Display control information generation

Abstract

Provides a Web server for generating display control information for dividing and displaying aform in a style conforming to a client device used by a user, which includes a HTTP request reception unit for receiving a form request from the client device, an application code database for storing a screen definition of the form subjected to the form request and a code of a validator for executing validation of an input value inputted into an input item in the form, a form division unit for dividing the form in conformity to the acquired terminal capacity by use of the read-out screen definition of the form and the read-out code of the validator, and a screen generation unit for generating screen information to be displayed on the client device by use of a result of division.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to a method and a mechanism for generating a control instruction for displaying a document and the like in a style conforming to a terminal used by a user. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Along with diffusion of Web-base technology, a so-called thin-client system configured to utilize a Web browser as a user interface and operate an application program on a Web server (an application server) has been put into practice. In this case, information to be transmitted from a server to a client may include hypertext markup language (HTML) documents containing forms, the wireless markup language (WML) defined as standard by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA; [0003] http: / / ,,, www.openmobilealliance.org / ), the Compact HTML which is a subset language of the HTML, and the like. As long as a client terminal can run a Web browser, the client can execute an application program without performing operations such as deploying or installing...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0024] Another aspect of the present invention is to provide an automatic division algorithm, such as one satisfying the above-described four conditions, so as to be able to flexibly deal with arbitrary terminals having various capacities.

[0025] Still another aspect of the present invention is to provide an automatic division algorithm to divide forms in conformity to a screen size of a terminal or to a user interface thereof, so that a user can operate the forms easily and correct an error easily upon occurrence of an input error.

[0026] Yet another aspect of the present invention is to provide an automatic generation method of a divided form screen for adding status indicators of validators and a “submit” button. To attain the aspects, the present invention provides a data structure and an algorithm for achieving optimization corresponding to various terminal screens, which have configurations that validators are operated as much as possible at a point when transition is performed between divided screens so as to immediately validate information inputted in the previous screen, that it is easy to access a corresponding page when an error is found by the validator, that it is possible to press a “submit” button for a form input only when the form input has a possibility to pass the validation, and so forth.

Problems solved by technology

However, there are even lower-processing performance and lower-cost terminals designed to run the Web browser recently, including, personal digital assistants (PDAs), handheld PCs, set-top boxes, car navigation systems, and the like.

Therefore, in some cases, usability of these terminals may be considerably degraded.

However, a validator existing in the application program is not taken into consideration.

Hence, there is a problem in terms of the usability.

Moreover, even when the validator finds an error, it is not possible to display the position with the error immediately because the display begins from the first page of the divided screens (or from an index page).

Accordingly, it takes some time for correcting and the usability is thereby degraded.

In addition, it is naturally impossible to achieve appropriate division unless a structure such as grouping is described when defining screens.

For this reason, the validators do not work in the course of transition of screens while inputting form data on these pages.

In addition, it is not possible to view all the related data at once.

Therefore, a user may be puzzled during an input operation.

Further, the usability is degraded as modification screens are divided when the validators find an error.

It is because that the user cannot confirm the user ID inputted on the different screen in the course of inputting the password.

Meanwhile, there are two conceivable reasons for a login error, namely, a user ID error and a password error.

On the contrary, incomplete input information may be submitted although all of the inputs are not completed yet if the “submit” button is provided on every page.

In this case, the user will result in viewing unnecessary execution of error processing and error screens.

Such a situation is also unfavorable.

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