Optimizing page output through run-time reordering of page content

• US 9,483,449 B1
• Filed: 07/30/2010
• Issued: 11/01/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Wood, Jeffrey D., Chakravarthy, Diwakar
• Primary Examiner(s): Baderman, Scott
• Assistant Examiner(s): Cortes, Howard
• Application Number:
  US12/846,949
• Time in Patent Office: 2,286 Days
• Field of Search: 715/234, 715/240
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]

Abstract

Technologies are described herein for optimizing page output by performing run-time reordering of the content of a page. A request for a content page is received from a client application. A page layout corresponding to the requested content page is transmitted to the client application. The page layout contains a number of placeholder elements corresponding to the content sections of the content page arranged in a particular layout. Upon receiving the page layout, the client application renders the content page to the display with the placeholder elements occupying the positions of the content sections. The content sections corresponding to the placeholder elements are generated and transmitted to the client application in an order independent of the order of rendering of the content sections. As the client application receives each content section, the corresponding placeholder element in the page layout is replaced with the content section.

Claims

1. A method for optimizing generation and transmission of content in a content page, the method comprising executing instructions on one or more computers to perform the operations of:

receiving a request for the content page from a user computing device executing a client application;

transmitting a page layout exclusive of content sections as a first portion of an output file representing the content page to the user computing device, wherein the page layout comprises a plurality of placeholder elements arranged in a particular layout, individual ones of the plurality of placeholder elements corresponding to a content section for the content page;

executing a plurality of pagelet modules to generate the content sections in the content page, wherein the plurality of pagelet modules are executed in a priority order defined for the content page based on performance metrics collected from past renderings of the content page and based on whether the content section generated by the corresponding pagelet module will be shown in an initial display of the content page by the client application;

receiving the content sections from one of the plurality of pagelet modules; and

transmitting the content section to the client application as a second portion of the output file representing the content page, wherein the content sections are transmitted to the client application in an order independent of the order of rendering the content sections by the client application in the content page.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the content sections of the content page further comprise scripting-language code configured to cause the client application to call a function operative to replace child elements of the placeholder element in a document object model (“

DOM”

) for the content page with elements comprising the corresponding content section.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the placeholder element comprises a hyper-text markup language (“

HTML”

) DIV tag.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the client application executing on the user computing device is configured to render the content page to a display upon receiving the page layout, and to replace the corresponding layout section defined in the page layout with the content section as each content section is received.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the client application executing on the user computing device is configured to render the content page to a display upon receiving the page layout, and to wait for multiple content sections to be received before replacing the corresponding placeholder elements in the page layout with the multiple content sections.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the page layout further comprises first scripting-language code defining a function utilized by the client application to replace the placeholder elements with the corresponding content sections, and wherein one or more of the content sections further comprises second scripting-language code for executing the function contained in the first scripting-language code.

7. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

receive a request for a Web page from a user computing device;

retrieve a page layout corresponding to the Web page, wherein the page layout comprises hyper-text markup language (“

HTML”

) defining one or more placeholder elements corresponding to layout sections arranged in the Web page, wherein the page layout is exclusive of content sections corresponding to the layout sections in the Web page;

transmit the page layout to the user computing device, wherein the page layout is rendered to a display by a client application executing on the user computing device upon receiving the page layout;

generate content sections corresponding to the layout sections in the Web page in a priority order defined for the Web page, the content section comprising HTML content for the corresponding layout section, wherein the priority order is determined based at least in part on whether the layout section corresponding to the content section will be shown by the client application in an initial display of the Web page; and

transmit the content sections to the user computing device, wherein the client application executing on the user computing device waits for multiple content sections to be received before replacing the corresponding placeholder elements defined by the page layout for the layout sections with the multiple content sections.

8. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the content sections are transmitted to the user computing device in an order independent of the order of rendering by the client application of the corresponding layout sections in the Web page.

9. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the content sections are generated simultaneously on parallel application threads.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the content sections further comprise scripting-language code operative to call a function to replace child elements of the placeholder element corresponding to the layout section in a document object model (“

DOM”

) for the Web page with elements comprising the corresponding content section.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the placeholder element corresponding to a layout section comprises an HTML DIV tag.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the page layout further comprises first scripting-language code defining a function utilized by the client application to replace the placeholder elements with the corresponding content sections, and wherein one or more of the content sections further comprises second scripting-language code for executing the function contained in the first scripting-language code.

13. A system for optimizing generation and transmission of content in a content page, the system comprising:

one or more application servers connected to a user computing device executing a client application via a communications network;

a plurality of pagelet modules executing on the application servers configured to generate content sections for the content page; and

a page module executing on the application servers and configured to

transmit a page layout exclusive of the content sections to the client application as a first portion of an output file representing the content page, wherein the page layout comprises a plurality of placeholder elements arranged in a particular layout, individual ones of the plurality of placeholder elements corresponding to a content section for the content page,

execute the plurality of pagelet modules to generate the content sections in the content page, wherein the plurality of pagelet modules are executed in a priority order defined for the content page based on performance metrics collected from past renderings of the content page and based on whether the content section generated by the corresponding pagelet module will be shown in an initial display of the content page by the client application,

receive the content sections from the plurality of pagelet modules, and

transmit the content sections to the client application over the communications network as a second portion of the output file representing the content page, wherein the content sections are transmitted to the client application in an order independent of the order of rendering the content sections by the client application in the content page.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the client application executing on the user computing device is configured to render the content page to a display upon receiving the page layout, and to replace the corresponding placeholder elements in the page layout with the content section as each content section is received.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the content sections further comprise scripting-language code configured to cause the client application to call a function operative to replace child elements of the corresponding placeholder element in a document object model (“

DOM”

) for the content page with elements comprising the content section upon receiving the content section.

16. The system of claim 13, wherein the client application executing on the user computing device is configured to render the content page to a display upon receiving the page layout, and to wait for multiple content sections to be received before replacing the corresponding placeholder elements in the page layout with the multiple content sections.

17. The system of claim 13, wherein the page layout further comprises first scripting-language code defining a function utilized by the client application to replace the placeholder elements with the corresponding content sections, and wherein one or more of the content sections further comprises second scripting-language code for executing the function contained in the first scripting-language code.

18. The system of claim 13, wherein the placeholder element comprises a hyper-text markup language (“

HTML”

) DIV tag.

19. A method for optimizing generation of content in a content page for transmission to a client application executing on a user computing device, the method comprising executing instructions on one or more computers to perform operations of:

receiving a request for a Web page from the user computing device;

retrieving a page layout corresponding to the Web page, wherein the page layout comprises hyper-text markup language (“

HTML”

) defining a plurality of placeholder elements corresponding to layout sections arranged in the Web page, wherein the page layout is exclusive of content sections corresponding to the layout sections in the Web page;

transmitting the page layout to the user computing device, wherein the page layout is rendered to a display by the client application upon receiving the page layout;

generating content sections corresponding to the layout sections in the Web page in a priority order defined for the Web page, the content section comprising HTML content for the corresponding layout section, wherein the priority order is determined based at least in part on whether the layout section corresponding to the content section will be shown by the client application in an initial display of the Web page; and

transmit the content sections to the client application wherein the client application waits for multiple content sections to be received before replacing the corresponding placeholder elements defined by the page layout for the layout sections with the multiple content sections.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the content sections further comprise scripting-language code configured to cause the client application to call a function operative to replace child elements of the corresponding placeholder element in a document object model (“

DOM”

) for the content page with elements comprising the content section upon receiving the content section.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein the page layout further comprises first scripting-language code defining a function utilized by the client application to replace the placeholder elements with the corresponding content sections, and wherein one or more of the content sections further comprises second scripting-language code for executing the function contained in the first scripting-language code.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein the content sections are received from the pagelet modules and transmitted to the user computing device in an order independent of the order of rendering of the corresponding layout sections defined in the page layout.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein the placeholder element comprises an HTML DIV tag.