Sequential digital image panning

• US 8,824,806 B1
• Filed: 03/02/2010
• Issued: 09/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/02/2010
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Gayles, Edward J., Kejriwal, Parmanand P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hung, Yubin
• Application Number:
  US12/715,919
• Time in Patent Office: 1,645 Days
• Field of Search: 382/176, 382/180, 382/199, 382257-259
• US Class Current: 382/199
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/163 Handling of whitespace

Abstract

Content portions to be presented on a display of an electronic device are identified by designating portions of a digital image as content regions and other portions of the digital image as non-content regions. The content portions are then identified from within the content region, in which each content portion has a predetermined width. Each content portion is then expanded to produce an expanded content portion. Each expanded content portion is presented on a display of an electronic device in a sequential manner.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method, comprising:

under control of one or more computing systems configured with executable instructions,

designating at least a portion of a digital image as a content region and at least another portion of the digital image as a non-content region;

determining a content portion width based at least in part on a width of the digital image and a magnification factor;

identifying a plurality of content portions that include text from the content region based at least in part on the content portion width;

determining word divisions within text content in a content portion of the plurality of content portions;

altering a boundary of the content portion to decrease the determined content portion width and terminate the boundary of the content portion at one of the word divisions to exclude at least one extraneous character from an adjacent word of the text content;

expanding the plurality of content portions for display based at least in part on the magnification factor; and

providing the expanded plurality of content portions for display on an electronic book reader device in a sequential manner.

2. A computer implemented method, comprising:

under control of one or more computing systems configured with executable instructions,

designating at least a portion of a digital image as a content region and at least another portion of the digital image as a non-content region;

determining a content portion width based at least in part on a width of the digital image and a magnification factor;

identifying a plurality of content portions from each content region based at least in part on the content portion width, the plurality of content portions including text;

determining word divisions within text content in a content portion of a plurality of content portions;

altering a boundary of the content portion to decrease the determined content portion width and terminate the boundary of the content portion at one of the word divisions to exclude at least one extraneous character from an adjacent word of the text content; and

expanding the plurality of content portions for display based on the magnification factor.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the designating includes designating at least a portion of the digital image as the content region that includes a plurality of content columns.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the identifying of the plurality of content portions from each content region further comprises identifying content having a width approximately equal to the content portion width.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the designating comprises:

detecting at least one non-background color pixel in a first line of pixels of the digital image;

designating the first line of pixels that includes the at least one non-background color pixel as a portion of the content region;

detecting each pixel in a second line of pixels of the digital image as a background color pixel; and

designating the second line of pixels as a portion of the non-content region.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 5, wherein the detecting the at least one non-background color pixel includes eliminating an artifact via a color validation check or a density check.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the determining the content portion width includes dividing the width of the digital image by a square root of the magnification factor.

8. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the expanding includes multiplying the content portion width and a height of each content portion by a square root of the magnification factor.

9. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the expanding includes expanding each content portion so that a width of each content portion is equivalent to the width of the digital image.

10. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the expanding includes expanding the digital image that includes the plurality of content portions based at least in part on the magnification factor.

11. The computer implemented method of claim 2, further comprising:

determining word divisions within additional text content of an additional content portion; and

shifting a boundary of the additional content portion to terminate the boundary of the additional content portion at one of the word divisions preceding the boundary to exclude at least one extraneous character from an adjacent word of the additional text content.

12. The computer implemented method of claim 2, further comprising identifying an additional content portion having a width that is less than the content portion width from an end of the content region.

13. The computer implemented method of claim 2, further comprising providing the plurality of content portions for display on an electronic device.

14. The computer implemented method of claim 13, wherein the presenting includes expanding at least one content portion based on a ratio between a width of the display and a height of a display of an electronic device.

15. A computer readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform acts comprising:

designating at least a portion of a digital image as a content region and at least another portion of the digital image as a non-content region;

identifying a plurality of content portions having a predetermined width from each content region, the plurality of content portions including text;

determining word divisions within text content in a content portion of the plurality of content portions;

shifting a boundary of the content portion to terminate the boundary of the content portion at one of the word divisions preceding the boundary to exclude at least one extraneous character from an adjacent word of the text content; and

expanding the digital image that includes the plurality of content portions to produce a plurality of expanded content portions for display.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the designating includes designating at least a portion of the digital image as the content region that includes a plurality of content columns.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the designating comprises:

detecting at least one non-background color pixel in a first line of pixels of the digital image;

designating the first line of pixels that includes the at least one non-background color pixel as a portion of the content region;

detecting each pixel in a second line of pixels as a background color pixel; and

designating the second line of pixels as a portion of the non-content region.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 17, wherein the detecting the at least one non-background color pixel includes eliminating an artifact via a color validation check or a density check.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein the eliminating of the artifact comprises performing the color validation check, and wherein the performing of the color validation check comprises determining that the non-background pixel is part of the content region when a color of the non-background pixel matches or is within a predetermined deviation range of a dominant color of the digital image.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein the eliminating of the artifact comprises performing the density check, and wherein the performing of the density check comprises determining that the non-background pixel is part of the content region when a quantity of additional non-background pixels within a predetermined distance of the non-background pixel meets or exceeds a predetermined threshold.

21. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the expanding includes expanding a particular content portion so that a width of the particular content portion following expansion is greater than the predetermined width.

22. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the predetermined width is determined as a proportion of a width of the display of an electronic device.

23. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising:

determining additional word divisions within additional text content of an additional content portion; and

altering a boundary of the additional content portion to decrease a width of the additional content portion and terminate the boundary of the additional content portion at one of the additional word divisions to exclude at least one extraneous character from an adjacent word of the additional text content.

24. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising identifying a content portion having a width that is less than the predetermined width from an end of the content region.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the identifying includes identifying each content portion in response to an activation of a user control.

26. The computer readable medium of claim 15, further comprising providing the plurality of expanded content portions for display on an electronic device.

27. The computer readable medium of claim 26, wherein the presenting includes presenting the at least one content portion at a substantially vertically centered location on a display of the electronic device.

28. The computer readable medium of claim 26, wherein the presenting includes reorienting at least one expanded content portion from an original orientation to an orientation that is perpendicular to the original orientation.

29. A device comprising:

a processor; and

memory storing modules executable by the processor, the modules comprising;

a content detection module to designate at least a portion of a digital image as a content region and at least another portion of the digital image as a non-content region, the content region including one or more lines of text;

a user interface module to receive content display commands inputted via user controls; and

a content expansion module to identify a plurality of content portions from a content region based at least in part on a predetermined width, determine word divisions within text content of a content portion, alter or shift a boundary of the content portion to decrease the predetermined width of the content portion at one of the word divisions to exclude at least one extraneous character from an adjacent word of the text content, and expand the plurality of content portions for display.

30. The device of claim 29, further comprising a display module to sequentially present the plurality of expanded content portions at a substantially vertically centered location on a display of an electronic device.

31. The device of claim 29, wherein the content detection module is to further designate the content region as including a plurality of content columns.

32. The device of claim 29, wherein the content detection module is to designate the content region and the non-content region by:

detecting at least one non-background color pixel in a first line of pixels of the digital image;

designating the first line of pixels that includes the at least one non-background color pixel as a portion of the content region;

detecting each pixel in a second line of pixels of the digital image as a background color pixel; and

designating the second line of pixels as a portion of the at least one non-content region.

33. The device of claim 32, wherein the content detection module is to detect at least one non-background color pixel in a first line of pixels by eliminating an artifact via a color validation check or a density check.

34. The device of claim 29, wherein the modules further comprises a data cache module to store at least one of one or more identified content portions or one or more expanded content portions.

35. The device of claim 29, wherein the content expansion module is to further identify a content portion having a width that is less than the predetermined width from an end of the at least one content region.

36. The device of claim 29, wherein the content expansion module is to identify the plurality of content portions at least partly in response to receiving a display command via the users controls from the user interface module.

37. The device of claim 29, wherein the content expansion module is to expand the plurality of content portions for display without reformatting lines ends of the one or more lines of text in the content region.