JP2001306450A - Network image communication system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a system enabling a user to quickly view a web page(WP) by improving the transmission speed of digital picture data to a destination computer(DC). SOLUTION: An image compression program is used for reducing an original image file(IF), a server program(SP) is used for the purpose of forming a new WP from an original WP and the new WP consists of image reference for referring to the reduced IF instead of the original IF and a hyperlink for relating the image reference of the new WP to the reduced IF. When a browsing program of the DC sends a request, the SP sends the new WP and the browsing program displays the new WP, and when the hyperlink is triggered, the server transfers a WP including reference to the original IF to the DC and the browsing program displays the original digital IF.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a network image communication system, and more particularly, to a network image communication system that allows a web page to be displayed on a browser more quickly.

[0002]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The past decade has shown the explosive growth of the Internet, most notably the World Wide Web (WWW). This growing growth has also led to an increase in sophisticated web pages that contain large amounts of graphical information.

[0003] Web pages embed this graphical information by referring to digital image files.
When a web browser requests a web page file from a server, it parses the file by referring to the digital image file. Based on these references to the web page file, the browser makes the same or other requests for the digital image file presented to the server. Digital image files are extremely large. Transferring such a large file overloads the communication bandwidth. Such overloads can lead to frustrating delays for the user.

[0004] One solution to this problem is to optimize the browser to make requests for digital image files only when explicitly instructed to do so by the user. Such systems typically replace boxes with buttons instead of the actual images contained in the file. When the user clicks the button, the browser makes a request to download the requested digital image file. When file data comes in, the box is filled with digital image data.

In principle, this appears to be a useful method, but in practice this is only confusing. Many web pages mainly consist of digital images. Under this system, users are often shown a jumble of boxes, which has little or no meaning. Thus, the user usually avoids such extreme measures and instead waits for the entire data set on the incoming web page.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is therefore a first object of the present invention to provide a system for viewing a web page more quickly by making the transmission of digital image data to a destination computer faster. .

[0007]

An object of the present invention is to provide an Internet web server including a server program, an image reduction program, and at least one original web page, and at least one destination connected to the web server through a communication network. The original web page contains an image reference to the original digital image file, and the image reduction program creates a reduced digital image file that is similar in appearance but smaller in size to the original digital image file. Used to reduce the original digital image file referenced by the original web page in a predetermined manner, the server program is used to form a new web page by the original web page, and the new web page is Original digital image file At least one destination connected to the web server through the communication network, comprising: an image reference that refers to the reduced digital image file; and a hyperlink that associates the reduced digital image file with the image reference of the new web page. The destination computer includes a display terminal that displays text and images, and an Internet browsing program that communicates with a server program of the server through a communication network and displays a web page sent from the server program on the display terminal. When the browsing program sends a request to the web server's server program requesting the original web page, the server program sends the browsing program a request for the original web page. Instead of sending a new web page, the browsing program displays the new web page, which includes an image reference to the reduced digital image file on the display terminal, and allows the user of the destination computer to reduce the reduced digital image. When triggering the hyperlink associated with the reference to the file, the server program forwards the web page containing the reference to the original digital image file to the destination computer, and the browsing program then places the original digital image on the display terminal. This is achieved by a network image communication system displaying image files.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown a network image communication system for transmitting digital images of a web page more quickly according to the present invention. The network image communication system 8 includes an Internet web server 10, a destination computer 20, and a communication network 30. Internet web server 1
0 and the destination computer 20 use the communication network 30 to exchange information. In its broadest form, communication network 30 is the Internet. Communication network 30 also includes a local area network (LA) comprising two or more networking devices.
N), ie, an intranet.

[0009] The destination computer 20 comprises a display terminal 22 and an Internet browsing program 24. In this example, destination computer 20 is a standard personal computer suitably configured with one or more commercially available Internet browsers. However, destination computer 2
0 may also be, for example, a television set-top box,
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that any browser-enabled computing device, such as a personal data assistant (PDA) or a cellular phone, may be used.

Internet browsing program 2
4 shows a web page to the user, and uses the display terminal 22 to receive user input. Generally, such inputs consist of so-called "clicks". When a user clicks on a hyperlink, the browser attempts to download the information referenced by the hyperlink. All of these are well known to those skilled in the art.

The Internet web server 10 includes a server program 12, an image reduction program 14, and at least one web page 16. In the following description, a web page refers to at least one image reference.
nce) 17 and is assumed to consist of a series of hypertext markup language (HTML) instructions. Image reference 17 indicates the source path of the original image digital file (not shown in FIG. 1), which forms at least part of the image information in the web file. The original digital image file resides on the Internet web server 10 or another server.

Referring to FIG. 2, this illustrates the operation of system 8. Internet browsing program 24
Requesting the original web page 16 from the Internet web server 10, the following steps occur: The server program 12 analyzes the web page 16 for any image references. In this case, it finds the image reference 17, which indicates the original digital image file 19. The image file 19 exists on the server 10 or does not exist. Original digital image file 1
If 9 is not present on server 10, it is accessed via network 30.

2. The contents of the original digital image file 19 are input to the image reduction program 14. The image reduction program 14 forms a reduced digital image file 18. This reduced image file 18 is very similar to the original digital image file 19 except that its dimensions have been reduced, ie, it is a thumbnail of the original digital image file 19.

3. The server program builds a new web page 40. The new web page 40 is the same as the original web page 16 except that the image reference 17 has been replaced by the image reference 47, and a new hyperlink 49 is associated with this image reference 47.
Image reference 47 points to the reduced image file 18. Hyperlink 49 is the original digital image file 1
Used to look at 9.

4. Instead of requesting the web page 16, a new web page 40 is transmitted to the destination computer 20 via the network 30.

As a result, instead of requesting the original web page 16, the user ends viewing the new web page 40. New web page 40
Is the original web page 16 except that some or all of its graphical images have been reduced in size.
Is the same as Some images do not need to be reduced because they are already small in size. However, larger images must be reduced. This size reduction significantly reduces the download time. Nevertheless, the user can still see the exact representation of the image of the original web page 16.

When the user enters the original digital image file 19
User wants to see the hyperlink 49
It is only necessary to click on that reduced image of the new web page 40 to trigger. This causes the server 10 to send the original digital image file 19 to the destination computer 20. The destination computer 20 launches a new Internet browsing program to display the original digital image file 19, or that is blank but on another web page for the images contained in the original digital image file 19. Is displayed.

The above description is somewhat complicated by the fact that the original web page 16 additionally has one or several hyperlinks associated with the image reference 17. These links need not appear on the new web page 40 if they are replaced by hyperlinks 49. However, by clicking on the hyperlink 49, the original digital image file 19 and all hyperlinks related thereto are revealed to the user.

Referring to FIG. 3, this shows a simple original web page 60. Original web page 60 includes text 62 and original image 66. The text 62 has a hyperlink 63 pointing to another web page 64.
Having. The original image 66 has a hyperlink 67 associated with it pointing to a different web page 68.

Referring to FIG. 4, this shows a new web page 70, which is sent from the server system of the present invention to the destination computer when it requests the original web page 60. The new web page 70 is the same as the original web page 60 of FIG. 3 except that the relatively large digital image 66 has been replaced by its reduced image 76. The hyperlink 73 associated with the text 72 points to the same web page 64. However, the hyperlink 77 for the reduced image 76 is different and points to a new resource 78.

Referring to FIG. 5, this is shown in FIG.
7 shows a web page 80 displayed by triggering its hyperlink 77 when clicking on the reduced image 76 of FIG. The original image 66 is displayed with the hyperlink 82 associated with it. Hyperlink 82 is identical to hyperlink 67 originally associated with original image 66 of original web page 60;
Thereby it points to the same web page 68. Thus, by clicking on the reduced image, the user can restore all of the original information contained in the original web page 60.

Although the above description limits itself to the case of a single image reference of the original web page for simplicity, it is not to which the invention is so limited. In fact, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention operates in the general case of an original web page having multiple image references and hyperlinks associated with those references. Also, the web page may or may not include text, references to other resources (eg, Java programs) or additional hyperlinks.

The present invention provides a new method in which all of the original digital image file references are replaced by reference to the corresponding reduced digital image file created by the image reduction program if reduction is deemed necessary. Serve the request for the original web page by returning the web page. Each of these references to the reduced image has its appropriate hyperlink so that the user can see the corresponding original image. When viewing the original image, all hyperlinks for that original image are also restored. Other resources, such as text, appear as much as possible in the original web page.

Referring back to FIG. 2, when converting the original digital image file 19 into a reduced digital image file 18, the image reduction program 14 may convert two different types of image files: static and dynamic. Take into consideration.

The static image file consists of a single digital image, which is shown on the display terminal 22. The dynamic image file is composed of a plurality of image frames. Each of these image frames is a single digital image. However, the frames are sequentially and repeatedly displayed on the display terminal 22 by the Internet browsing program 24. This creates an animation effect, and such dynamic files are typically referred to as animation files.

Although the present invention described above merely reduced a single frame of a static image file to form a reduced digital image file 18, the image reduction program 14 selects one of the frames of the animation file. , It is reduced as well as a static image to form a reduced digital image file. Thus, when the new web page 40 is viewed on the display terminal 22, a static reduced image is displayed instead of a dynamically reduced image. When the hyperlink associated with the reduced image is triggered, the complete animation file is displayed in its animated form.

Of course, it is also possible for the image reduction program 14 to form a corresponding reduced image animation file for the original animation file. In such a case, instead of seeing a single reduced frame of the original animation file of the new web page 40, a reduced animated image is viewed, ie, multiple reduced frames are The Internet browsing program 24 sequentially shows the user to form a thumbnail animated version 18 of the original animation file 19.

Finally, the present invention allows the user to specify the amount of reduction desired, or to turn off reduction completely to view the original web page directly. This option is provided via a user interface web page on the internet web server 10. Using this web page, the user selects how much image reduction should be done. The server then reads these specific parameters of the user and operates accordingly.

The network image communication system 8 significantly reduces the time required to download a web page by creating a new web page from the requested original. The new web page is similar to the original web page, except for the image reference and its associated hyperlink. The original image and its reference are replaced with a reference to the corresponding reduced image. These reduced images are sent to the destination computer, thus reducing the overall amount of information sent from the server to the destination computer. This reduces the amount of time required to view a web page. The original image and its associated hyperlink can be seen by triggering the corresponding reduced image hyperlink of the new web page.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a network image communication system according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the operation of the system shown in FIG.

FIG. 3 shows the original web page.

FIG. 4 shows a new web page based on the original web page of FIG.

FIG. 5 shows a web page displayed when a user clicks on the reduced image shown in FIG. 4;

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Internet web server 12 Server program 14 Image reduction program 16 Web page 17 Image reference 18 Reduced image file 19 Digital image file 20 Destination computer 22 Display terminal 24 Browsing program 30 Communication network 40 New web page 47 Image reference 49 New Hyperlink 60 Original Webpage 62 Text 63 Hyperlink 64 Other Webpage 66 Original Image 67 Hyperlink 68 Webpage 70 New Webpage 72 Text 73 Hyperlink 76 Reduced Image 77 Hyperlink 78 New Resource 80 Web page 82 Hyperlink

Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Chao-Qu-Gen Taiwan, Tainan Xian, Yun-Kang Citi, Fukuo Second Road, Lane 205, Number 18 F-term (reference) 5C064 BB05 BC10 BC16 BC23 BD02 BD08 BD09

Claims (4)

[Claims] An Internet web server including a server program, an image reduction program, and at least one original web page, and at least one destination computer connected to the web server through a communication network. The web page contains an image reference to the original digital image file, and the image reduction program converts the original web page into a reduced digital image file that is similar in appearance but smaller in size in a predetermined manner. Is used to reduce the original digital image file referenced by, the server program is used to form a new web page with the original web page, and the new web page replaces the original digital image file. Reduced digital image The destination computer comprises an image reference that refers to the file and a hyperlink that associates the reduced digital image file with the image reference of the new web page. The destination computer displays the text and the image, and a server of the server through the communication network. An internet browsing program that communicates with the program and displays a web page sent from the server program on the display terminal, wherein the browsing program of the destination computer requests the original web page for the server program of the web server The server program sends a new web page to the browsing program instead of the original web page, and the browsing program displays the new web page Includes an image reference to the reduced digital image file on the display terminal, and when the user of the destination computer triggers a hyperlink associated with the reference to the reduced digital image file, the server program causes the destination computer to execute the hyperlink associated with the reduced digital image file. A networked image communication system that transfers a web page containing a reference to the original digital image file, and the browsing program then displays the original digital image file on a display terminal. 2. The image reduction program is started by the server program to reduce the original digital image file to a reduced digital image file after the server program receives a request for the original web page from the browsing program. The system of claim 1. 3. The original digital image file is an animation file comprising a plurality of digital image frames, and the reduced digital image file is formed from one of the digital image frames of the original digital image file. System. 4. Both the original and new web pages are H
The system of claim 1 in a TML (Hyper Text Markup Language) file format.