Dynamically enabling an interactive element within a non-interactive view of a screen sharing session

A system for providing interactivity for a view only teleconference comprising:

• a computer with memory and at least one processor;
• a collaboration engine comprising computer program instructions executing in the memory by the processor of the computer, the instructions performing a method comprising:
• establishing a non-interactive screen sharing session between a Web browser executing in memory of a receiving computing device and a sending computing device;
• identifying a screen buffer for the Web browser containing a graphical representation of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) disposed within the contents prior to presenting the contents of the screen buffer within the Web browser executing in the memory of the computing device;
• extracting from the graphical representation of the URL, a text form of the URL using optical character recognition of an image of the URL and then regular expression matching the text form of the URL against known URL expressions;
• determining an area surrounding the graphical representation comprising of a position and dimensions of the graphical representation within the contents utilizing feature detection and edge detection;
• replacing the graphical representation of the URL in the screen buffer with an interactive element in real-time, wherein the interactive element including the text form of the URL that when selected transmits a request by the Web browser to retrieve a Web page at the URL;
• responsive to the replacing, presenting the contents of the screen buffer within the Web browser;
• and,
• on condition that the graphical representation of the URL is not determined during the extracting, manually selecting the graphical representation of the URL using a selection tool upon the contents of the screen buffer once presented in the Web browser and then performing the extracting, replacing and presenting.

A method for providing interactivity for a “view only” teleconference session comprising:

• establishing a non-interactive screen sharing session between a Web browser executing in memory of a receiving computing device and a sending computing device;
• identifying a screen buffer for the Web browser containing a graphical representation of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) disposed within the contents prior to presenting the contents of the screen buffer within the Web browser executing in the memory of the computing device;
• extracting from the graphical representation of the URL, a text form of the URL using optical character recognition of an image of the URL and then regular expression matching the text form of the URL against known URL expressions;
• determining an area surrounding the graphical representation comprising of a position and dimensions of the graphical representation within the contents utilizing feature detection and edge detection;
• replacing the graphical representation of the URL in the screen buffer with an interactive element in real-time, wherein the interactive element including the text form of the URL that when selected transmits a request by the Web browser to retrieve a Web page at the URL;
• responsive to the replacing, presenting the contents of the screen buffer within the Web browser;
• and,
• on condition that the graphical representation of the URL is not determined during the extracting, manually selecting the graphical representation of the URL using a selection tool upon the contents of the screen buffer once presented in the Web browser and then performing the extracting, replacing and presenting.