System and method for abbreviating information sent to a viewing device

• US 7,302,637 B1
• Filed: 07/24/2000
• Issued: 11/27/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/24/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Malikie Innovations Limited (Key Patent Innovations Limited), Pacific Engineering Corporation (Stantec Incorporated), Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Research In Motion Limited (Blackberry Limited)
• Inventors: Maguire, Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Hong; Stephen
• Assistant Examiner(s): STORK, KYLE R
• Application Number:
  US09/624,285
• Time in Patent Office: 2,682 Days
• Field of Search: 715/517, 715/512, 715/530, 715/514, 715/513, 715/523, 345/744
• US Class Current: 715/261
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0281 Proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/04 specially adapted for terminals or networks with limited capabilities; specially adapted for terminal portability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/2871 Implementation details of single intermediate entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/565 Conversion or adaptation of application format or content adding application control or application functional data H04L67/561
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5651 Reducing the amount or size of exchanged application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/06 Optimizing the usage of the radio link, e.g. header compression, information sizing , discarding information system modifying transmission characteristic according to link quality by modifying frame length H04L1/0007; dynamic adaptation of the packet size for flow control or congestion control H04L47/365
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/10 Flow control between communication endpoints
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/02 Terminal devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/16 Gateway arrangements

Abstract

A system and method for transporting user-requested framed data from a gateway device to a handheld viewing device includes an information source, a gateway device, a relay network and a handheld viewing device. The gateway device includes a fetch and cache component, storage, and a wireless transport layer. The wireless transport layer delivers content from the gateway to the handheld viewing device. The user of the handheld device is then graphically presented with a representative form of the data and is thus able to manually select certain frames of data through a user interface.

Claims

1. A method of providing an information page having a plurality of frames to a handheld viewing device, comprising the steps of:

requesting an information page at the handheld device;

retrieving the information page from a remote system;

generating an abbreviated version of the information page, wherein the abbreviated version includes a graphical representation of the information page and an image map that defines frame locations in the image map in the same relative locations as locations of the plurality of frames within the graphical representation of the information page; and

transmitting the abbreviated version of the information page to the handheld viewing device.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

providing a gateway device for receiving the request from the handheld viewing device and for retrieving the information page from the remote system.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising the steps of:

coupling the gateway device to the handheld viewing device via a wireless network.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising the steps of:

coupling the gateway device to the remote system via a wired network.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the wired network is the Internet, and the remote system is a world-wide-web server.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the information page is a web page.

7. The method of claim 2, wherein the gateway device stores the information page in a cache and generates the abbreviated version thereof including the graphical representation and the image map.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

displaying the graphical representation of the information page at the handheld viewing device;

selecting a portion of the graphical representation;

accessing the image map to determine a frame that corresponds to the portion of the graphical representation selected; and

retrieving a graphical representation of the selected frame and displaying it on the handheld viewing device.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising the steps of:

providing a uniform resource locator (URL) associated with each of the plurality of frames identified by the image map; and

transmitting one of the uniform resource locators to the remote system in response to selecting the portion of the graphical representation.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the graphical representation is a bitmap file.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

prior to the transmitting step, reducing the size of the graphical representation of the information page to match the display characteristics of the handheld viewing device.

12. A system for processing information pages having a plurality of frames using a handheld viewing device, comprising:

a remote system for storing the information pages; and

a gateway device coupling the remote system to the handheld viewing device, wherein the gateway device responds to a request for an information page from the handheld viewing device and retrieves the requested information page from the remote system, and wherein the gateway device generates an abbreviated version of the information page, the abbreviated version including a graphical representation of the information page and an image map that identifies frame locations in the image map in the same relative locations as the locations of the plurality of frames within the graphical representation of the information page, and transmits the abbreviated version of the information page to the handheld device.

13. The system of claim 12, further comprising a wireless network coupling the gateway device to the handheld viewing device.

14. The system of claim 12, further comprising a wired network coupling the gateway device to the remote system.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the wired network is the Internet and the remote system is a world-wide-web server.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the information page is a web page.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein the gateway device includes a cache memory for storing previously requested information pages and for storing the abbreviated versions thereof.

18. The system of claim 12, wherein the handheld viewing device is operable to display the graphical representation of the information page and to receive a selection of a portion of the graphical representation, and wherein in response to the selection of the portion, the handheld viewing device is operable to access the image map to determine a frame that corresponds to the selected portion and to retrieve a graphical representation of the selected frame from the gateway device.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein a uniform resource locator (URL) is associated with each of the plurality of frames identified by the image map and the handheld viewing device transmits one of the URLs to the remote system in response to selecting the portion of the graphical representation.

20. The system of claim 12, wherein the graphical representation is a bitmap file.

21. The system of claim 12, wherein the gateway device reduces the size of the graphical representation of the information page to match the display characteristics of the handheld viewing device.

22. A mobile communication device for processing remotely-stored information pages, comprising:

a transmitter for transmitting an information page request to a remote system where the information page is stored;

a receiver for receiving an abbreviated version of the information page in response to the information page request; and

a processor for processing the abbreviated version of the information page, the abbreviated version of the information page including a graphical representation of the information page and an image map the identifies frame locations in the image map in the same relative locations as the locations of a plurality of frames within the graphical representation of the information page.

23. The mobile communication device of claim 22, wherein the transmitter transmits the information page request to the remote system via a gateway device that receives the information page request from the mobile communication device and forwards it to the remote system, and in response thereto, the gateway device receives the requested information page from the remote device.

24. The mobile communication device of claim 23, wherein the abbreviated version of the information page received at the receiver is generated at the gateway device.

25. The mobile communication device of claim 22, wherein the transmitter and the receiver communicate via a wireless communication network.

26. The mobile communication device of claim 22, further comprising:

a display for displaying the graphical representation of the information page; and

a selector for selecting a portion of the graphical representation;

wherein the processor processes the information page by receiving a selection signal from the selector and accessing the image map to determine a frame that corresponds to the portion of the graphical representation selected.

27. The mobile communication device of claim 26, wherein the processor retrieves a graphical representation of the selected from and displays it.