Providing user interface (UI) elements in virtual machine sessions at reduced latency

A method for operating virtual machine sessions provided by a virtualization server in communication with at least one client computing device to provide a hosted application that includes user interface (UI) elements comprising embedded non-text graphic objects, the method comprising:

• accessing the hosted application from at least one client computing device during one of the virtual machine sessions for receiving a hierarchical tree of the UI elements, the client computing device operative for:
• displaying some of the UI elements as local virtual UI elements and based upon the received hierarchical tree maintaining other UI elements hidden,
• applying user input to one of the displayed local virtual UI elements,
• generating a local virtual UI element graphics overlay and displaying the local virtual UI element to which user input has been applied and one or more previously hidden UI elements from the hierarchical tree corresponding to a predicted response to the user input from the visualization server wherein the predicted response includes panning and scaling of the displayed UI elements that include the local virtual UI elements to which user input has been applied and the one or more previously hidden UI elements from the hierarchical tree;
• and
• the client computing device in response to the visualization server updating UI element graphics, being operative for receiving the updated UI element graphics and replacing at least a portion of the local virtual UI element graphics overlay corresponding to the predicted response to the user input with the received updated UI element graphics corresponding to the actual response to the user input response to the user input from said virtualization server wherein the actual response includes panning and scaling of the UI elements.

A non-transitory computer readable medium for operating virtual machine sessions provided by a virtualization server in communication with at least one client computing device and providing a hosted application that includes user interface (UI) elements comprising embedded graphic objects, and with the non-transitory computer readable medium having a plurality of computer executable instructions for causing the at least one computing device to perform steps comprising:

• accessing the hosted application from the at least one client computing device during one of the virtual machine sessions and receiving a hierarchical tree of the UI elements;
• displaying some of the UI elements as local virtual UI elements and based upon the received hierarchical tree maintaining other UI elements hidden;
• applying user input to one of the displayed local virtual UI elements;
• and
• generating a local virtual UI element graphics overlay and displaying the local virtual UI element to which user input has been applied and one or more previously hidden UI elements from the hierarchical tree corresponding to a predicted response to the user input from the virtualization server wherein the actual response includes panning and scaling of the UI displayed elements that include the local virtual UI elements to which user input has been applied and the one or more previously hidden UI elements from the hierarchical tree;
• and in response to the visualization server updating UI element graphics, the at least one client computing device is operative for receiving the updated UI element graphics and replacing at least a portion of the local virtual UI element graphics overlay corresponding to the predicted response to the user input with the received updated UI element graphics corresponding to the actual response to the user input response to the user input from said virtualization server wherein the actual response includes panning and scaling of the UI elements.