Intermediary System for Page Preview Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users experience significant delays when loading web pages due to various factors such as connection speed, server load, page size, embedded objects, and processing power, making browsing frustrating.
Innovation Solution
An intermediary system that prefetches and generates cached page previews, including screenshot images, to be displayed while the actual page loads, reducing the delay by minimizing browser processing and optimizing for different device types, and allowing users to interact with links in the preview.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If the browser waits for the complete page to be retrieved and processed, then the page content is displayed accurately, but the user experiences significant delay
Solution Approach 1:
The intermediary system performs preliminary actions by prefetching pages and generating cached previews before the user actually requests them. When a page is requested, the preview is already prepared and can be displayed immediately, eliminating the waiting delay while maintaining content accuracy through subsequent updates.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a copy of the page content in the form of a cached preview that can be displayed immediately. This copy contains the essential visual representation and interactive elements, allowing the user to see and interact with page content without waiting for the full page to load and process.
2Productivity
If the browser processes the complete page including embedded objects, then all content is rendered correctly, but the processing time increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The intermediary system extracts the essential visual and interactive content from the complete page, creating a simplified cached preview that contains screenshots, text, and functional links. This extracted preview can be displayed and interacted with without requiring the browser to process the entire page including all embedded objects, scripts, and stylesheets.
Solution Approach 2:
The page content is segmented into different components: the cached preview containing essential visual and interactive elements, and the complete page with all embedded objects. The browser only needs to process the segmented preview initially, while the complete page can load in the background without blocking user interaction.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the system generates and caches previews for all pages, then preview availability is maximized, but the intermediary system requires more storage and processing resources
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary generation of cached previews for pages that are likely to be requested, storing them in advance. This allows the previews to be ready for immediate display when users request those pages, maximizing preview availability for frequently accessed content without needing to cache every possible page.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and process are disclosed for providing users with page previews during page loading events, such that the delay experienced before the display of page content is reduced. The previews may include screenshots of the pages or of portions thereof, and may be generated periodically and cached by the system for delivery to user devices. The process of generating and delivering the previews via the Internet or some other network may be implemented partly or wholly within an intermediary system that sits logically between the user devices and content servers. The process may be used with existing browsers without the need for any browser modifications, or may be used with a “preview-aware” browser that includes special program code for providing page previews.