System for transmitting and displaying icon resources group associated with remote application to a local computing system to facilitate virtualization of the remote application

• US 7,254,786 B2
• Filed: 11/05/2002
• Issued: 08/07/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/05/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Henriquez, Alberto
• Primary Examiner(s): Luu; Le Hien
• Application Number:
  US10/288,118
• Publication Number:
  US 20040088377A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,736 Days
• Field of Search: 709/219, 709/203, 709/227, 709/225, 715/363, 715/835, 715/810, 710/11, 379/88.17
• US Class Current: 715/835
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology for transmitting icon information from a remote system to a local system. The icon information is extracted from an application residing on the remote system. The icon information is then encoded and stored until it is requested by the remote system. When the application is remotely accessed by the local system, the icon information is pushed to the local system. The local system decodes the information and displays the icon to a user. The icon is displayed such that the application appears to reside on the local system, rather than the remote system, where it actually resides.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates remote computer access, comprising:

a remote computing system having an application residing thereon;

a transmit component that transmits an icon resources group associated with the application to a local computing system, the transmitted icon resources group facilitates virtualization of the application at the local computing system upon selection of an icon therein; and

a display component to display at the local computing system, at least an icon rendered from the icon resources group for the application, the icon is displayed at the local computing system such that it shares a window area of display with graphics of the local computing system and creates an appearance as if the application associated with the icon is resident at the local computing system.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the transmit component residing at a second remote computing system transmits the encoded icon information via XML.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the transmit component transmits the encoded icon information via SOAP-XML.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtualization of the at least one application includes programmatic data and user interface information.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the icon resources group contains all the iconic information necessary to render an icon associated with the application at the local computing system.

6. The system of claim 1 employing deterministic policies in connection with transmitting iconic data.

7. The system of claim 6 inferring a desired level of iconic information to be transmitted to the local computing system.

8. The system of claim 1 comprising an extract component that extracts icon information from the application.

9. The system of claim 8 comprising an encode component that encode the extracted icon information.

10. The system of claim 9, the encode component employing at least one of the following encoding protocols:

(1) uuencode, (2) BinHex, (3) MIME and (4) Wincode.

11. A system for extracting, encoding and transmitting icon information, comprising:

a locate component to locate at least one icon resource group from at least one application residing on a remote system;

an extract component to extract the at least one icon resource group from the at least one application;

an encode component to encode the at least one extracted icon resource group;

a transmit component to transmit the encoded icon resource group to a local system to facilitate running the at least one application residing on the remote system upon user selection of an icon within the encoded icon resource group and

a display component that displays at least one icon generated from the encoded icon resources group at the local system such that the at least one icon shares a common window area of display with graphics of the local system and that it appears as if the at least one application is residing on the local system.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the at least one extracted icon resource group includes icons associated with the at least one application.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the encode component employs uuencoding to encode the at least one extracted icon resource group.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the at least one extracted icon resource group is encoded into an ico file format.

15. The system of claim 11, further comprising a storage component to store the encoded icon information.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the encoded icon information includes one of a 32×

32 icon image and a 64×

64 icon image.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the encoded icon information includes a plurality of different icon displays, a plurality of different icon formats, and a plurality of different icon resolutions.

18. A system for receiving icon information comprising:

a receive component to receive encoded icon information from a remote system, wherein the encoded icon information is associated with at least one application residing on the remote system;

a decode component to decode the encoded icon information; and

a display component to display at least one icon generated from the icon information such that the icon shares a common window area of display with graphics of the local system and that it appears that the at least one application resides on a local system.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the at least one icon is displayed as a 32×

32 icon image.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the at least one icon is displayed as a 64×

64 icon image.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the encoded icon information is received via web services.

22. A method for extracting, encoding and transmitting icon information comprising:

identifying an icon resource group in at least one application residing on a remote system;

extracting the icon resource group from the at least one application;

encoding the icon resource group into an icon format;

transmitting the encoded icon information to a local system for remote access of the at least one application at the local system; and

displaying an icon generated from the encoded icon information in a common window area of display with graphics at the local system as if the application were residing on the local system.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein different icon displays, sizes, and resolutions are extracted from the at least one application for rendering of an icon at a local computer via a remote access protocol.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein the icon resource group is encoded into an .ico file format.

25. The method of claim 22, wherein the icon resource group is uuencoded.

26. The method of claim 25, further comprising packaging the encoded icon resource group into an XML document.

27. The method of claim 26, further comprising storing the XML document in a database.

28. A method for transmitting icon information comprising:

encoding icon information associated with at least one application residing on a remote system;

determining when the encoded icon information has been requested by a local system;

transmitting the encoded icon information over a communications channel to the requesting local system to facilitate running the application on the remote system upon selection of an icon associated with the encoded icon information, the transmission being performed via at least one of;

web services or SOAP-XML;

and

displaying the icon associated with the encoded icon information at the requesting local system and, upon selection of the icon, displaying a graphical user interface for the associated application at the requesting local system in window area of display shared by graphics of the local system as if the at least one application is residing on the requesting local system.

29. The method of claim 28 further comprising:

receiving the encoded icon information from the remote system;

decoding the encoded icon information, wherein the icon information is uudecoded; and

streaming the decoded icon information into a file.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising reading the file and determining whether an icon replacement exists for the at least one application.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising selecting a best icon file, wherein the best icon file is the file with a highest icon resolution, icon size, and icon color data.

32. The method of claim 28, the communication channel uses two channel parts which employ same or different communication protocol(s).

33. The method of claim 32, a first channel part communicates program instructions from the local system that interact with and manipulate the remote system with the interactions being reflected in a user interface (UI) that is generated at the remote system and sent to the local system through a second channel part.

34. The method of claim 33, a UI (user interface) for the application running on the remote computer and graphics for the requesting local system share a window area of display at the requesting local system.

35. The method of claim 33, the remotely generated UI draws to a known window address at the local system by employing the second channel part.

36. A remote access computing system comprising:

means for extracting icon information from at least one application residing on a remote system;

means for transmitting the icon information associated with the at least one application to a local system;

means for generating at least one icon from the icon information; and

means for displaying the at least one icon on a display of the local system in a window area of display shared by graphics of the local system such that it appears as if the at least one application resides on the local system.

37. A data packet transmitted between two or more computer components that facilitates icon marshalling within a remote computing access framework, the data packet comprising:

icon information associated with at least one application that is run by a local system while residing on a remote system, the icon information comprising a plurality of icon formats and an icon is generated from the icon information for display at the local system in a common window area shared by graphics of the local system as if the at least one application resides on the local system.

38. A computer readable medium storing computer executable components of a remote system, comprising:

a locate component to locate at least one icon resource group from at least one application residing on a remote system;

an extract component to extract the at least one icon resource group from the at least one application;

an encode component to encode the at least one extracted icon resource group;

a transmit component that transmits encoded icon information from the remote system to a local system to facilitate running the application from the remote system at a local computing device; and

a display component that displays at least one icon generated from the encoded icon information at the local system such that the at least one icon shares a common window area of display with graphics of the local system and that it appears as if the at least one application is residing on the local system.

39. The computer readable medium of claim 38, the icon information includes all the icons associated with the at least one application.

40. A computer readable medium storing computer executable components of a local system, comprising:

a receive component to receive encoded icon information from a remote system, wherein the encoded icon information is used to run at a local system, at least one application residing on the remote system; and

a decode component to decode the encoded icon information to display at least an icon generated from the encoded icon information at the local system in a window area of display shared by graphics of the local system such that it appears as if the at least one application is residing on the local system.

41. A system that facilitates remote accessing of computer applications comprising:

means for determining that a local computing system desires access to an application residing on a remote computing system;

means for employing a probabilistic determination analysis in connection with inferring a level of interaction associated with the remote access;

means for transmitting iconic information associated with the application to the local computing system so that the local system initiates the application residing on the remote system upon selection of an icon resulting from the iconic information, the amount of iconic information transmitted being based at least in part on the analysis; and

means for displaying the at least one icon on a display of the local system in a window area of display shared by graphics of the local system such that it appears as if the at least one application resides on the local system.

42. A method to facilitate rendering of iconic data within a remote computing access framework, comprising:

scanning an application residing on a remote system for an associated icon resource group;

collecting icon data from the icon resource group and converting the icon data to a flat memory model;

encoding the converted icon data;

transmitting the encoded icon data to a local system such that the icons are rendered as if the application resides on the local system; and

displaying the icon associated with the encoded icon information at the requesting local system in a shared window area of display with graphics of the local system as if the at least one application is residing on the requesting local system.

43. The method of claim 42, further comprising packaging the encoded icon data as an XML document.