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Description  |
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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to information retrieval in a computer network. More particularly, it relates to an improved method for providing a set of bookmarks in a browser for retrieving Web pages in an Internet environment.
It is well known to couple a plurality of computer systems into a network of computer systems. In this way, the collective resources available within the network may be shared among users, thus allowing each connected user to enjoy resources
which would not be economically feasible to provide to each user individually. With the growth of the Internet, sharing of computer resources has been brought to a much wider audience. The Internet has become a cultural medium in today's society for
both information and entertainment. Government agencies employ Internet sites for a variety of informational purposes. For many companies, one or more Internet sites are an integral part of their business; these sites are frequently mentioned in the
companies' television, radio and print advertising.
The World Wide Web, or simply "the Web", is the Internet's multimedia information retrieval system. It is the most commonly used method of transferring data in the Internet environment. Other methods exist such as the File Transfer Protocol
(FTP) and Gopher, but have not achieved the popularity of the Web. Client machines accomplish transactions to Web servers using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is a known application protocol providing users access to files, e.g., text,
graphics, images, sound, video, using a standard page description language known as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML provides basic document formatting and allows the developer to specify "links" to other servers and files. In the Internet
paradigm, a network path to a server is identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) having a special syntax for defining a network connection.
Retrieval of information is generally achieved by the use of an HTML-compatible "browser", e.g., Netscape Navigator, at a client machine. When the user of the browser specifies a link via a URL, the client issues a request to a naming service to
map a hostname in the URL to a particular network IP address at which the server is located. The naming service returns a list of one or more IP addresses that can respond to the request. Using one of the IP addresses, the browser establishes a
connection to a server. If the server is available, it returns a document or other object formatted according to HTML. Web browsers have become the primary interface for access to many network and server services.
The entry of the URL in the entry field of a browser can be a difficult task for many users. While the URL for the main Web page of a major company can be relatively brief, e.g., www.ibm.com, subsidiary pages can have very lengthy URLs in, at
least to the average user, an arcane syntax. Recognizing the difficulties involved, the developers of browsers have provided one useful means of returning to a favorite URL, by the creation of user stored "bookmarks" in the browser.
Web browsers offer many options in the user interface for creating a bookmark list. Basic options let the user add and access a page through a pop-up menu on the location toolbar or through a menu pulldown from the main menu bar. A simple way
to add a bookmark for a favorite page is to enter the URL to travel to the page, once there, open the Bookmarks menu and choose the Add Bookmarks selection. This set of actions adds the URL of the current page as an item in the Bookmarks menu.
Once created, bookmarks offer a means of page retrieval. The user can cause the browser to display his bookmark list and select among his bookmarks to go directly to a favorite page. Thus, the user is not forced to enter a lengthy URL nor
retrace the original tortuous route through the Internet by which he may have arrived at the Web site. Once a bookmark is added to a bookmark list, in general, the bookmark becomes a permanent part of the browser until removed. The permanence and
accessibility of bookmarks have made them a valuable means for personalizing a user's Internet access through the browser.
Yet despite their usefulness, the current arrangement of bookmarks is not without its flaws. As the numbers of web sites and web pages on these sites have increased dramatically, so has the number of bookmarks that a typical web browser user
maintains on his browser. It is not uncommon that hundreds of bookmarks be stored in a bookmark file after a few weeks of web browsing. While folders in some browsers have helped the user group his bookmarks by category, in reality, the bookmark file
is one huge list of bookmarks, all accessible to the user through the browser. This present invention is concerned with providing structure and additional function to this amorphous entity, the bookmark file.
One problem not addressed by the current bookmark schemes is access control. In the current browser environment, all bookmarks are accessible to the user at all times. There are certain environments, e.g., a work environment or a home
environment with young children, in which this power is not an unmixed blessing.
The most common way of adding bookmarks to the bookmark file in the browser is manually intensive. Each bookmark is added one at a time. A user visits a web site, then selects that site as a bookmark entry and, if desired, categorizes it
manually. Furthermore, the current technology used in browsers to update bookmarks, i.e. removing the old address and entering the new one, is very slow and inefficient.
Bookmarks are currently used merely as an aid for navigation on a site by site basis. Once at a web site, the bookmark list is unused in navigation until a new web site in the user's bookmark list is desired. Bookmarks lend a uniform navigation
means to an otherwise unordered Web; it is unfortunate that their utility has been untapped for intrasite navigation.
These problems as well as others are addressed in various embodiments of the present invention.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to improve the management of bookmarks in the browser.
It is another object of the invention to provide bookmarks sets from a web page selectable by a browser.
It is another object of the invention to automatically update a browser bookmark list of a subsequent visit to a bookmarked web site.
These and other objects are accomplished by providing bookmark sets to a browser in a computer system by downloading a respective bookmark set as a unit. The process begins by creating a bookmark set at a first computer system computer system
coupled to a network, the bookmark set containing a set of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and downloadable as a unit one or more computer systems. A request for downloading the bookmark set results in sending the bookmark set via the network to a
second computer system. The bookmark set is received and used at the second computer system by a browser to access the set of URLs. The request for downloading the bookmark set can be initiated at the first computer system as a push operation or at the
second computer system in a pull operation. The bookmark set can be set for automatic update; if changes are made at the first computer system, the updated bookmark set to the second computer system. The bookmark set can be incorporated in a downloaded
web document. The browser parses for a tag in the web document which indicates the presence of a bookmark set in the web document and prompts for whether the incorporated bookmark set is to made available for use by the browser.
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
These objects, features and advantages will be more readily understood with reference to the attached figures and following description.
FIG. 1 depicts a computer system configured according to the teachings of the present invention.
FIG. 2 depicts the processing of an HTTP request in the Internet environment.
FIG. 3 shows a flow diagram of the creation of a list of bookmarks.
FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of rendering a bookmark set the active set according to the present invention.
FIG. 5 shows a flow diagram of using the bookmark set architecture of the present invention to limit access to the URLs of the active bookmark set.
FIGS. 6A and 6B respectively depict user interfaces for prior art browsers and a browser which follows the present bookmark set architecture.
FIG. 7 illustrates the use of a blacklist bookmark set to control the URLs visited by the browser.
FIG. 8 is a flowchart of the blacklist bookmark set embodiment.
FIG. 9 show a user interface for downloading a bookmark set.
FIG. 10 is a flow diagram showing a pull process for network components in a bookmark set download.
FIG. 11 is a flow diagram showing a push process for a bookmark set download initiated at the browser.
FIG. 12 shows the user interface of a browser when the web site of URLs change.
FIG. 13 is a diagram showing the interaction of network components in an bookmark set update.
FIG. 14 is a flowchart depicting a process for dynamic update of bookmarks.
FIG. 15 shows the use of a consumer hot list at a retail web site.
FIG. 16 is a flowchart of the consumer hot list process.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The invention may be run on a variety of computers or collection of computers under a number of different operating systems. The computer could be, for example, a personal computer, a mini computer, mainframe computer or a computer running in a
distributed network of other computers. Although the specific choice of computer is limited only by processor speed and disk storage requirements, computers in the IBM PC series of computers could be used in the present invention. One operating system
which an IBM personal computer may run is IBM's OS/2 Warp 4.0. In the alternative, the computer system might be in the IBM RISC System/6000 (TM) line of computers which run on the AIX (TM) operating system.
In FIG. 1, a computer 10, comprising a system unit 11, a keyboard 12, a mouse 13 and a display 14 are depicted in block diagram form. The system unit 11 includes a system bus or plurality of system buses 21 to which various components are
coupled and by which communication between the various components is accomplished. The microprocessor 22 is connected to the system bus 21 and is supported by read only memory (ROM) 23 and random access memory (RAM) 24 also connected to system bus 21.
A microprocessor in the IBM PC series of computers is one of the Intel family of microprocessors including the 386, 486 or Pentium microprocessors. However, other microprocessors including, but not limited to, Motorola's family of microprocessors such
as the 68000, 68020 or the 68030 microprocessors and various Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) microprocessors such as the PowerPC chip manufactured by IBM. Other RISC chips made by Hewlett Packard, Sun, Motorola and others may be used in the
specific computer.
The ROM 23 contains among other code the Basic Input-Output system (BIOS) which controls basic hardware operations such as the interaction of the processor and the disk drives and the keyboard. The RAM 24 is the main memory into which the
operating system and application programs are loaded. The memory management chip 25 is connected to the system bus 21 and controls direct memory access operations including, passing data between the RAM 24 and hard disk drive 26 and floppy disk drive
27. The CD ROM 32 also coupled to the system bus 21 is used to store a large amount of data, e.g., a multimedia program or presentation.
Also connected to this system bus 21 are various I/O controllers: The keyboard controller 28, the mouse controller 29, the video controller 30, and the audio controller 31. As might be expected, the keyboard controller 28 provides the hardware
interface for the keyboard 12, the mouse controller 29 provides the hardware interface for mouse 13, the video controller 30 is the hardware interface for the display 14, and the audio controller 31 is the hardware interface for the speakers 15. An I/O
controller 40 such as a Token Ring Adapter enables communication over a network 46 to other similarly configured data processing systems.
One of the preferred implementations of the invention is as sets of instructions 48-52 resident in the random access memory 24 of one or more computer systems configured generally as described above. Until required by the computer system, the
set of instructions may be stored in another computer readable memory, for example, in the hard disk drive 26, or in a removable memory such as an optical disk for eventual use in the CD-ROM 32 or in a floppy disk for eventual use in the floppy disk
drive 27. Further, the set of instructions can be stored in the memory of another computer and transmitted over a local area network or a wide area network such as the Internet when desired by the user. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the
physical storage of the sets of instructions physically changes the medium upon which it is stored electrically, magnetically, or chemically so that the medium carries computer readable information. While it is convenient to describe the invention in
terms of instructions, symbols, characters, or the like, the reader should remember that all of these and similar terms should be associated with the appropriate physical elements.
Further, the invention is often described in terms that could be associated with a human operator. While the operations performed may be in response to user input, no action by a human operator is desirable in any of the operations described
herein which form part of the present invention; the operations are machine operations processing electrical signals to generate other electrical signals.
A web browser is a program that allows viewing the content of the Internet. A well known web browser is Netscape Navigator, however, many browsers exist. Some are general purpose and have many capabilities to provide a variety of functions.
Other are less capable and special purpose. In general, a web browser is a program which is capable of parsing and presenting a document written in HTML, although those skilled in the art would appreciate that other markup languages such as dynamic HTML
and XML will be used in the browsers of the future. In the present invention, the browser must also be equipped with a bookmark manager, a software module which handles sets of bookmarks which provide referents, typically URLs, to various locations in
the Internet. The bookmark manager is preferably part of the browser itself.
Upon starting a web browser, the first page the user sees is the current "home page". The URL of the home page can be regarded as the first bookmark in the browser. Although entry of a URL is one way of browsing the Web, the user may also
traverse to another Web page by clicking highlighted words, images or graphics in a page activating an associated hyperlink to bring another page of related information to the screen. Each hyperlink contains URL location information that serves as an
address of the web site. Navigational aids such as Back and Forward toolbar buttons are available to proceed back or forward to pages which have been previously accessed. Other navigation aids are the bookmarks which are used in the present invention.
In the Internet, the Web server accepts a client request and returns a response back to the client. A series of server computers may be involved in the retrieval of a specific web page. The operation of the server program is governed by a
number of server application functions (SAFs), each of which is configured to execute in a certain stop of a sequence. This sequence, illustrated in FIG. 2, begins with the authorization translation step 75 during which the web server translates any
authorization information sent by the web client into a user and a group. If necessary, the step 75 may decode a message to get the actual client request. At the name translation step 77, the URL associated with the request may or may not be translated
into a system-dependent file name, a redirection URL or a mirror site. In the path checks step 79, the server performs various tests on the resulting path to ensure that the given client may retrieve the document.
In step 81, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) type information, e.g., text/html, image/gif, for the given document is recognized. In the service step 83, the Web server routine selects an internal server function to send the retrieved
information back to the requesting web client. This function can run the normal server service routine to return a file or some other server function, such as a program to return to return a custom document or a CGI program. At the Add Log step 85,
information about the transaction is recorded.
A URL or "Uniform Resource Locator" is defined in RFC 1945, which is incorporated herein by reference. As is well known, the URL is typically of the format: http://somehost/somedirectory?parameters . . . " where "somehost" is the hostname
position of the URL, "somedirectory" is a directory in which the web page may be found. The usual manner in which a URL is resolved into an actual IP address for a web server is through the use of a nameserver. In an internet or intranet network, a
nameserver maps hostnames in URLs to actual network addresses. An example of a nameserver is the Domain Name Service (DNS) currently implemented in the Internet. The process of having a Web client request a hostname and address from a nameserver is
sometimes called resolution. In TCP/IP, the nameserver resolves the hostname into a list of one or more IP addresses which are returned to the Web client on an HTTP request. Each IP address identifies a server which hosts the requested content made by
the browser.
Each bookmark entry is comprised of a URL to a favorite page and an associated descriptive text string which describes the web page in such a way to be easily recognized by the user. The descriptive text can be entered by the user when creating
the bookmark set. Also, the typical browser default, when the user does not enter any descriptive text, is to use the text within an embedded "title" tag which is often sent as part of the HTML header. Other information such as pointers to cached
copies of the web page can be included in the bookmark entry.
Named Internet Bookmark Sets
Current web browsers process bookmarks as single URL entities within a single repository of bookmarks. Some browsers have the capability to organize the bookmarks by folders; however, even if a particular folder is chosen, all bookmarks remain
available for selection without restrictions. While the user can group the bookmarks into several user-specified categories, an entity which operates like the "bookmark set" described by the Applicants is lacking. The inability of prior art browsers to
process groups of bookmarks, particularly subgroups of the overall bookmark list, as an entity is disadvantageous.
For example, it is possible to include a list of bookmarks in an electronic message to another user. However, this takes a lot of manual work by one user to make the list and more work by a second user to incorporate the list into the second
user's browser's bookmark list. It is not possible to request a downloadable bookmark set which is smoothly integrated in the bookmark file of prior art browsers in a single operation.
As another example, in prior art browsers, bookmarks can not be installed as a set, nor once installed can bookmarks be managed, e.g., stored, selected or deleted, as a bookmark set. When installing bookmark entries, prior art web browsers
require the users to install each bookmark individually rather than installating a group of bookmarks as a set. Prior art web browsers do not support the concept of deleting a bookmark set, where all the bookmark entries are deleted as a set. The
maintenance of bookmark entries in the prior art web browsers requires manual intervention, handling individual URLs for all bookmark entries.
This invention creates the concept of "bookmark sets" to provide greater capability than exists in the prior art bookmark technology.
A bookmark set is an entity which has attributes of its own, e.g., active vs. inactive, and manages attributes and behavior, e.g., dynamic vs. static, of its individual bookmarks. A bookmark set is a finite collection of bookmarks that have
static and dynamic characteristics. An action such as selection, deletion or e-mail transmission can be accomplished for the entire set in a single operation by the user.
Since the bookmark list in prior art web browsers is basically one huge list, they allow unrestricted access to all bookmark entries, regardless of classification. The present invention adds the concept of an "active" bookmark set. Each
bookmark set is a collection of bookmark entries that can be made active or inactive as a working set. The active bookmark set comprises the only bookmarks which can be accessed through the bookmark mechanism.
In some embodiments below, the active bookmark set is the only list of web sites, including their subdirectories, that can be visited by use of the browser. In these embodiments, the main "user" is the program developer, the system administrator
or parent, who allows less privileged users limited access to the Internet. Those web sites outside the active set require special password permission to access. In these embodiments, a bookmark set is not only a collection of URLs, but precludes an
unprivileged user from unlimited browsing or adding more URLs to the bookmark set. This is not possible in current browsers in which the bookmark function can not be configured to limit the bookmark list to a specific URL set.
Bookmark sets allow the user to create specific sets of URLs depending on his or her needs. For example, a privileged user can configure an Office bookmark set, a Home bookmark set and a Daughter bookmark set to satisfy each of the environments
and users of the browser. Some or all of the bookmark sets may be password protected to use. In some embodiments, there is an additional password to modify or create a bookmark set. A sample "work" bookmark set is given below:
Work:
www.HTML.Reference/Definitions"//Descriptors/index.html
www.Javasoft.Javadefinition.com
w3.myproject/FVN.results.com
w3.status report.project office/myproject.status
w3.server.performance/my project.results
w3.myproject/resources1/people
The text descriptors are the "Title Page" that comes in the HTTP header.
The invention allows the association of a home page with each respective bookmark set. Thus, when the user switches the active bookmark set from his Home bookmark set to his Work bookmark set, his home page switches as well. An alternative
embodiment is to have a home page bookmark set. Each successive activation of the home page button of the browser would open a different home page window until all of the configured home pages were retrieved.
As described above, the invention allows the user to create specific and unique bookmark sets for each of the tasks for which he uses the browser. Although the bookmark set could be designated active in many ways, a bookmark set can be activated
through a browser configuration option. For example, by a "Select active bookmark set" option in a bookmark pulldown, the user can specify the unique bookmark set that is active at any one session.
For example, on a portable computer which is used both at home and work, a user can have a "work" bookmark set, a "hobbies" bookmark set, a "news" bookmark set, a "kids" bookmark set and a "financial" bookmark set using this invention. The
members of the household who use the computer can possess the appropriate passwords to the appropriate bookmark sets. They make their bookmark sets active through the use of the bookmark pulldown.
The user at work can select his "work" bookmark set as his active bookmark set. All other bookmark sets are inactive and can only be activated through the browser preferences menu. For the privileged user, the ability to manage bookmark sets as
a collection of bookmarks instead of managing one URL at a time like in the folder paradigm is advantageous. For example, the ability to change an attribute of all the bookmarks, e.g., inactive, active, dynamic, static, or to perform an action such as
deletion or password protection for all the bookmarks in the active set is part of the invention. Also, the privileged user may exercise control over the web sites to which non-priviledged users have access.
An illustrative method of creating a bookmark set according to the invention is shown in FIG. 3. Those skilled in the art will recognize that other steps in other user interfaces may be used to assemble a bookmark set. In step 101, the bookmark
manager is activated in response to user selection of the bookmark item on the browser pulldown menu. In step 103, after the menu item "Create named bookmark sets" is selected through a browser preferences menu in the browser, a creation routine for the
bookmark set is initiated. In step 105, the user is prompted for a password. Step 107 tests whether the password was entered successfully. If not entered successfully within the number of attempts allowed by the browser security protocol, the process
ends, step 109. At this point, other actions such as browser lockup, disconnect from the network as well as various alarms are possible.
Presuming the user successfully enters a password, in step 111, a new bookmark file is allocated for the new bookmark set. In the preferred embodiment, a bookmark set definition is contained within a single bookmark file. At the time of the
creation of the bookmark set, the user is prompted for a name for the set, step 113. Next, the user can specify a URL, i.e. bookmark, that belongs to the set, step 115. A text descriptor for each bookmark is also added in this step. The system tests
each bookmark and that a bookmark set name and at least one URL is added to the bookmark set, step 117. If not, the user is prompted that there is not enough information to create a bookmark list, step 119, and given an opportunity to provide the
missing information. In step 121, the user is asked whether there is another bookmark to add to the set. If so, the process returns to step 115.
The user is queried whether the bookmark set is to be password protected, in step 123. The user is prompted for the password which becomes part of the bookmark set, step 125. Step 127 represents the creation of the bookmark set and the addition
of its name into a menu of selectable bookmark sets. Once created, the users with the appropriate permissions can access the bookmark set.
The selection of the active bookmark set through the browser preferences menu is shown in FIG. 4. In step 151, the names of the selectable bookmark sets are displayed in tabular form by the browser. Those password protected may be marked by
some indicia, e.g., an icon or coloration. In step 153, in response to user selection of a bookmark set to be active, the system retrieves password information for the bookmark set, if any. If there is password protection, the user is prompted for the
password, step 155. If it is not correctly entered, step 156, after the allowed number of attempts, the process exits, step 157. Various lockup actions as described above may ta | | |
