In the context of global hypertext, a new solution to the human interface problem of waiting for the content of a next page to arrive and be displayed by a WWW browser. Small amounts of relevant content are stored and maintained in the hyperlinks themselves. This extra content is revealed to users during download wait time. Hypertext links that contain and reveal extra content are called content laden links. By displaying content which is useful and relevant to the user while the next WWW page is being fetched, useless dead time can be turned into productive time and the satisfaction level of the user increased.

A client/server system for authoring an on-line service uses a server machine accessed a client machine which performs authoring operations on information stored on the server machine comprising the on-line service. Requests for authoring operations to be performed on information on the server machine, for authoring the online service, are translated on the client machine into at least one message which is sent to the server machine. The server machine receives the at least one message from the client machine and performs authoring operations identified in the received at least one message so as to author the online service. This information on the server machine is then made accessible by the server machine to other client systems that can be used to access the information without modifying the information, such as a browser. Generally, when the client machine receives a response message from the server machine, it displays information about performance of the authoring operation by the server, using the response message. The client and server may communicate using the HTTP protocol over a TCP/IP connection. The may also have different file name spaces, requiring the server to maintain and perform mapping between identifiers used by the client and those used on the server. The server may have a server program for processing HTTP messages and a server extension program for processing authoring operations. This extension program can be called via the common gateway interface. The authoring operations to be performed can include storing, creating or modifying information, such as documents and scripts and meta-information about services, documents and scripts on the server. Also, operations for providing a listing of services and documents are also available.

The present invention provides methods and apparatus for a front end navigating tool that may access and manipulate files distributed across different physical machines and platforms. The front end navigating tool communicates with a plurality of server processes, resident on networked servers, to perform all types of file manipulations such as such as debugging and editing. The server processes communicate with gateway processes resident on the same machine as the calling server process that perform the desired function on any of a plurality of program segments that may distributed across a plurality of computers. The present invention supports any type of function, such as debugging, browsing and editing, that may be applied to a file.

A method and apparatus for managing the display of multiple windows in a computer user interface in an efficient manner. Two separate window areas are allocated in a display area. A first area is an overlapped window area where windows may overlap each other. A second area is a tiled window area where windows may not overlap each other. User interface controls are provided to allow the user to designate a displayed window as tiled or overlapped and the designated window is moved from area to area, accordingly. Windows in either area may be resized and repositioned, although with some restrictions in the tiled area. The computer system automatically adjusts window and area sizes within predefined limits.

A connection dialog component of an extensible and replaceable network-oriented component system enables a user to specify address information of a particular resource coupled to a computer network. The network-oriented system includes novel application programming interfaces for the connection dialog component that facilitates integration with an underlying software component architecture. Such a highly-modular cooperating layered-arrangement between the network component system and the component architecture allows the connection dialog component to be replaced, extended or modified by other connection dialog-type components, while ensuring that these latter components "seamlessly" interact with existing components and component editors of the system.