Method for viewing document information on a mobile communication device

Abstract

A process for viewing document information on a mobile communication device without having to retrieve the full document onto the device. The solution is client—server based. The client is the mobile device attachment viewing application and the server is the document (attachment) handling process on a remote machine. The process comprises server document information construction and delivery, and document information display on the mobile device.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The following is directed in general to displaying content on mobile communication devices, and more particularly to a method for viewing document information about a document, on a mobile communication device, without having to retrieve the full document onto the device. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Mobile communication devices are becoming increasingly popular for business and personal use due to a relatively recent increase in number of services and features that the devices and mobile infrastructures support. Handheld mobile communication devices, sometimes referred to as mobile stations, are essentially portable computers having wireless capability, and come in various forms. These include Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), cellular phones and smart phones. While their reduced size is an advantage to portability, bandwidth and processing constraints of such devices present challenges to the downloading and viewing of documents, such as word ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007] By using the method set forth herein, a user is able to identify a document of interest, without retrieving the document content from the server for each attachment in an email. This minimizes bandwidth usage and provides an enhanced on-demand attachment viewing experience. Also, eliminating unnecessary document content transmission to the device minimizes device power consumption.

Problems solved by technology

While their reduced size is an advantage to portability, bandwidth and processing constraints of such devices present challenges to the downloading and viewing of documents, such as word processing documents, tables and images.

Also, as a result of their enhanced levels of functionality and computing power, handheld mobile communication devices are increasingly susceptible to attack by computer viruses.

Therefore, email attachments are often identified as presenting a security threat for corporate networks.

When the user of a mobile device receives an email with renamed attachments it is difficult for the user to determine which attachment is of interest based on file names alone.

However, the downloading of an entire document from the server to a mobile communication device consumes a large amount of bandwidth, especially when the document is large.

In addition, viewing even a portion of such a downloaded document on the device consumes substantial device CPU / memory / battery resources.

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