System and Method for Providing and Displaying Information Content

Abstract

A system and method is provided for enabling an electronic device to efficiently access information content. A server browser accesses the information content over a network. The accessed information content is retrieved and adapted for presentation for the electronic device. A serializer dynamically formats the adapted information content according to a client browser. The client browser receives and presents the information content on the electronic device. An event translator is included to provide additional compatibility with commercially available client browsers. The information content is formatted to selectively minimize the horizontal scrolling required to view the content. The need for horizontal scrolling is selectively removed where not necessary to preserve the context. Each component or sub-component of the original area, such as a frame, table row, table cell or nested table, is considered separately and may be preserved, resized, or replaced. Where the context requires that the content be wider than the viewable area of the screen, horizontal scrolling is preserved.

Description

REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 693,292, titled “A System and Method for Providing and Displaying Information Content,” and filed Oct. 24, 2003, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 693,292 is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 280,263, titled “System and Method for Displaying Information Content With Selected Horizontal Scrolling,” and filed Oct. 25, 2002, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, and which in turn is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 842,474, titled “System and Method for Accessing Information Content,” and filed on Apr. 25, 2001, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, and which in turn claims priority to U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60 / 199,858 filed on Apr. 26, 2000, which is also incorporated herein by reference in its entirety....

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention provides a system and method for electronic devices to access and interact with feature-rich information content. The system optimizes the content to minimize the horizontal scrolling required to view it, and works with different types of electronic devices and network connections. The system includes a server browser and a client browser that work together to access information content. The client browser can selectively minimize the horizontal scrolling required to view the content, and the system supports tiers of devices with varying capabilities. The system also utilizes a normalizer to adapt to the layout of the information content, and a pattern-matching template to make the presentation of the content compatible with different browsers or applications. The system allows for seamless access to information content and applications, and provides a similar experience on devices with limited hardware capability as on full-featured PCs."

Problems solved by technology

Unfortunately, this feature rich information content was developed for a standard PC-based browser, not a mobile or portable electronic device that might be limited in memory, screen size, bandwidth, navigation capabilities, power consumption, processing power, etc.

For example, an electronic device, such as portable PDA, with a small screen size may be inappropriate to display the same information content originally intended for a PC-based browser, and viewed on a 15-inch or greater size display monitor.

Consequently, the PDA cannot be able to faithfully access and display information content as it was originally intended to be viewed.

In another example, a mobile or wireless device with only low bandwidth capability may be unable to view information content intended for only high bandwidth applications.

In yet another example, current electronic devices cannot take full advantage of dynamically generated content and interactive Web sites that are typically hosted on today's Web servers.

Currently, information content is sent to the device, but often in a format that the appliance, user, or network cannot conveniently accommodate, which produces undesirable results.

For example, the data content might be unreadable on the display, displayed in an unorganized fashion, be too voluminous or bandwidth intensive to be received or displayed, and so on.

Tables providing content designed for larger desktop screen displays, however, may not fit on smaller screen displays, such as on a personal digital assistant, cell phone, pager or internet information appliances, or even when windows are resized.

The content is then only partially viewable with portions chopped off, which is at a minimum aesthetically displeasing and may also reduce the readability and usability of the content when significant portions are cut off.

Scrolling, however, requires additional input from the user, which is inconvenient, and still does not allow the entire page to be seen at once.

Indiscriminately reducing the width of information content destroys the integrity of the content as the creator intended and possibly results in the loss of information.

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