Dynamic Thumbnail Images for Web Page Update Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face inefficiencies in staying current with frequently updated web content, as devices with limited memory discard cached data, and existing systems require users to manually navigate to each web page to check for updates, wasting time.
Innovation Solution
A computing device creates dynamic thumbnail images for accessed web pages, visually distinguishing updated pages from unchanged ones, allowing users to quickly identify updates without manually navigating to each site, through automatic image creation and caching mechanisms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If users manually navigate to each web site to check for updates, then they can stay current with updated content, but considerable time is spent on the task
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates thumbnail image copies of web pages that are displayed in a scrollable list. Users can view these thumbnail copies to identify updated pages without navigating to each original web site, thereby staying current with updates while minimizing time spent on navigation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically checks for updates on web pages in the background before users need to review them. Updated pages are marked in the thumbnail list, so users only need to review the marked thumbnails rather than checking every page manually, reducing the time required to stay current.
2Ease of operation
If devices cache data viewed by users, then access to previously viewed content is improved, but devices with limited memory quickly discard the cached data
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential visual information from web pages by creating compressed thumbnail images. These thumbnails are stored in cache instead of full web page data, providing visual reference to previously viewed content while consuming minimal memory capacity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transforms full web pages into thumbnail images by changing the resolution and format parameters. This parameter transformation allows the cached data to provide useful visual reference while occupying significantly less memory space, preventing quick discarding due to limited capacity.
3Productivity
If dynamic thumbnail images are created and updated for web pages, then users can quickly identify updated pages, but device resources are consumed for image creation and maintenance
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates simple thumbnail images that are lightweight and easy to regenerate. When web pages are updated, new thumbnails are created to replace old ones, but because thumbnails are small and simple, the resource cost of creating and maintaining them is minimal compared to full web page processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates thumbnails only for web pages that have been visited and potentially updated, rather than for all possible pages. This partial action approach focuses computational resources only on relevant pages, improving the speed of identifying updates while consuming fewer device resources.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments automatically create dynamic thumbnail images corresponding to accessed web pages. Thumbnails, snapshots, or other images are generated for each of a plurality of the web pages (e.g., viewed or visited by a user, or pre-fetched by a browser). The images are provided to the user as, for example, active tiles in a browser tab or on a desktop background. As content on the web pages updates, the images are re-created and visually distinguished from other images to enable the user to quickly identify the images that correspond to updated web pages. The user interacts with the images to view the corresponding web pages.