Concealing latency in display of pages

• US 9,503,499 B1
• Filed: 03/07/2013
• Issued: 11/22/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Donaldson, Jesse Earl
• Primary Examiner(s): Khan, Aftab N.
• Application Number:
  US13/788,510
• Time in Patent Office: 1,356 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5681 Pre-fetching or pre-delivering data based on network characteristics
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5682 Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data

Abstract

Content logic in a web browser receives a request to load a web page in the web browser and determines whether a cached copy of the web page is available in a browser cache. If the cached copy is available, the content logic loads the cached copy of the web page in the web browser. While the cached copy of the web page is loaded, the content logic sends a request to a web server hosting the web page for updated content associated with the web page. If updated content is received from the web server, the content logic removes stale content from the cached copy of the web page and loads the updated content in the web browser.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a processing device, a request to load a web page into a web browser;

determining, by the processing device, that a cached copy of the web page is available in a browser cache;

begin loading, by the processing device, the cached copy of the web page into the web browser prior to requesting updated content from a web server hosting the web page when an age of the cached copy is less than an age threshold value;

while the cached copy of the web page is loading, sending, by the processing device, a request to the web server for the updated content;

receiving the updated content from the web server;

causing display, in the web browser, that the updated content is received;

receiving user input representing an indication to display an updated version of the web page comprising the updated content; and

in response to receiving the user input, causing display of the updated version of the web page, without completely reloading the web page, by removing at least one stale content object from the cached copy of the web page and loading at least one updated content object into the web browser for display.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the browser cache to store cached copies of web pages previously loaded in the web browser, and wherein the stale content comprises content in the web page that was updated by the web server after the cached copy was saved in the browser cache.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that the web page is found on an exclusion list comprising a list of web pages for which loading the cached copy from the browser cache is not appropriate;

requesting content for the web page from the web server without loading the cached copy of the web page.

4. A system, comprising:

a memory; and

a processing device, operatively coupled to the memory, the processing device to;

in response to a request to load a web page in a web browser, begin loading a cached copy of the web page prior to retrieving updated content from a web server when an age of the cached copy is less than an age threshold value;

while the cached copy of the web page is loading, retrieve the updated content from the web server; and

once the updated content is retrieved, cause display, in the web browser, that the updated content is retrieved;

receive user input representing an indication to display an updated version of the web page comprising the updated content; and

in response to receiving the user input, cause display of the updated version of the web page, without completely reloading the web page, by removing at least one stale content object from the cached copy of the web page and loading at least one updated content object into the web browser for display.

5. The system of claim 4, the processing device further to:

determine that a cached copy of the web page is available in a browser cache by comparing a uniform resource identifier (URI) of the web page to a list of URIs in the browser cache.

6. The system of claim 4, wherein to retrieve updated content to be displayed in the web page, the processing device to send a request to the web server hosting the web page for the updated content to be displayed in the web page, the request comprising an identifier of the web page and a timestamp value indicating a time when the cached copy of the web page was cached.

7. The system of claim 4, wherein the processing device to determine whether to load the updated content in the web page, without completely reloading the web page, in view of at least one of how many content objects on the web page are updated, what percentage of content objects on the web page are updated, or what type of content objects on the web page are updated.

8. The system of claim 4, wherein in response to the processing device determining not to load the updated content in the web page, without completely reloading the web page, the processing device to completely reload the web page by removing the cached copy and displaying the updated version of the web page.

9. The system of claim 4, the processing device further to:

determine that the web page is found on an exclusion list comprising a list of web pages for which loading the cached copy from a browser cache is not appropriate.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the list of web pages on the exclusion list are determined in view of at least one of an average load time of the web page, how often cached content to be displayed in the web page is stale, which content objects in the web page are updated most frequently, or whether a user has added the web page to the exclusion list.

11. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed, cause a processing device to perform operations comprising:

begin loading, by the processing device, a cached copy of a web page into a web browser prior to receiving updated content from a web server when an age of the cached copy is less than an age threshold value;

receiving, by the processing device from the web server, the updated content;

causing display in the web browser, by the processing device, that the updated content is available;

receiving, by the processing device, user input representing an indication to display an updated version of the web page comprising the updated content; and

in response to receiving the user input, causing display, by the processing device, the updated version of the web page, without completely reloading the web page, by removing at least one stale content object from the cached copy of the web page from the web browser and loading at least one updated content object into the web browser for display.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, the operations further comprising:

causing display of the cached copy of the web page in response to receiving a request to load the web page, wherein the cached copy was stored in a browser cache when the web page was previously loaded in the web browser.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, the operations further comprising:

receiving the updated content to be displayed in the web page in response to a request issued to the web server while the cached copy of the web page was loading.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, further comprising causing display of notification bar in the web browser, the notification bar comprising one or more user input buttons to receive user input indicating whether to transition from the cached copy of the web page to the updated version.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 14, the operations further comprising:

in response to the user input indicating not to transition to the updated version of the web page, continuing to display the cached copy of the web page.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, the operations further comprising:

copying user information input into an input field in the cached copy of the web page;

storing the user information in an internal data store; and

pasting the user information from the internal data store back into the input field in the updated version of the web page.