System and method for integrating a document into a desktop window on a client computer

• US 6,216,141 B1
• Filed: 12/06/1996
• Issued: 04/10/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Martineau, Teresa Anne, Straub, Eric John, Isaac, Steven Alfred, Jakstadt, Eric George
• Primary Examiner(s): Hong, Stephen S.
• Assistant Examiner(s): HUYNH, CONG LAC T
• Application Number:
  US08/760,931
• Time in Patent Office: 1,586 Days
• Field of Search: 707/513, 707/514, 707/515, 707/501, 395/200.33, 395/200.36, 395/200.48, 395/200.67, 395/107.01, 395/158, 709/203, 345/335
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/543 User-generated data transfer, e.g. clipboards, dynamic data exchange [DDE], object linking and embedding [OLE]

Abstract

A system and method for displaying a rich multimedia document in the same window as a desktop window. In one aspect of the invention a client computer connects to a computer network, such as the Internet, and retrieves a channel guide or list of content providers from which a user can select one or more content providers. The client computer retrieves a document associated with a content provider selected from the channel guide. The document is integrated into the desktop window on the client computer. The document received may be an HTML document including hyperlinks for allowing a user to jump to another document (e.g., folder, FTP site, other HTML documents, etc.) associated with the hyperlink.

Claims

1. A method for displaying a document in a desktop window on a client computer, the method comprising the steps of:

connecting to a computer network from the client computer, the computer network having a plurality of server computers associated with a plurality of content providers;

retrieving a channel guide including a list of content providers from the computer network for allowing a user to select and deselect two or more content providers and stories associated with the content providers, wherein the channel guide remains displayed after the user selects a content provider so that the user can select multiple content providers from the channel guide and the multiple selected content providers remain selected at the same time;

storing the selections that the user made from the channel guide including which stories the user selected;

reading the stored selections and obtaining an address associated with a selected content provider;

retrieving the stored selections including the stories selected in the channel guide; and

integrating the retrieved stories into the desktop window so that the stories and the desktop window are displayed in the same window.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the desktop window includes a first pane for displaying the first document, and a second pane for displaying desktop icons unrelated to the first document.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the first and second panes of the desktop window are not minimizable.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the first document is a hypertext document and the first pane of the desktop window includes a hypertext document viewer for displaying the first document.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the desktop window provides for navigation controls, and the method further comprises:

replacing the first document with a second document received from a content provider in the channel guide and scanning through the first and second documents using the navigation controls.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the navigation controls include fast forward and reverse and wherein selecting the navigation controls allows the user to view content associated with the stored selections from the channel guide.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the first document includes a hyperlink referencing a second document and the method further comprising jumping to the second document upon selection of the hyperlink.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the desktop window is in a windowing environment supporting a plurality of windows displayed on the client computer according to a front-to-back order, wherein windows in the front of the order overlap windows further back in the order, and wherein the desktop window permanently remains the back-most window in the order.

9. The method of claim 1 further including connecting the client computer to a first server computer on the computer network, retrieving the channel guide from the first server computer, selecting a content provider from the channel guide, connecting the client computer to a second server associated with the selected content provider and retrieving a documents preferences listing page relating to documents available for the selected content provider from the second server computer.

10. The method of claim 1 including providing a user-preference storage on the client computer and wherein the channel guide includes a software control for storing information associated with the selected content provider in the user-preference storage.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the user-preference storage is in a registry of configuration information on the client computer.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the channel guide is a first channel guide and further including selecting content to be displayed in the desktop window from a second channel guide provided from a different server computer than the first channel guide and integrating addresses from the first channel guide with addresses from the second channel guide and replacing the first document with a second document from a content provider listed in the second channel guide.

13. The method of claim 12 further including storing information associated with the content provider from the second channel guide in a user-preference storage on the client computer.

14. The method of claim 12 wherein the second document includes a software control for storing information associated with the content provider not listed in the channel guide in a user-preference storage on the client computer.

15. The method of claim 1 further including retrieving a second document from the computer network and displaying the first document for a first period of time and replacing the first document with the second document for a second period of time.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the first document is received from a first server computer and the second document is received from a second server computer.

17. The method of claim 1 including automatically displaying the first document when the client computer remains idle for a predetermined period of time.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein automatically displaying includes overlaying the first document over other windows on the client computer, including overlaying the desktop window.

19. The method of claim 1 wherein the channel guide is a first channel guide retrieved from a first server computer and the method further includes retrieving a second channel guide from a second server computer.

20. The method of claim 19 further including sequentially displaying documents selected from the first and second channel guides in the desktop window.

21. The method of claim 1 wherein the channel guide includes a hierarchical menu interface having a first level including a list of selectable channels, each channel displaying a different topic of information.

22. The method of claim 21 wherein the channel guide includes a second level in the hierarchical menu interface including a list of content providers relating to a channel displayed at the first level.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the channel guide includes a third level in the hierarchical menu interface including a list of document preferences associated with a content provider displayed at the second level.

24. The method of claim 23 including storing a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) on the second level in the channel guide, the URL pointing to the list of document preferences on the third level.

connecting to a first server computer;

retrieving a channel guide of content providers from the first server computer, the channel guide for allowing a user to select one or more content providers;

connecting to a second server computer associated with a user-selected content provider in the channel guide; and

retrieving a document having a hyperlink embedded therein from the second server computer.

25. A method for displaying a hyperlinkable document in a desktop window in a windowing environment on a client computer, the method comprising the steps of:

connecting to a first server computer;

retrieving a channel guide that includes a list of content providers from the first server computer, the channel guide for allowing a user to select one or more content providers from the list and wherein multiple content providers may appear selected at the same time;

storing the selections that the user made from the list of content providers;

reading the stored selections and obtaining an address associated with a second server computer from the stored selections;

connecting to the second server computer associated with a user-selected content provider in the channel guide by using the address obtained from reading the stored selections; and

retrieving a document having a hyperlink embedded therein from the second server computer.

26. The method of claim 25, including integrating the document into the desktop window on the client computer so that the document and the desktop window are displayed in the same window.

27. The method of claim 25 including:

connecting to a third server computer associated with a second content provider in the channel guide;

retrieving a second document having a hyperlink embedded therein from the third server computer associated with a content provider selected from the channel guide; and

replacing the first-mentioned document with the second document on the desktop window.

28. The method of claim 25 including:

connecting to a third server computer not associated with a content provider in the channel guide;

retrieving a second document having a hyperlink embedded therein from a third server computer; and

replacing the first-mentioned document with the second document to display the second document in the desktop window.

29. A method of displaying a hyperlinkable document in a windowing environment on a client computer when the computer is left idle for a predetermined period of time, the method comprising the steps of:

connecting to a computer network from the client computer;

retrieving a channel guide of content providers from the computer network for allowing a user to select one or more content providers;

storing selections made by the user from the channel guide including storing addresses of content providers;

obtaining an address of a content provider from the stored selections;

reading a first document from a selected content provider by using the address obtained from the stored selections, the first document having a hyperlink embedded therein and integrating the first document into the desktop window on the client computer;

after the client computer is left idle a predetermined period of time, overlaying the first document over other windows in the windowing environment.

30. The method of claim 29 wherein the first document is received from a first server computer and the method further includes:

retrieving a second document having a hyperlink embedded therein from a second server computer associated with a second content provider selected from the channel guide page; and

replacing the first document with the second document.

31. The method of claim 29 including:

selecting two or more content providers from the channel guide;

retrieving hyperlinkable documents from two or more server computers corresponding to the content providers selected from the channel guide;

after the client computer is left idle a predetermined period of time, sequencing through the hyperlinkable documents by displaying one document at a time and replacing a currently displayed document with a next document in the sequence.

32. A computer system, comprising:

a client computer having a display for displaying a windowing environment including a desktop window with a first pane for displaying content having hyperlinks and a second pane for displaying desktop icons unrelated to the content;

a channel guide for displaying a list of content providers on the client computer display, the content providers providing content having hyperlinks embedded therein from a plurality of server computers connectable to the client computer;

a user-preference storage on the client computer for storing information associated with content providers selected from the channel guide;

means for retrieving content having hyperlinks embedded therein from the plurality of server computers and displaying the content in the first pane of the desktop window on the client computer display.

33. The computer system of claim 32 wherein the means includes establishing an Internet network connection with the server computers.

34. A method for displaying a hyperlinkable document in a windowing environment on a client computer, the method comprising the steps of:

connecting to a computer network from the client computer, the computer network having a plurality of server computers associated with a plurality of content providers;

retrieving a channel guide from one of the server computers, the channel guide including a list of content providers with check boxes associated therewith so that a user can select multiple content providers while continually viewing the channel guide;

storing addresses associated with at least first and second content providers that the user selected from the channel guide;

without any user input, automatically reading the stored address for the first content provider and retrieving a first document from the first content provider on a first server computer;

displaying the first document on the client computer;

waiting a predetermined period of time sufficiently long so that the user can view the first document;

without any user input, automatically reading the stored address for the second content provider and retrieving a second document from the second content provider on a second server computer; and

automatically displaying the second document on the client computer.

35. The method of claim 34 further comprising the steps of automatically and sequentially displaying documents from all of the content providers in the channel guide that were selected by the user.

36. The method of claim 35 further including providing fast forward and rewind buttons that allow a user to fast forward or rewind through the sequential display of documents.

37. The method of claim 34 wherein storing addresses associated with content providers selected by the user includes storing the addresses on a server computer.

38. The method of claim 34 wherein storing addresses associated with content providers selected by the user includes storing the addresses on a client computer.

39. The method of claim 34 wherein the channel guide is retrieved from a default server or third party server.

40. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising:

connecting to a computer network from the client computer, the computer network having a plurality of server computers associated with a plurality of content providers;

retrieving a channel guide including a list of content providers from the computer network and check boxes associated with each content provider for allowing a user to select and deselect one or more content providers, wherein the channel guide remains displayed after the user selects a content provider so that the user can select multiple content providers from the channel guide, the channel guide allowing multiple check boxes to remain selected even if the user selects other check boxes; and

integrating a first document received from a server computer of at least one user-selected content provider into the desktop window so that the first document and the desktop window are displayed in the same window.

41. A computer system for viewing Internet documents provided from two or more server computers, comprising:

a client computer having a display for displaying a windowing environment including a desktop window that displays icons related to applications;

a viewer integrated into the desktop window on the display for displaying Internet documents in the same window as the desktop window; and

a channel guide that includes a list of content providers and check boxes adjacent each content provider, the check boxes indicating whether a user selected one or more content providers from the list wherein multiple check boxes can remain selected at the same time and wherein by selecting the content providers the user customizes content displayed in the viewer which is provided by the two or more server computers.

42. A method for displaying a document in a desktop window on a client computer, the method comprising the steps of.

(a) connecting to a computer network from the client computer, the computer network having a plurality of server computers associated with a plurality of content providers;

(b) retrieving a channel guide including a list of content providers from the computer network for allowing a user to select one or more content providers and one or more stories associated with the content providers;

(c) storing the selections that the user made from the channel guide;

(d) reading the stored selections and obtaining an address associated with one of the selected stories;

(e) retrieving the selected story from the content provider;

(f) integrating the retrieved story into the desktop window to display the story to the user; and

(g) automatically repeating (d) through (f) to provide an effect of automatically scrolling through the stories selected in the channel guide.