically generating the page stored in the second portion of the file.