DYNAMIC IMAGE MAP AND GRAPHICS FOR RENDERING MOBILE WEB APPLICATION INTERFACES

• US 20090288019A1
• Filed: 05/15/2008
• Published: 11/19/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Tunning, Brian
• Application Number:
  US12/121,780
• Publication Number:
  US 20090288019A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/760
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A method and system of generating a graphic display. Initially, a background image is displayed. One or more image containers that specify areas overlaying the background image are defined. Images to be rendered in these image containers are requested from a server. The server dynamically generates the images and transmits them to the client device.

Claims

1. A method of generating a graphic display comprising:

displaying a background image;

defining one or more image containers that specify areas overlaying the background image;

requesting images for each of the image containers from a server;

displaying the images in their respective image containers.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

the server dynamically generating the image in response to a request from a client device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the area in the image is defined by an image map.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

defining at least one area in an image, which when selected by a user, causes user information to be displayed.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

caching the images in a local memory.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

associating a particular image with a particular image container by an identifier.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the identifier comprises a source attribute and changing the source attribute of an image container results in a new image being displayed in that image container.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the graphic display is rendered on a web browser running on a mobile client device.

9. A method of rendering a web page, comprising:

dividing the web page into a plurality of sections, each of the plurality of sections having an identifier that specifies a particular image;

requesting images from a server for the plurality of sections according to identifiers associated with the plurality of sections;

changing an appearance of the graphic display by changing at least one of the identifiers for one of the sections in response to a user input.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

displaying a background image corresponding to an application corresponding to the web page.

11. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

defining separate areas within an image, wherein a first area is inactive and a second area is responsive to user input.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein clicking on the second area causes the web page to display user information.

13. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

dynamically generating the images when the images are to be rendered for display on the web page.

14. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

reading an image from a local memory.

15. The method of claim 9, wherein the web page corresponds to a web based calendar application.

16. A mobile computing device, comprising:

a display for displaying a user interface that comprises a background and a plurality of images overlaying designated sections of the background image;

a processor coupled to the display that requests the plurality of images from a server device;

a memory coupled to the processor that stores information identifying which image is to be displayed in which of the designated sections.

17. The mobile computing device of claim 16 further comprising:

a user input device coupled to the processor, wherein a user can click on a highlighted area of an image to obtain user data.

18. The mobile computing device of claim 16, wherein the memory stores an image map that identifies the highlighted area.

19. The mobile computer device of claim 16 further comprising a cache memory coupled to the processor, the cache memory used to store images.

20. The mobile computing device of claim 16, wherein the requests cause a remote server device to dynamically generate the images on demand.