Bandwidth reduction through delivery of hardware-independent graphics commands for portions of content pages

• US 9,563,928 B1
• Filed: 05/22/2014
• Issued: 02/07/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/22/2014
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sokolowski, Dmitry, Jain, Saral
• Primary Examiner(s): Chin, Michelle
• Application Number:
  US14/285,531
• Time in Patent Office: 992 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/20 Processor architectures; Processor configuration, e.g. pipelining

Abstract

Server systems are disclosed that receive content request and respond with hardware-independent graphics commands instead of, or in addition to, unprocessed content items. Some server systems may act as intermediaries between user devices and content sources. The server systems can obtain content pages from content sources, process the content pages (e.g., using a headless browser), and provide hardware-independent graphics commands (e.g., vector graphics commands, that do not require specialized graphics hardware for execution) to user devices in response to requests for content. The hardware-independent graphics commands can be executed by client browsers to generate a representation of the content page that is the same or substantially the same as the representation that would have been generated by processing the content pages locally. A user device in receipt of such hardware-independent graphics commands can execute them without performing traditional content page processing, thereby improving user-perceived page load times.

Claims

1. A system configured to act as an intermediary between user devices and content servers, the system comprising one or more computing devices, wherein the system is programmed to at least:

segment a content page into at least a first layer and a second layer, wherein the first layer corresponds to a different visual portion of the content page than the second layer, and wherein the content page comprises network resources obtained from one or more content servers;

generate a first set of hardware-independent graphics commands operative to cause display of a representation of the first layer, and a second set of hardware-independent graphics commands operative to cause display of a representation of the second layer;

provide the first and second sets of hardware-independent graphics commands to a user device in response to a request for the content page;

obtain, from the user device, interaction data regarding a user interaction with at least a portion of the representation of the first layer;

generate a first updated set of hardware-independent graphics commands, wherein the first updated set of hardware-independent graphics commands are operative to cause display of an updated representation of the first layer, and wherein the user device does not receive the content page; and

transmit a response comprising the first updated set of hardware-independent graphic commands to the user device, wherein the response does not comprise hardware-independent graphics commands operative to cause display of an updated representation of the second layer.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the hardware-independent graphics commands comprise software abstraction layer commands that are graphics processing unit-specific.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the hardware-independent graphics commands comprise graphics library commands.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more computing devices are further programmed to at least:

perform an operation to an instance of the content page maintained by an application executing on one or more of the one or more computing devices, the operation corresponding to the user interaction; and

generate the first updated set of hardware-independent graphics commands in response to determining that operation caused a change to the visual portion of the instance of the content page corresponding to the first layer.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more computing devices are further programmed to at least segment the content page based on a set of segmentation rules.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein at least one of the set of segmentation rules relates to a render tree node of the content page.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the at least one segmentation rule relates to the render tree node comprising at least one of:

a graphic transform, an image, a video, a canvass, a plugin, an animation, a filter, an interactive control, a child node that has been segmented into its own layer, or a sibling node that has been segmented into its own layer.

8. A computer-implemented method comprising:

as implemented by one or more server computing devices configured to execute specific instructions,

executing a server browser instance comprising a processed version of a content page currently displayed by a client browser instance executing remotely from the one or more server computing devices;

determining that a first visual portion of the processed version of the content page has changed, wherein at least a second visual portion of the processed version of the content page has not changed;

generating hardware-independent graphics commands operative to cause display of an updated representation of the first visual portion, wherein the hardware-independent graphics commands cause display of the updated representation when executed by the client browser instance without the client browser instance first receiving the content page, and wherein the updated representation corresponds to the determined change; and

providing the hardware-independent graphics commands to the client browser instance without providing hardware-independent graphics commands operative to cause display of an updated representation of the second visual portion when executed by the client browser instance.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, further comprising receiving, from the client browser instance, synchronization data reflecting a user interaction with the representation of the content page at the client browser instance.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, further comprising performing an operation to the processed version of the content page executing at the server browser instance, the operation corresponding to the user interaction.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, wherein the first visual portion of the content page is determined to have changed in response to performing the operation corresponding to the user interaction.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the first visual portion of the content page is determined to have changed without user intervention.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, further comprising segmenting the content page into at least the first visual portion and the second visual portion based at least partly on a set of segmentation rules.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein at least one of the set of segmentation rules relates to a render tree node of the content page.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 14, wherein the at least one segmentation rule relates to the render tree node comprising at least one of:

a graphic transform, an image, a video, a canvass, a plugin, an animation, a filter, an interactive control, a child node that has been segmented into its own layer, or a sibling node that has been segmented into its own layer.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein at least one of the one or more server computing devices comprise an origin server of the content page.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the one or more server computing devices are part of a system that acts as an intermediary between user devices and content servers.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the hardware-independent graphics commands comprise software abstraction layer commands that are not graphics processing unit-specific.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the hardware-independent graphics commands comprise graphics library commands.

20. Non-transitory computer storage having stored thereon a browser module configured to execute a process on a user computing device, the process comprising:

displaying a representation of a content page, wherein the representation is a composite of at least a first visual portion and a section visual portion that is different than the first visual portion;

receiving, subsequent to displaying the representation of the content page, hardware-independent graphics commands from a server system, the high level graphics commands corresponding to the first portion; and

executing the hardware-independent graphics commands, wherein executing the hardware-independent graphics commands causes display of an updated representation of the first visual portion without first receiving the content page, and wherein the representation of the second visual portion is not updated subsequent to displaying the representation of the content page.

21. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 20, wherein the browser module comprises one of:

an application;

a browser plug-in, or a browser extension.

22. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 20, wherein the user computing device does not comprise specialized graphics processing hardware.

23. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 20, wherein the hardware-independent graphics commands comprise software abstraction layer commands that are not graphics processing unit-specific.

24. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 20, wherein

the hardware-independent graphics commands comprise graphics library commands.

25. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 20, the process further comprising transmitting, to the server system, synchronization data regarding a user interaction with the representation of the content page.