Visual editor for electronic mail
AssigneeConstant Contact, Inc.
InventorsYan Gao, Sridhar Gorantla, Paul McLaughlin, Michael Fitterman
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A visual editor for generating a custom email message. An editor interface may display an approximation of an email message. A user may customize content and layout of an email message through the editor interface. A user interface system may track such customizations to enable faster remote operations to be performed on content of the email message. A plurality of substantially modular renderers may enable a plurality of different output representations to be generated from a single stored representation of the email message.
Claims86
A computer-implemented method for generating at least one custom email message based, at least in part, on input from a user of a computer system, the computer system having a display, the method comprising acts of:
- A) presenting, to the user in the display of the computer system, an editor interface displaying an initial approximation of an email message comprising a plurality of content blocks;
- B) accepting, through the editor interface, at least one customization of at least one of a content of at least one of the plurality of content blocks and a layout of the plurality of content blocks;
- and
- C) displaying through the editor interface a customized approximation of the email message based, at least in part, on the initial approximation of the email message and the at least one customization.
A computer-implemented method for generating at least one custom email message based, at least in part, on input from a user of a computer system, the computer system having a display, the method comprising acts of:
- A) presenting, to the user in the display of the computer system, an editor interface displaying an initial approximation of an email message comprising a plurality of content blocks;
- B) accepting, through the editor interface, a customization of a content of at least one of the plurality of content blocks;
- C) accepting, through the editor interface, a customization of a layout of the plurality of content blocks;
- D) tracking the customization of the content and customization of the layout in a memory of a user interface server;
- and
- E) storing at least a representation of the customized content of the at least one of the plurality of content blocks in at least one database table on a database server.
The method of claim38, wherein the act A includes transmitting the initial approximation of the email message from the user interface server to the user.
A computer-implemented method for generating at least one custom email message based, at least in part, on input from a user of a computer system, the computer system having a display, the method comprising acts of:
- A) receiving from the user an indication of a desired version of the custom email message;
- B) selecting an email renderer based, at least in part, on the indication of the desired version of the custom email message;
- C) rendering the desired version of the custom email message using the selected email renderer;
- and
- D) presenting, to the user in the display of the computer system, the desired version of the custom email message.
The method of claim C.3, wherein the desired version includes an editor for a device type, and the act C includes generating an editor representation of the customized email message designed for the device type based, at least in part, on a document object model representation of the custom email message.
The method of claim 72, further comprising an act of E) presenting, to the user in the display of the computer system, the edit interface displaying the edit text version.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.