System and method for pre-loading flyer image tiles and managing memory for same

• US 9,842,378 B2
• Filed: 03/06/2015
• Issued: 12/12/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Flipp Operations Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Flipp Corporation
• Inventors: Charlebois, Erik, Cheung, Matthew, Au-Yeung, David, Francis, Jeff, Meyers, David, Tan, Wehuns
• Primary Examiner(s): Sams, Michelle L
• Application Number:
  US14/640,715
• Publication Number:
  US 20150186954A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,012 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0276 Advertisement creation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/60 Memory management
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20021 Dividing image into blocks, subimages or windows
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/40 Scaling of whole images or parts thereof, e.g. expanding or contracting
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2340/045 Zooming at least part of an image, i.e. enlarging it or shrinking it
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2360/121 using a cache memory
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/006 Details of the interface to the display terminal specific for a display terminal using a CRT G09G1/167; using a flat panel G09G3/2096; circuits for interfacing with colour displays G09G5/04
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/391 Resolution modifying circuits, e.g. variable screen formats

Abstract

In the present disclosure, there is disclosed a communication device including a pre-loading module configured to retrieve a first and a second set of flyer image tiles from a flyer image tile set stored in memory, the first set of flyer image tiles being associated with the most zoomedout state and the second set of flyer image tiles being associated with a zoom level of a current viewport. The pre-loading module is further configured to associate the first set of flyer image tiles with an underlay viewport. The communication device further includes a display configured to display the first set of flyer image tiles in the underlay viewport that are visible in the current viewport and overlay the second set of flyer image tiles visible in the current viewport onto the first set of flyer image tiles.

Claims

1. A method of managing physical memory of an interactive flyer system on a communication device, comprising:

determining that the physical memory requires management;

ordering flyer image tiles stored in the memory in z-order; and

for each top z-order flyer image tile,

determining portion of the flyer image tiles stored in the memory that is covered by the top z-order flyer image tile; and

removing from the physical memory the determined portion of the flyer image tiles to release the memory storing the determined portion of the flyer image tiles.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein determining portion of the flyer image tiles stored in the physical memory that is covered by the top z-order flyer image tile comprises determining intersection between the top z-order flyer image tile and the ordered flyer image tiles.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the flyer image tiles stored in the physical memory are associated with a set of flyer image tiles comprising multiples copies of a tiled flyer image for a plurality of zoom levels based on a flexible zoom ratio.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein determining that the physical memory requires management comprises determining that a trigger condition has been satisfied.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the trigger condition being is based on a predetermined memory capacity threshold, or a predetermined elapsed time since last memory management, or both.