System and method for defining and presenting a composite web page

[0001] This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application Serial No. 60/265,223 filed Jan. 31, 2001, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The concurrently filed U.S. Non-Provisional Application entitled System and Method For Isomorphic Data-Driven Web Page Generation is also incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

[0002] The present application generally relates to the field of generating and presenting information over a network. More specifically, the present application relates to a system and method for dynamically assembling and presenting selected web page content from one or more sources.

[0003] Over the last twenty years, the use of a global network of interconnected computers, commonly referred to as the Internet or the World Wide Web, has increased at a tremendous rate. One particularly useful aspect of the Internet is the ability to send and retrieve information to and from third parties via web pages or electronic mail (e-mail). Millions of Internet users rely on this aspect of the network on a daily basis to send and receive critical business information as well as news, advertising and other information.

[0004] As user familiarity with web browser technology increases, such browsers are becoming the preferred graphical user interfaces (GUI) for accessing remote information stores, and/or computer programs over the Internet. Information accessed this way is displayed in the form of web pages, each page generally representing a point of access.

[0005] Presentation of web pages using a web browser may be problematical in certain circumstances. For example, the traditional GUI may be cumbersome when there is a need to see information from many web pages at the same time. Another example of circumstances under which a traditional GUI presentation is cumbersome is when there is a need to have command and control of many remote applications at the same time. The presentation approach is an issue, at least in part, because a typical web page occupies a substantial portion of the space on a computer monitor screen, and it is not possible to make many web pages completely visible on a computer monitor at the same time.

[0006] One traditional solution to this presentation problem involves manually flipping through multiple web pages on a computer screen. This solution is inefficient, tedious and confusing for the user.

[0007] Another solution to this presentation problem is to have a computer programmer create a special program designed specifically to combine the relevant web pages. In order to create a composite view of a new set of web pages, new computer code is created by such programmers. Since an end-user has little control over this process, this effectively constitutes an information publication where the publisher of the information controls what is being seen in the resulting composite page. Consequently, such a solution is expensive, slow, and not easily repeatable. Further, such a solution has the additional disadvantage that the end user is not able to control or alter the resulting composited web page or the compositing process.

[0008] This disclosure provides methods and systems for defining and presenting composite web pages in a computer processing environment. According to one aspect of the disclosure, a method for defining a composite web page is disclosed. The method includes identifying a web page which references at least one associated element, analyzing the web page to determine a list of the associated elements, presenting the list of associated elements to a user, and receiving a user selection of one or more of the associated elements from the list. The selected elements are intended to be displayed on a composite web page. The user selection is registered or stored for later reference so that a user can retrieve the composite web page without having to redefine it.

[0009] According to a second aspect of the disclosure, a method for presenting a composite web page is disclosed. The method includes receiving a user request to present a composite web page, by, for example, identifying and retrieving the elements of the composite web page, and rendering the retrieved elements to form the composite web page.

[0010] A system for defining a composite web page is also disclosed. In one embodiment, the system includes a processor and memory storing processor executable instructions for controlling the operation of the processor. The processor executable instructions include instructions to identify a web page, which references at least one associated element, instructions to analyze the web page to determine a list of the associated elements and to present the list to a user. The processor executable instructions further include instructions to receive a user selection of one or more associated elements from the list and register the user selection. The selected elements are the elements which are intended to comprise a composite web page for future presentation.

[0011] A system for presenting a composite web page is also disclosed. The system includes a processor and memory storing processor executable instructions for controlling the operation of the processor. The processor executable instructions include instructions to receive a user request to present a composite web page and to identify at least one element of the composite web page. The processor executable instructions also include instructions to retrieve the identified element(s) and render them to form the composite web page.

[0012] Computer-readable storage media are also disclosed which include processing instructions for implementing certain disclosed methods.

[0013] The disclosed systems and methods enable a user to identify selected elements of one or more relevant web pages, and combine them into a single composite web page. The features and advantages of the proposed method and system are readily apparent from the following description when taken in connection with the accompanying drawings.

[0014] For a more complete understanding of the disclosed systems and methods, reference is now made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which like reference numbers indicate like features and wherein:

[0015] FIG. 1A is a block diagram of an exemplary environment of the disclosed system and method;

[0016] FIG. 1B is a block diagram of an alternate exemplary environment of the disclosed system and method;

[0017] FIG. 2 is an exemplary methodology for defining a composite web page in accordance with one embodiment of the disclosed method;

[0018] FIG. 3 is an exemplary methodology for presenting a composite web page in accordance with one embodiment of the disclosed method;

[0019] FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a system for defining a composite web page in accordance with one embodiment of the disclosure;

[0020] FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating a system for presenting a composite web page in accordance with one embodiment of the disclosure;

[0021] FIG. 6 is a computer screen display illustrating an exemplary graphical user interface for defining a composite web page;

[0022] FIG. 7 is a computer screen display illustrating a portion of the data included in a specification; and

[0023] FIG. 8 is a computer screen display illustrating the presentation of a composite web page.

[0024] The methods and systems according to the present application define and present composite web pages based on stored composite page definitions. Such page definitions can be stored locally in, for example, page registry 160, as shown in FIG. 1A, or they be stored in a distributed storage medium, for example, page registry 160, as shown in FIG. 1B.

[0025] Referring to FIG. 1A, there is illustrated a block diagram of an exemplary service provider system 100 for defining and presenting composite web pages. The service provider system 100 includes an Application Integration Bus 110 that is capable of storing information to and retrieving information from a variety of disparate sources including, for example, application 112, and data sources 114, 116 and 118.

[0026] The application integration bus 110 is an infrastructure that facilitates communication between different computer programs in a consistent and reliable manner. An example of a suitable application integration bus is the CA Common Services application, formerly known as Jasmineii, manufactured by Computer Associates International Inc., Islandia, N.Y. FIG. 1A shows the application integration bus 110 connected to the application 112, data sources 114, 116 and 118 and page registry 160 via local connections, such as POTS, wireless telephone networks, Local Area Networks (LAN), and Wide Area Networks (WAN). FIG. 1B shows the application integration bus 110 connected to the application 112, data sources 114, 116 and 118 and page registry 160 via the Internet.

[0027] Application Integration Bus 110 delivers data from the disparate sources to Data Format Translator 120, which may be a Data Format Translator or other translator providing data representation of various types of information in a standard format. For example, in one embodiment, XML is used to represent various types of information, such as documents, spreadsheets and databases.

[0028] The Data Format Translator 120 is capable of translating data in a format that is not suitable for representing information, e.g., data in a proprietary binary format, into a format that is suitable for representation (e.g., XML syntax (or data) which can represent information such as text documents, spread sheets, database information and web information). More particularly, the data format translator 120 traverses a data structure in, for example a binary form, and transforms the data structure into a format that is suitable for representation, which can be XML syntax (or data). Data Format Translator 120 uses data received from Application Integration Bus 110 to process requests and deliver data(e.g., XML data) to GUI Data Manager 130.

[0029] The GUI data manager 130 converts the data from the data format translator 120 into a format suitable for presentation to a user, e.g., HTML, PDF formats. For example, if the output of the data format translator 120 is XML data, the GUI data manager 130 could convert the XML data to HTML data, which is suitable for presentation to one or more users. In addition to interfacing with Data Format Translator 120, GUI Data Manager 130 accesses, updates and maintains web pages stored in Page Registry 160 via Application Integration Bus 110.

[0030] GUI Data Manager 130 responds to requests received from Web Server 140. The Web Server presents a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to GUI Data Manager 130, and the GUI Data Manager 130 responds by delivering a presentation definition of the data such as, for example, Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) code. Generally, Web Server 140 provides web pages to one or more users 170 over the Internet 150.

[0031] The operation of systems 400 and 500 within the service provider system 100 illustrated in FIGS. 1A and 1B are described in greater detail with reference to FIGS. 4 and 5, respectively.

[0032] Although the described embodiment is an Internet-based web page delivery and presentation solution, it should be understood that the methods disclosed herein may also be applied to other systems. For example, wireless telephone networks, LAN's, WAN's, Extranets and Intranets, as well as other types of networks, could all support the disclosed methods.

[0033] Referring now to FIG. 2, there is illustrated a flowchart describing the operation of one methodology for defining a composite web page. At block 205, the system identifies a web page from which one or more elements will be extracted for use in a composite web page. The set of web pages that may be used by the system includes any web page that may be parsed into it's constituent elements. Of course, plug-ins may be utilized to parse specific types of data on web pages. The system may identify the web page, for example, using a URL supplied by a user, such as through typing, copying or dragging a URL displayed in a browser and dropping it into a work area. The identified web page references at least one associated element. An elements of a web page may be, for example, a text block, a table, a digital image, or a grouping of such items from a tree structure defining the web page. For example, an element of a page http://www.msnbc.com may be a digital photograph associated with a lead news story, or a set of current headlines. The system analyzes the web page to determine a list of associated elements, as shown by block 210. The analysis may include parsing HTML source code of the identified web page, although any other technique for determining an element list would be acceptable.

[0034] At block 215, the system presents the list of elements from the identified web page to a user. The list may be embodied, for example, as a textual list, a graphical set of icons or the list may be formatted to provide the appearance of the actual web page, among other things. In one embodiment, the listed elements are presented to the user in the form of a tree structure, shown in FIG. 6. While presentation of the list in other ways, such as using icons or using a simple list, for example, would be sufficient, presentation of the list in the form of a tree structure provides a user with a view of the relationships between elements.

[0035] The system allows the user to select one or more listed elements or parts of the identified web page that the user is particularly interested in viewing as part of a composite web page. At block 220, the system receives from the user a selection of one or more elements that will form at least a portion of the composite web page.

[0036] Upon the selection of one or more elements by the user, the system registers the user selection, as shown by block 225. The registration of the user selection includes persistently storing the selection. Such persistent storage may be accomplished using a local registry or a registry on a remote server.

[0037] The registration of the user selection includes creating a specification that includes data defining the composite web page including an identification of the selected elements. Registration further includes transmitting the specification over the Internet, and storing the specification in a persistent registry, such as page registry 160. The specification may include information regarding how to fetch the web page in its entirety, and/or information how to extract each selected element from the web page. The specification may include data not only identifying the selected elements of the composite web page, but also data identifying the source web page for each selected element. The specification may also include information regarding how to retrieve the source web pages and extract each selected element from its associated source web page.

[0038] It should be appreciated that while the methodology of FIG. 2 is described with respect to a single identified web page, the methodology may also be used to define a composite page comprising elements from multiple identified web pages. In one alternative approach, more than one web page may be identified and analyzed at blocks 205 and 210, and the system presents a master list of elements to the user for selection. The master list may include, for example, some identification regarding the web page to which each element is associated. This may be accomplished by segmenting or sorting the list of elements, accordingly.

[0039] Alternatively, the system may present a separate list of elements for each identified web page. In such an embodiment, the user may select elements from among the plurality of element lists to define the composite web page. The graphical user interface for selecting elements according to such an embodiment is illustrated in FIG. 6.

[0040] It should be further appreciated that in an alternate embodiment, the methodology may include determining an identifier associated with the user. Examples of such an identifier include, the logon name of a user, a role or position of employment associated with a user, and an identifier associated with a particular network node or computer. The identifier may be stored in the registry to associate the composite web page with the user.

[0041] Referring now to FIG. 3, there is illustrated a flowchart describing the operation of one methodology for presenting a composite web page. At block 305, the system receives a user request to present a previously defined composite web page. The composite web page may have been previously defined in accordance with the methodology of FIG. 2, or it could have been defined in accordance with another methodology that results in a stored composite web page definition.

[0042] The system identifies the selected elements that comprise the composite web page at block 310 and retrieves the selected elements at block 315. In one embodiment, identification of the selected elements 310 is accomplished by accessing a persistent registry, such as page registry 160 and retrieving a specification containing data defining the composite web page.

[0043] After a selected element has been identified, the system may retrieve it for inclusion in the composite web page. In one embodiment, the system retrieves the latest versions of each source web page that contains an element selected for presentation on the composite web page, according to information stored in the registry. Each selected element is extracted from its associated source web page, based on the specification of the composite page.

[0044] At block 320, the system renders the composite page in a web browser for presentation to the user. It should be appreciated that the rendering of the composite web page, including for example the relative placement of the selected elements, may be performed in accordance with instructions or data stored in the specification. The stored instructions or data may be defined by a user during a composite page definition process or may be automatically determined based on one or more factors, including certain characteristics of the selected elements, such as display size, data refresh requirements, frequency of use or preferred layering order (or z-order).

[0045] In another embodiment, the rendering of the composite web page may be automatically determined at the time of rendering. In this embodiment, the automatic determination may be based on one or more run-time variables, such as, for example, the dimensions of a window containing the composite web page.

[0046] According to one embodiment, the methodology for presenting a composite web page to a user includes determining an identifier associated with the user and accessing the registry is based on the identifier. Determining such a user identifier enables the user to request a composite web page that has been tailored to the specific needs of the user. In addition, in embodiments in which the page registry is stored on a remote server, the user is able to request the composite page to be displayed regardless of the particular local computer the user is operating, as long as the local computer is able to access the registry on the remote server, for example, using the Internet.

[0047] In FIG. 4 there is illustrated one embodiment of a system for defining a composite web page 400. As shown, the system includes a processor 410 and memory 415. The memory 415 is connected to the processor 410 and stores processor executable instructions for defining a composite web page.

[0048] The memory 415 includes composite web page definition logic 420 for enabling a user to define a composite web page. The composite web page definition logic 420 employs a source web page identifier 425 to identify one or more source web page containing element(s) that the user elects to include in a composite web page. The definition logic 420 also employs a source web page analyzer 430 and list presentation logic 435 to respectively analyze the source web pages to identify a list of associated elements and present the list to the user. A user selection module 440 is used by the definition logic 420 to enable the user to select listed elements for inclusion in the composite web page.

[0049] The composite web page definition logic registers the user selection of elements using a selection registration module 445. In one embodiment, selection registration module 445 creates a specification of the selected elements, transmits the specification over the Internet, and stores the specification in a persistent registry, such as page registry 160 (shown in FIG. 1). Of course, in an alternate embodiment, the persistent registry may reside locally on the user's computer. The specification may include information regarding how to fetch the web page in its entirety, as well as how to extract each selected element from the web page.

[0050] In FIG. 5 there is illustrated one embodiment of a system for presenting a previously defined composite web page 500. As shown, the system includes a processor 510 and memory 515. The memory 515 is connected to the processor 510 and stores processor executable instructions for presenting the composite web page.

[0051] The memory 515 includes composite web page presentation logic 520 for presenting the composite web page to a user. The composite web page presentation logic 520 employs a composite web page request receiver 525 to receive a request for presentation of the composite web page. The presentation logic 520 also employs an element identifier 530 to identify the elements associated with the requested composite web page. In one embodiment, element identifier 530 accesses a persistent registry, such as page registry 160 (shown in FIG. 1) and retrieves a specification containing data defining the composite web page. The specification may include data not only identifying the selected elements of the composite web page, but also data identifying the source web page for each selected element. The specification may further include information regarding how to retrieve the source web pages and extract each selected element from its associated source web page.

[0052] An element retriever 535 retrieves the element(s) identified by element identifier 530. In a one embodiment, element retriever 535 retrieves the latest versions of each source web page that contains an element selected for presentation on the composite web page, according to information stored in the registry. Each selected element is extracted from its associated source web pages, based on the specification of the composite page.

[0053] Composite web page presentation logic 520 utilizes a composite web page renderer 540 to display the web page for the user. In one embodiment, renderer 540 determines the relative placement of the selected elements, which may be performed in accordance with instructions or data stored in the specification. The stored instructions or data may be defined by a user during a composite page definition process or may be automatically determined based on one or more factors, including certain characteristics of the selected elements. In another embodiment, renderer 540 automatically determines the placement of elements at the time of rendering. In this embodiment, automatic determination may be based on one or more run-time variables, such as, for example, the dimensions of a window containing the composite web page.

[0054] In alternative embodiments, the systems illustrated in FIGS. 4 and 5 may be embodied as computer readable code stored on a computer readable medium. The code may include one or more computer/processor executable instructions that cause the computer to act in a selected manner. The computer readable medium may be an optical storage device such as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, a magnetic storage device such as a hard disk or floppy disk, an electronic storage device such as a memory card, RAM, ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, or flash memory, or any other storage device capable of storing computer readable processor instructions.

[0055] Referring now to FIG. 6, there is shown a computer screen display 600 illustrating an exemplary graphical user interface for defining a composite web page. Display 600 is a web page dialog that is presented upon user selection of a web page to include in a composite web page.

[0056] Display 600 includes a navigation page 610 that displays the constituent elements of the selected web page. In the illustrated example, the elements of the selected web page are displayed in a tree format according to the source HTML code of the selected web page. The navigation pane enables the user to select a portion of the selected web page for inclusion in the composite web page. In the illustrated example, the user has made a selection 615.

[0057] The presentation associated with the selection 615 is displayed in preview pane 610. Preview pane 620 presents a graphical preview of a selected portion of the web page to provide the user with visual verification the selection 615 is appropriate for the user's purposes. To enlarge or reduce the scope of the selection, the user may click buttons 622 or 624, respectively.

[0058] Display 600 further includes area 630 for displaying the partial content selection criteria. Area 630 may be used to assist the presentation system 500 in identifying the selected elements. This is particularly useful with regard to web pages that are dynamic, such as, for example, pages that display news or other pages that may be frequently updated. The partial content selection criteria defined at 630, may define at least a portion of the specification associated with the content. An example of the specification data is illustrated in FIG. 7.

[0059] FIG. 8 is a computer screen display 800 illustrating the presentation of a composite web page. Display 800 is an exemplary result of methodology 300 performed by system 500. The selection illustrated in FIG. 6 is displayed as part of a composite web page at 810.

[0060] While the disclosed systems and methods may be employed at a single enterprise to assist its users, it is also envisioned that the disclosed systems and methods could be made available by a service provider over the Internet. By accessing a web site employing an applet implementing the methods of the disclosed methods, a service provider may allow the public to create their own composite views of other web pages. Such a web site may derive its revenue from the traffic generated from such a service, for example, by charging a nominal subscription fee, or by generating revenue from advertisements. In addition, such a web site may also serve as a portal to other web sites, and derive revenue from producing pre-defined composite views available to its users, and/or charge a fee for other company's content to be included in such a composite view. In another embodiment, a service provider maintaining such a web site may accept subscriptions from other companies, so that a composite web page with content specificied by such a company may be made available, for example, to a specific group of individual users, to the general public, or to other companies, such as for business-to-business purposes.

[0061] Unlike typical web portal businesses, such as yahoo.com or msn.com, a business method employing the disclosed methods and systems enable the user to create a composite view of any web pages over the Internet, by simply connecting to a web site and using the service provided.

[0062] Although the disclosed systems and methods have been described in terms of specific embodiments and applications, persons skilled in the art can, in light of this teaching, generate additional embodiments, including various changes, substitutions and alterations, without exceeding the scope or departing from the spirit of the disclosure. Accordingly, it is to be understood that the drawing and description in this disclosure are proffered to facilitate comprehension of the systems and methods, and should not be construed to limit the scope thereof.