Enhancement of e-mail client user interfaces and e-mail message formats

Abstract

An enhancement to e-mail user interfaces and message formats includes a dynamic preview window to view and retrieve attachments and summaries of e-mail messages directly in the e-mail list view or inbox view without opening an e-mail message. The efficient viewing mechanism further allows previews without cluttering the listing of the e-mails in the inbox by allowing the client to detect special preview instructions within an e-mail and run executables within the preview window. The enhancement is applicable to standalone e-mail clients (POP or IMAP based) and to web-based e-mail systems.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 688,174, filed Jun. 7, 2005.BACKGROUND [0002] The present invention relates generally to the enhancement of e-mail user interfaces and message formats, and more specifically to providing a dynamic preview window for viewing summaries of e-mail messages and attachments without having to open the e-mail message [0003] E-mail is a very heavily used computer application program, and the number and size of e-mails are increasing every day. Recipients frequently must spend hours reading and responding to emails. Much of the increase in size is due to e-mail attachments. Because it is relatively easy to do, senders may add pictures, documents, and even video attachments to e-mails. E-mail recipients are frequently forced to guess the content of an e-mail from the subject line, and they are only notified of the present an attachment by a “paper clip” icon or the like. Th...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention is a method and system for improving the user interface of email clients by allowing users to preview emails without opening them. This is done through a temporary preview window that appears only when the user activates it, and can be dismissed when deactivated. The preview window can also contain special instructions that prompt the user to access email attachments or run executable files. The preview window can overlay the email inbox listing, making it convenient for users to view without having to focus on another part of the screen. The invention also introduces a delay to prevent accidental triggering and allows applications and scripts to interact with remote services and servers through the preview window."

Problems solved by technology

This requires invoking another application for each different type of attachment, and is very time consuming.

Unfortunately, this reading pane suffers from several shortcomings.

Firstly, it is a separate window that takes up a large amount of space on the display screen, which limits the amount of space available to list e-mails in the inbox view listing 111 of e-mails.

Secondly, the reading pane is an operational mode of the Outlook e-mail application that is either turned on or off.

Auto-preview also does not allow access to attachments.

However, they also suffer from the drawback that these preview windows take up a large amount of space on the screen, and still require the e-mail and an appropriate application to be opened to access an attachment.

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