Integrated document viewer with automatic sharing of reading-related activities across external social networks

Abstract

In various embodiments of the present invention, documents (such as PDF documents) are converted into HTML 5 (and CSS 3) formats and integrated into existing HTML 5 web pages in a manner that preserves the original fonts embedded within the documents. The fonts can also be integrated or embedded (e.g., via the standard HTML “iframe” tag) into other web pages. The original appearance of the source document is maintained, the text is preserved as searchable text, and the document is integrated into a web page that can be searched, zoomed, scrolled, printed, etc., utilizing standard web browser controls. As a result, a significantly increased “ad inventory” is enabled, wherein advertisements can be integrated between the individual pages (or even within a page) of the document. In addition, the resulting document (independent of its format) can be passively shared with desired members of a user's external social networks (as well as any social network within the host website), along with other activities and behavior performed by the user on the website hosting the document.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit (pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §119(e)) of (i) U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 326,166, filed Apr. 20, 2010, entitled “Integrated Document Viewer with Automatic Sharing of Reading-Related Activities Across External Social Networks,” and (ii) U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 330,161, filed Apr. 30, 2010, entitled “Integrated Document Viewer with Automatic Sharing of Reading-Related Activities Across External Social Networks with Additions,” each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.I. BACKGROUND[0002]A. Field of Art[0003]This application relates generally to the integration of documents into web pages, and in particular to systems and techniques for preserving a document's original nature and appearance when displaying the document within the pages of a website, and automatically sharing users' reading-related activities on that website across their external social ne...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0028]Moreover, because the PDF document is now an integral component of the resulting HTML 5 web page, a significantly increased “ad inventory” is enabled. Advertisements can be integrated between the individual pages (or even within a page) of the document. Even in the context of a relatively short 20-page document, there is at least a 20-fold increase in the ad inventory than would be present if the document were confined to a separately scrolled window within the web browser's window.

Problems solved by technology

Initially, documents displayed on a computer screen were limited to text, with little or no choice of fonts, much less page layout and formatting of any kind.

Maintaining a document's appearance as it is distributed among different computers and platforms (including its appearance when printed or displayed within a web page) has long been a problem addressed by various software technologies.

At this point, it is virtually impossible to distinguish the appearance of a document created as a web page (HTML) from that of one created as a more traditional page-oriented document via a word processing, presentation or page layout program.

Even PDF documents, however, have been difficult to integrate into web pages, while preserving their intended appearance, due to historical formatting limitations of the HTML format, which traditionally has allowed for the display of only a limited number of fonts.

Yet, these programs cause the document to occupy the entire web browser window (along with the controls typically associated with Adobe's “Acrobat” program for displaying PDF documents).

Thus, the author of a web page cannot easily integrate an existing PDF document as part of a web page that includes other web elements or objects, such as text, images, advertisements, etc.

This approach has a number of disadvantages, however, in that the PDF document is not truly integrated into the web page; instead it remains in a separately controlled window within that web page.

For example, a user must scroll through the PDF document separately from the rest of the web page, resulting in the significant inconvenience of having to switch between scrolling through the PDF document and scrolling through the web page.

In short, the PDF document becomes a separately controllable object that is subservient to the primary web browser controls for the overall web page window, resulting in significant inconvenience to the user.

This approach defeats the primary objective of preserving the author's intended appearance of the PDF document.

To the extent this approach employs a separately scrollable window, it suffers from the same disadvantages as noted above.

Even if the image of the entire document is truly integrated into a discrete area of the web page (as opposed to a separate scrollable “sub-window”), this approach, while preserving the appearance of text, does not preserve the nature of the text itself.

In other words, the ability to search and recognize the text is sacrificed, which results in a significant loss of functionality.

Not only are users unable to search through the PDF document, but other programs cannot search through and identify words and phrases within the PDF document, a critical feature for targeted advertising engines.

Yet, this “thin client” approach suffers from a number of disadvantages that result from converting the PDF document into an “image” rather than directly into text (along with the fonts that determine the appearance of that text).

For example, the “image” of each page of the document is significantly larger than the corresponding text on that page (even apart from other non-text elements on the page), resulting in an additional delay before each page of the document can be delivered to and displayed by the user's web browser.

Moreover, the frequent server interaction imposes further delays whenever the user interacts with the document, e.g., by scrolling to a new page or selecting or searching for words within the document.

Even though the “image” of each page can be “zoomed” with the user's standard web browser controls, the words of the document become distorted when zoomed (as would any bitmapped image of text), causing Google to include a custom “zoom” control to avoid this distortion, but at the expense of further delay due to additional server interaction.

Yet, actively choosing to share an activity or behavior is burdensome.

While passive sharing is becoming increasingly more common, it has yet to be integrated into the activities or behavior within a website independent of the sharing process itself.

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