Small form factor web browsing

• US 9,483,577 B2
• Filed: 09/12/2011
• Issued: 11/01/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 11/27/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Chen, Yu, Zhang, Hong-Jiang, Ma, Wei-Ying, Wang, Ming-Yu
• Primary Examiner(s): HONG, STEPHEN S
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ludwig, Matthew
• Application Number:
  US13/230,513
• Publication Number:
  US 20120005565A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,877 Days
• Field of Search: 715/205, 715/238, 715/234, 715/243, 715/246, 715/252
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

A large web page is analyzed and partitioned into smaller sub-pages so that a user can navigate the web page on a small form factor device. The user can browse the sub-pages to find and read information in the content of the large web page. The partitioning can be performed at a web server, an edge server, at the small form factor device, or can be distributed across one or more such devices. The analysis leverages design habits of a web page author to extract a representation structure of an authored web page. The extracted representation structure includes high level structure using several markup language tag selection rules and low level structure using visual boundary detection in which visual units of the low level structure are provided by clustering markup language tags. User viewing habits can be learned to display favorite parts of a web page.

Claims

1. A computer to adapt web content for display on a small form factor device having a display screen with a width, the computer comprising:

a high level structure analysis module executed on one or more processors to receive a web page and to analyze a markup language tag tree of a markup language document representing the web page to identify;

peripheral regions of the web page including a header, a footer, a left, and a right regions; and

body regions enclosed by the peripheral regions;

a low level structure analysis module executed on the one or more processors to analyze the markup language tag tree defining the peripheral regions and the body regions to;

identify visual boundaries from analyzing properties of tags of the markup language tag tree;

detect patterns in leaf markup language tags to find one or more basic semantic units each having a shape;

project the shape of each basic semantic unit normal to perpendicular axes; and

identify the visual boundaries of the web page based on projection values for each axis.

2. The computer according to claim 1, further comprising a logical block analysis module executed on the one or more processors to identify logical blocks that are adjacent to the identified visual boundaries, such that the logical blocks are a function of a semantic structure of the markup language document representing the web page, the logical blocks are within the peripheral regions and the body regions and are from corresponding tags of the markup language tag tree.

3. The computer according to claim 2, further comprising a content adaptation module executed on the one or more processors to:

partition the visual boundaries and the logical blocks within the peripheral regions and the body regions into a plurality of sub-pages, each sub-page containing a hierarchy of the logical blocks and having a width not greater than the width of the display screen of the small form factor device, each logical block being the function of the semantic structure of the markup language document representing the web page, wherein the hierarchy of the logical blocks of each sub-page does not correspond to one tree tag of the markup language;

form a thumbnail image of the web page having partitions corresponding to the plurality of sub-pages; and

form a hyperlink to a sub-page from a corresponding partition of the thumbnail image of the web page.

4. The computer according to claim 3, further comprising a storage module executed on the one or more processors to store content in a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) document in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file such that the content of the HTML document corresponds to:

the logical blocks within the peripheral regions and the body regions;

the visual boundaries;

the thumbnail image of the web page having partitions corresponding to the plurality of sub-pages;

the hyperlink to the sub-page based on the corresponding partition of the thumbnail image of the web page; and

a correspondence between the content in the HTML document and a respective place of each of the one or more logical blocks in the hierarchy of each sub-page indicated by;

an XPath; and

an XPointer.

5. The computer according to claim 4, further comprising a style module executed on the one or more processors to extract style information from the HTML document of the web page for inclusion in the sub-page.

6. The computer according to claim 1, wherein the markup language document is a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) document.

7. A server comprising:

a memory;

a processor coupled to the memory configured to communicate with a small form factor client device having a display screen through a network, for performing acts comprising;

using a markup language tag tree of a web page to extract regions of the web page including a header, a footer, a left, and a right side bar regions, and one or more body regions adjacent to the header, the footer, the left, and the right side bar regions;

identifying visual boundaries within the header, the footer, the left, and the right side bar regions by;

analyzing properties of tags of the markup language tag tree;

grouping one or more objects associated with the header, the footer, the left, and the right side bar regions into a shape;

projecting the shape normal to an axis so that the shape is represented by one or more semantic units of tags of the markup language tag tree in each region; and

determining additional visual boundaries from projection values for the axis; and

identifying a plurality of sub-pages of the web page using the identified visual boundaries and the header, the footer, the left, and the right side bar regions, where each sub-page has a width not greater than a predetermined width of the display screen.

8. The server according to claim 7, the acts further comprising:

forming a thumbnail image of the web page having;

a width not greater than the predetermined width of the display screen of the small form factor client device;

partitions corresponding to the plurality of sub-pages;

forming hyperlinks to each sub-page from a corresponding partition of the thumbnail image of the web page; and

storing the plurality of sub-pages of the web page, the thumbnail image, and the hyperlinks using an annotation mechanism.

9. The server according to claim 8, the acts further comprising:

extracting style information from the markup language tag tree of the web page to include content into each sub-page; and

processing the extracted style information for inclusion into each sub-page.

10. The server according to claim 8, the acts further comprising:

receiving a request for the web page from the small form factor client device; and

transmitting a transmission to the small form factor client device over the network that includes at least one of;

the thumbnail image of the web page;

or

one of the plurality of sub-pages.

11. The server according to claim 10, the acts further comprising in response to the request for the web page from the small form factor client device, presenting the thumbnail image of the web page to be displayed on a screen of the small form factor client device.

12. The server according to claim 10, the acts further comprising in response to the transmitting the one of the plurality of sub-pages, sending a hyperlink that corresponds to the one of the plurality of sub-pages to the small form factor client device.

13. The server according to claim 10, the acts further comprising:

receiving the request for the sub-page of the web page from the small form factor client device;

retrieving the requested sub-page from the plurality of sub-pages stored in a database; and

transmitting the requested sub-page to the small form factor client device over the network.

14. The server according to claim 10, wherein the transmitting the transmission to the small form factor client device over the network comprises selecting content for the transmission based upon prior requests received from the small form factor client device.

15. A method implemented at least in part by a processor, the method comprising:

partitioning a markup language document representing a web page into a plurality of sub-pages;

deriving from the markup language document of the web page a hierarchy of one or more logical blocks for each sub-page, such that;

each logical block of each sub-page is a function of a semantic structure of the markup language document; and

the hierarchy of the one or more logical blocks of each sub-page does not correspond to one markup language tree tag;

generating a thumbnail image of the web page having partitions corresponding to the plurality of sub-pages; and

associating a hyperlink to a sub-page from a corresponding partition of the thumbnail image of the web page.

16. The method according to claim 15, further comprising storing content in a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) document, the content of the HTML document includes:

the plurality of sub-pages;

the hierarchy of the one or more logical blocks for each sub-page;

the thumbnail image of the web page having partitions corresponding to the plurality of sub-pages; and

the hyperlink to the sub-page from the corresponding partition of the thumbnail image of the web page.

17. The method according to claim 16, further comprising storing correspondence between the content in the HTML document and a respective place of each of the one or more logical blocks in the hierarchy of each sub-page.

18. The method according to claim 15, wherein the thumbnail image of the web page has a width not greater than a predetermined number of pixels.

19. The method according to claim 15, wherein each sub-page has a width less than a predetermined number of pixels.

20. The method according to claim 15, wherein each sub-page includes:

corresponding style information for corresponding content;

hyperlinks to locations within the sub-page, such as intra-sub-page hyperlinks; and

hyperlinks to locations on a different sub-page, such as inter-sub-page hyperlinks.