MESSAGING STICKER APPLICATIONS

• US 20170357415A1
• Filed: 12/22/2016
• Published: 12/14/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Peterson, Adele C., SARMA, Bhaskar P., Lindeman, Kevin J., GARCIA, Roberto, CARTER, David Alex, THIRUMALAI, Gokul
• Granted Patent: US 10,534,533 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2203/04803 Split screen, i.e. subdividing the display area or the window area into separate subareas
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04845 for image manipulation, e.g. dragging, rotation, expansion or change of colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0486 Drag-and-drop
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04886 by partitioning the display area of the touch-screen or the surface of the digitising tablet into independently controllable areas, e.g. virtual keyboards or menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/54 Interprogram communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/046 Interoperability with other network applications or services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/063 Content adaptation, e.g. replacement of unsuitable content
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/10 Multimedia information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/18 Commands or executable codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/216 Handling conversation history, e.g. grouping of messages in sessions or threads
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]

Abstract

A messaging system in one embodiment includes a messaging app and one or more sticker extension apps configured to create a sticker image and render a sticker image that is displayed in a view hosted by the messaging app. The messaging app can launch, from a browsable view that includes one or more sticker extension apps, one or more of the sticker extension apps, and a sticker image created by one of the sticker extension apps can be communicated between the sticker extension app and the messaging app through an interprocess communication.

Claims

1. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing executable program instructions which when executed by a data processing system cause the data processing system to perform a method comprising:

receiving a selection, to create a sticker image, within a user interface view of a sticker application (app) hosted by a messaging app;

receiving one or more user inputs which specify changes to the selected sticker image, the one or more user inputs defining image metadata;

communicating the sticker image and the image metadata to a first messaging app through an interprocess communication between the sticker app and the first messaging app;

uploading, by the first messaging app, the sticker image, a message and the image metadata to one or more messaging servers for delivery of the message and the sticker image and the image metadata to a receiving device;

receiving and storing by the first messaging app, a token from the one or more messaging servers, the token representing the sticker image;

sending, by the first messaging app in response to a subsequent request to send the sticker image, the token to the one or more messaging servers without sending the sticker image again.

2. The medium as in claim 1, the method further comprising:

displaying, by the sticker application in a view hosted by the first messaging app, a set of sticker images, each selectable by a user to associate with a message in a message bubble in a message transcript view of the first messaging app.

3. The medium as in claim 2, wherein the user associates a sticker image with a message bubble by dragging the sticker image onto the message bubble.

4. The medium as in claim 1 wherein the image metadata comprises one or more of:

(a) scaling data to vary a size of the sticker image;

(b) rotation data to vary a rotation data of the sticker image;

(c) location of the sticker image on the message in the message bubble;

or (d) other image modification data.

5. The medium as in claim 4 wherein an amount of data of the sticker image is constrained to remain below a predetermined limit.

6. The medium as in claim 5 wherein the first messaging app displays the sticker image on the message in a message transcript within a view of the first messaging app, wherein a size and rotation and location of the sticker image on the message is specified by the image metadata, and wherein the first messaging app encrypts the sticker image for each receiving device to generate multiple encrypted sticker images when the message is sent to multiple receiving devices.

8. The medium as in claim 1, the method further comprising:

receiving a time-to-live (TTL) value of the token from the one or more messaging servers, the TTL value being refreshed at the first messaging app and at the one or more servers in response to the subsequent request to send the sticker image.

9. The medium as in claim 1, the method further comprising:

determining, by the first messaging app from data about a receiving device, that a second messaging app on the receiving device Is not compatible with the sticker app;

sending, by the first messaging app, alternative content to the receiving device in response to determining the second messaging app is not compatible with the sticker app.

7. (canceled)

10. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing executable program instructions which when executed by a data processing system cause the data processing system to perform a method comprising:

receiving, by a first messaging application (app) on a first device, a message and a token and associated metadata, which comprises image metadata, from a second device, the token referring to a sticker image created by a second sticker extension app that operated with a second messaging app on the second device, the first and the second messaging apps are each configured to transmit Short Message Service (SMS) text messages and other content and display the text messages in a message transcript;

sending, by the first messaging app, the token to one or more messaging servers to obtain the sticker image;

receiving, by the first messaging app, the sticker image in response to sending the token and generating a final image by applying the image metadata to the sticker image;

displaying, by the first messaging app, the final image on or near a message bubble containing the message.

11. The medium as in claim 10 wherein the method further comprises:

communicating, by the first messaging app, the sticker image and image metadata to a first sticker extension app identified by an app identifier contained in the associated metadata, the sticker image and the image metadata being communicated from the first messaging app to the first sticker extension app through an interprocess communication (IPC);

generating, by the first sticker extension app, the final image by applying the image metadata to the sticker image;

communicating the final image from the first sticker extension app to the first messaging app through an IPC; and

wherein the first messaging app executes in a first process and the first sticker extension app executes in a second process that is distinct from the first process, and wherein the message bubble is identified by a bubble identifier.

12. The medium as in claim 11 wherein the first messaging app receives the sticker image in an encrypted form and decrypts the sticker image and provides the decrypted form of the sticker image to the first sticker extension app through an IPC.

13. The medium as in claim 10 wherein an amount of data of the sticker image is constrained to remain below a predetermined limit.

14. The medium as in claim 10 wherein the image metadata comprises one or more of:

(a) scaling data to vary a size of the sticker image;

(b) rotation data to vary a rotation of the sticker image, or (c) other image modification data.

15. The medium as in claim 14 wherein the first messaging app displays the message bubble in a message transcript within a view of the first messaging app, and wherein a size and rotation of the final image on or near the message bubble is specified by the image metadata.

16. The medium as in claim 10 wherein the first messaging app uses a hash of the sticker image to determine whether the first messaging app already has a copy of the sticker image before sending the token, and wherein the hash is contained in either the associated metadata or the image metadata.

17. The medium as in claim 10, wherein the method further comprises:

launching the first sticker extension app automatically in response to receiving the message, wherein the launching occurs without user action or intervention.

18. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing executable program instructions which when executed by a data processing system cause the data processing system to perform a method comprising:

receiving a plurality of encrypted sticker images for delivery to a plurality of recipients from a first messaging app, each of the plurality of encrypted sticker images representing the same sticker image when decrypted;

creating and transmitting a plurality of tokens to the first messaging app, each of the plurality of tokens assigned for one of the plurality of recipients;

creating a time-to-live (TTL) value for each of the encrypted sticker images and transmitting at least one of the TTL values to the first messaging app;

storing the plurality of encrypted sticker images and the plurality of tokens and the TTL values;

receiving, from the first messaging app, one of the tokens in the plurality of tokens in response to the first messaging app sending the same sticker image to one of the recipients in the plurality of recipients and refreshing the TTL value corresponding to the received token.

19. The medium as in claim 18, the method further comprising:

sending, to a second messaging app on a receiving device, an encrypted sticker image in response to the second messaging app sending one of the tokens in the plurality of tokens, the sent token corresponding to the sent encrypted sticker.

20. The medium as in claim 19, wherein the method is performed by a set of one or more messaging servers, wherein the one or more messaging servers also receive a plurality of encrypted messages, one for each of the plurality of recipients, and wherein the one or more messaging servers store the plurality of encrypted sticker images, the plurality of tokens and the TTL values in a set of one or more databases.

23. The medium as in claim 20, wherein the method further comprises:

receiving, from the first messaging app, metadata associated with the same sticker image and transmitting, to the second messaging app, the metadata, wherein the metadata is at least one of;

(a) a sticker extension app identifier provided by a service from which extension app identifier provided by a service from which extension apps can be downloaded;

or (b) image metadata used by the sticker extension app that operates with the second messaging app to create a modified sticker image.

21. (canceled)

22. (canceled)

24. (canceled)