Creating and maintaining images of browsed documents
AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC
InventorChetley T. Laughlin
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Embodiments automatically create dynamic thumbnail images corresponding to accessed web pages. Thumbnails, snapshots, or other images are generated for each of a plurality of the web pages (e.g., viewed or visited by a user, or pre-fetched by a browser). The images are provided to the user as, for example, active tiles in a browser tab or on a desktop background. As content on the web pages updates, the images are re-created and visually distinguished from other images to enable the user to quickly identify the images that correspond to updated web pages. The user interacts with the images to view the corresponding web pages.
Claims20
A system for providing dynamic thumbnail images corresponding to web pages on a mobile computing device, said system comprising:
- a memory area associated with a mobile computing device, said memory area storing a plurality of web pages accessed by a user, said memory area further storing a dynamic thumbnail image of one or more of the plurality of web pages;
- a display including a tile user interface and a browser user interface;
- and
- a processor programmed to:
- display, to the user in the tile user interface, one or more of the dynamic thumbnail images stored in the memory area;
- subsequently update one or more of the web pages stored in the memory area;
- for each of the updated web pages,
- re-create the dynamic thumbnail image of the web page;
- and
- visually distinguish the re-created image from the dynamic thumbnail images corresponding to web pages that have not been updated;
- and
- display the visually distinguished, re-created dynamic thumbnail images to the user in the tile user interface to enable the user to determine, without executing an application associated with the one or more of the web pages, that the one or more of the web pages have been updated.
A method comprising:
- displaying, to a user in a tile user interface on a computing device, dynamic thumbnail images for a plurality of web pages, wherein one or more of the web pages are subsequently updated;
- for each of the updated web pages,
- re-creating the dynamic thumbnail image of the web page;
- and
- visually distinguishing the re-created image from the dynamic thumbnail images corresponding to web pages that have not been updated;
- and
- displaying the visually distinguished, re-created dynamic thumbnail images to the user in the tile user interface to enable the user to determine, without executing an application associated with the one or more of the web pages, that the one or more of the web pages have been updated.
One or more computer storage media embodying computer-executable components, said components comprising:
- a browser component that when executed causes at least one processor to cache a plurality of web pages accessed by a user with a computing device;
- a user interface component that when executed causes at least one processor to receive a request from the user to create a thumbnail image of at least one of the web pages cached by the browser component, said user interface component further creating and providing the thumbnail image for display to the user on the computing device in response to the received request, wherein the browser component subsequently updates the web page corresponding to the created thumbnail image;
- and
- a notification component that when executed causes at least one processor to re-create the thumbnail image corresponding to the updated web page and to alter the re-created thumbnail image to indicate to the user that the corresponding web page has been updated, wherein the user interface component presents the altered, re-created image for display to the user on the computing device to enable the user to determine, without executing an application associated with the web page, that the web page has been updated.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.