Undockable sub-windows

Abstract

A system, method, and medium are disclosed for undocking content from a window into sub-windows. The undocked sub-windows may be redocked to the parent window. The sub-windows may continue to exist after an application providing the window has been closed.

Description

I. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001] A. Technical Field[0002] In general, the present invention relates to interacting with documents, and more particularly to undocking sections from HTML (hypertext markup language) documents.[0003] B. Background of the Invention[0004] The Internet has experienced tremendous growth. Through various HTML programming techniques (including tables and frames, for example), information may be presented to end users in visually appealing forms. However, one of the difficulties with these presentation techniques is that, once the table or form is coded, the end user has little ability by which to interact with the presented information. For instance, if a user is viewing an article in a frame as displayed in a browser (for example, Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 by the Microsoft.RTM. Corporation or Netscape Navigator (NN) 4.0 by the Netscape Corporation), the user may scroll up or down the article. However, the user cannot read the article once the browser is...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This solution enhances user interactivity by allowing users to undock and re-dock content windows, maintaining their state independently of the parent browser application, enabling more complex and customizable user interfaces and navigation within web pages.

Problems solved by technology

However, one of the difficulties with these presentation techniques is that, once the table or form is coded, the end user has little ability by which to interact with the presented information.

However, the user cannot read the article once the browser is closed.

Further, the article cannot be moved apart from the window supported by the browser.

However, current undocking solutions fail to provide an end user with freedom to navigate beyond the displayed windows.

Further, current separable windows in browsers fail to provide any sort of docking.

There is no ability to dock the two windows together to provide a browser window that is unified in appearance and navigation.

Current browsers do not allow incorporated content to be undocked from a main application.

In short, while providing simple textual markups and related display characteristics, HTML is limited in that it fails to provide application designers with a complex design language for applications.

The current state of browsers or the HTML language itself fails to provide the needed underlying framework for these applications.

While e-mail clients and NetMeeting.TM. incorporate a limited ability to undock windows from each other, a developer familiar only with HTML is prevented from providing even this limited functionality to a web page or an HTML document.

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