JP2004220260A - Web page browsing system and image distribution server - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a system for allowing even a client terminal which is not mounted with any Web browser to browse a Web page. <P>SOLUTION: This Web page browsing system is provided with: a Web server 12 for disclosing a Web page on the Internet; a client terminal 10 for browsing a Web page; and an image distribution server 11 for relaying the Web server 12 and the client terminal 10. The image distribution server 11 reads the elements constituting the Web page from the Web server on the basis of address information transmitted from the client terminal 10, prepares a Web page from the constituent elements, converts the prepared Web page into bit map data, and transmits the resultant data to the client terminal 10. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO&NCIPI

Description

[0001]
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a system for browsing a web (hereinafter, referred to as Web) page published on the Internet.
[0002]
[Prior art]
WWW utilizes a computer system called a client server. This system is composed of two elements: a client that requests a service and a server that provides the service. In the case of WWW, a client is called a Web browser (Browser, browsing software), and a server is called a Web server.
In this system, when a client transmits a request, a server returns necessary content to the client, and the client displays the content as a basic operation.
[0003]
A communication protocol used for communication between the client and the server is called HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), and controls an operation of transferring an HTML document (Web page) from the server to the client. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is an agreement for creating an HTML document such as a Web page, and a document created according to the HTML procedure is referred to as an HTML document. A markup language is a description of the logical structure of a document (markup) by embedding commentary symbols (tags) indicating "what is this part of this sentence and how it is displayed" in the document. ). HTML documents are stored on a hard disk or the like in file units in the same manner as document data created by ordinary word processing software, but are also processed in file (HTML document) units when displayed on a Web browser.
[0004]
FIG. 10 is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example of a protocol between a Web server and a Web browser. Hereinafter, the protocol will be briefly described with reference to FIG. In this example, an HTML document is stored in the Web server, while a Web browser that analyzes the HTML document and displays a Web page is installed in the Web browser.
[0005]
First, a Web browser makes a request by transmitting an address called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to a Web server (S1). The URL is an identifier that designates the destination of the Web server. The URL includes a protocol (such as HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP), a host name including a domain name (such as www.server.com), The directory name and file name (eg, hello.html) of the server are included.
In this example, the web page to be browsed is http: // www. server. com / hello. html is specified. Next, the Web server receiving the request sends the specified hello. html (HTML document) is returned to the requested Web browser (S2). The received web browser is hello. The html tag is interpreted and displayed (S3). At this time, if there is data specified by a file name such as an image or an icon, the Web browser requests the Web server to transfer the data of the file again, and after receiving the file, displays the data on the Web browser. .
[0006]
Prior art documents related to the present invention include the following.
[0007]
[Patent Document 1]
JP 2002-007463 A [Patent Document 2]
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-082871 [Patent Document 3]
JP 2002-132630 A [Patent Document 4]
JP 2002-229839 A [Patent Document 5]
JP 10-269297 A
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
However, the conventional system described above has the following problem.
[0009]
Unless high-performance browsing software called a Web browser that processes a markup language and displays a screen with an appropriate layout is installed in the client terminal, the client terminal cannot browse the Web page.
[0010]
In addition, since characters are distributed as text data, correct characters may not be displayed unless the client terminal has appropriate font data (character image data) according to the Web page viewed. For example, in an overseas Web page, there is a possibility that a font unique to the country may be used, so that correct characters cannot be displayed unless the client side holds font data corresponding to the font. On the other hand, if font data of a font unique to each country in the world is registered in the client terminal, a large amount of storage area is required, so that the system scale on the client side becomes too large.
[0011]
Furthermore, since the HTML language does not strictly define the layout, the appearance of the displayed Web page may differ depending on the type of the Web browser of the client terminal. That is, the layout may not be displayed on the screen of the client terminal in a layout intended by the creator of the Web page.
[0012]
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a system that can browse a Web page even with a client terminal that does not have a Web browser.
[0013]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
In order to achieve this object, the present invention provides a high-performance server that performs advanced Web page display processing such as character data conversion, layout analysis, and layout generation, while a client terminal uses a screen of a Web page created by the server. Is received and displayed as image data.
[0014]
That is, the web page browsing system of the present invention includes a first server that publishes a web page on the Internet, a client terminal that browses the web page, and a second server that relays the first server and the client terminal. 2 server, the second server reads a component of the web page from the first server based on the address information sent from the client terminal, generates a web page from the component, The generated web page is converted into bitmap data and transmitted to the client terminal.
[0015]
Further, the web page browsing system of the present invention includes a first server that publishes a web page on the Internet, a client terminal that browses the web page, and a second server that relays the first server and the client terminal. The client terminal transmits the designated character string or the position information of the image to the second server, and the second server transmits the address information and the address information transmitted from the client terminal. Reading a component of a web page from the first server based on the location information, generating a web page from the component, converting the generated web page into bitmap data, and transmitting the bitmap data to a client terminal. And
[0016]
Also, the image distribution server of the present invention is an image distribution server that relays a web server that publishes a web page on the Internet and a client terminal that browses the web page, wherein the address information transmitted from the client terminal And reading a component of the web page from the web server based on the web server, generating a web page from the component, converting the generated web page into bitmap data, and transmitting the bitmap data to the client terminal.
[0017]
Also, the image distribution server of the present invention is an image distribution server that relays a web server that publishes a web page on the Internet and a client terminal that browses the web page, wherein the address information transmitted from the client terminal And read the components of the web page from the web server based on the specified character string or the position information of the image, generate a web page from the components, convert the generated web page to bitmap data, It is transmitted to a client terminal.
[0018]
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION
Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
[0019]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an overall configuration of a Web page browsing system according to the first embodiment of the present invention. The Web page browsing system according to the present embodiment includes a client terminal 10 for browsing a Web page, a Web server 12 for publishing the Web page, and an image distribution server 11 for relaying between the client terminal 10 and the Web server 12. Each device performs data communication using an HTTP communication protocol.
[0020]
FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a processing flow of the Web page browsing system according to the present embodiment. Referring to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, in the present process, the client terminal 10 transmits a URL of a Web page to be viewed to the image distribution server 11 (S1), and the image distribution server 11 A step (S2) of accessing the designated Web server, a step (S3) of the accessed Web server transmitting an HTML document or the like as a component of the Web page to the image distribution server 11, and the image distribution server 11 A step of creating a Web page from an HTML document or the like by using a Web browser (S4); a step of transmitting the created Web page as image data to the client terminal 10 by the image distribution server 11 (S5); (S6) displaying the image data on the display unit.
[0021]
FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of the image distribution server 11 according to the present embodiment. The image distribution server 11 includes an Internet control unit 31, a Web page generation unit 32, a storage unit 33 storing font information, and an image data generation unit 34. When receiving the URL from the client terminal 10, the Internet control unit 31 reads a Web page component such as an HTML document from a Web server specified by the URL, and outputs the read Web page component to the Web page generation unit 32. The Web page generation unit 32 analyzes the HTML document with reference to the font information 33 and generates a Web page. It is desirable that the font information 33 include font information unique to each country in the world. The image data generation unit 34 converts the generated Web page into image data such as a bitmap, and outputs the image data to the Internet control unit 31. The Internet control unit 31 transmits the image data to the client terminal 10 that has made the request.
[0022]
That is, the image distribution server 11 receives a URL from the client terminal 10 and distributes a Web page as image data to the client terminal 10, and a Web server such as an HTML document or an image file from the Web server specified by the URL. It can be said that it has both functions as a Web browser that reads out page components and generates a WEB page.
[0023]
FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of the client terminal 10 according to the present embodiment. The client terminal 10 includes an Internet control unit 41, an image data receiving unit 42, and a display unit 43. The Internet control unit 41 transmits the URL specified by the user to the image distribution server 11. Further, the Internet control unit 41 outputs image data such as a bitmap distributed from the image distribution server 11 to the image data receiving unit 42. The image data receiving unit 42 outputs the image data to the display unit 43.
[0024]
As described above, in the first embodiment of the present invention, the image distribution server 11 obtains Web page configuration data such as an HTML document from the Web server 12 instead of the client terminal 10 and then converts the Web page from the data. Since the client terminal 10 generates and receives the Web page from the image distribution server 11 in the form of image data such as a bitmap, even if the client terminal 10 is a simple client terminal 10 without a Web browser, the Web page is Can be viewed. In addition, the high-performance image distribution server 11 accurately generates a Web page according to the intention of the Web page creator and transmits the generated Web page to the client terminal 10 as image data. Can be viewed.
[0025]
Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described. In the present embodiment, a process of browsing a web page by following a link shown on a web page screen is added to the process described in the first embodiment. In a hypertext such as a Web page, there is a large amount of information about a certain topic, and a relation is defined between related topics. Viewers read hypertext by freely following this association. A block of information in topic units such as a Web page is called a node, and a relation between topics is called a link. If a string inside a node is deeply related to another topic, you can set a link to another node from this string.
[0026]
FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating a processing flow of the Web page browsing system according to the second embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 5, in the first half of this processing, the client terminal 10 transmits a URL of a Web page to be viewed to the image distribution server 11 (S1), and the image distribution server 11 A step of accessing the designated Web server (S2), a step of the Web server 12 transmitting an HTML document or the like as a component of the Web page to the image distribution server 11 (S3), and a step of the image distribution server 11 A step (S4) of creating a Web page from an HTML document or the like by using a method, a step (S5) of transmitting the created Web page to the client terminal 10 as image data such as a bitmap by the image distribution server 11, Steps in which the terminal 10 displays the image data on the display unit (S6) Constructed. The processing up to this point is the same as the processing (see FIG. 2) in the first embodiment of the present invention.
[0027]
Next, the user of the client terminal 10 specifies which part of the displayed Web page to follow the link. Specifically, the user points to a character string, an image, or the like displayed on the screen using a pointing device such as a mouse, and specifies the character string by clicking on it.
[0028]
In the latter half of the process, the client terminal 10 calculates the click position coordinate data from the position (position on the screen) of the designated character string, image, and the like, and the position of the click position coordinate data is displayed together with the URL of the currently displayed Web page. A step of transmitting the coordinate data to the image distribution server 11 (S7), and the image distribution server 11 corresponding to the click position coordinate in the configuration data of the Web page of the URL based on the transmitted URL and click position coordinate. (S8) checking whether a link pointer exists in the character string or the like, and, if a link pointer exists, accessing a Web server specified by the URL indicated by the link pointer (S9). ) And the accessed Web server transmits the HTML document, which is a component of the Web page, to the image distribution server. (S10), the image distribution server 11 creates a Web page from an HTML document or the like using a Web browser (S11), and the image distribution server 11 converts the created Web page into image data. And a step (S13) of transmitting the image data to the display unit by the client terminal 10 (S13). Note that the click position coordinates in S7 indicate a plane position on the screen, and may be expressed in an XY coordinate format. If the link pointer does not exist in S8, the fact is returned to the client terminal. Further, when following another link, it is started from the designation performed immediately before S7.
[0029]
FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a configuration of the image distribution server 11 according to the second embodiment of the present invention. The image distribution server 11 includes an Internet control unit 31, a Web page generation unit 32, a storage unit 33 storing font information, an image data generation unit 34, and a link destination URL extraction unit 35. Here, the link destination URL extraction unit 35 is a unique configuration in the second embodiment, and the other configurations and their operations are basically the same as those in the first embodiment.
[0030]
Upon receiving the click position coordinates and the URL from the client terminal 10, the link destination URL extraction unit 35 determines whether the link pointer exists in a character string or the like corresponding to the click position coordinates in the configuration data of the Web page of the URL. Inspect whether. As a result, if the link pointer exists, the web server designated by the URL indicated by the link pointer is accessed.
[0031]
FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing a configuration of the client terminal 10 according to the second embodiment of the present invention. The client terminal 10 includes an Internet control unit 41, an image data receiving unit 42, a display unit 43, and a click position detecting unit 43. Here, the click position detection unit 43 is a unique configuration in the second embodiment, and the other configurations and operations are basically the same as those in the first embodiment.
[0032]
The user points to a character string, an image, or the like displayed on the screen using a pointing device such as a mouse, and specifies the character string by clicking on it. The click position detection unit 43 calculates click position coordinate data from the position (position on the screen) of the designated character string, image, and the like, and outputs the position coordinate data together with the URL of the currently displayed Web page to the Internet control unit. The image data is transmitted to the image distribution server 11 via the server 41. The click position coordinates indicate a plane position on the screen, and may be expressed in an XY coordinate format.
[0033]
In the first and second embodiments described above, it is preferable that the image distribution server 11 compresses the image data and distributes it to the client terminal 10. However, since a Web page generally has a structure in which character information and image information are integrated, if this is compressed and distributed as one piece of image data, characters may be lost at the time of compression, or the compression ratio may be reduced. However, there is a problem that the distance cannot be increased. Therefore, as a third embodiment of the present invention, a function of dividing a character area and an image area when distributing image data is further provided, and image compression suitable for each is performed. JPEG2000 already exists as a technique for compressing image data into regions. Here, JPEG2000 will be briefly described. JPEG2000 is a standard that defines a method for compressing and decompressing still images, and is characterized by being able to perform higher compression and higher quality image compression than conventional JPEG. In the conventional JPEG method, an image is transformed by a discrete cosine transform (DCT: a method in which an image is divided into small blocks, and frequency component coefficients are quantized, coded, and compressed). Is divided into frequency bands, and the vertical and horizontal frequency components are quantized, encoded, and compressed. For this reason, block noise (lattice-like noise) and mosquito noise (water-like ripples) that are conspicuous when stored at a high compression rate (low image quality) in JPEG do not occur in JPEG2000. In addition, it is possible to insert a “digital watermark” and to finely specify image quality and file size when compressing.
[0034]
FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of the image distribution server 11 according to the third embodiment of the present invention.
[0035]
The image distribution server 11 includes an Internet control unit 31, a Web page generation unit 32, a storage unit 33 storing font information, an image data generation unit 34, and an image compression unit 36. Here, the image compression unit 36 is a unique configuration in the third embodiment. The image compression unit 36 compresses a Web page using a compression technique defined by JPEG2000. That is, as shown in FIG. 9, the Web page is separated into a character area and an image area, each area is separately compressed, each compressed data is synthesized, and delivered to the client terminal 10. As a result, it is possible to distribute image data with a higher compression rate and with which characters and the like are not broken. It goes without saying that the client terminal 10 has a function of decompressing the compressed data.
[0036]
【The invention's effect】
The following effects can be obtained by the present invention.
[0037]
This eliminates the need for the client terminal to have a sophisticated system such as a Web page layout analysis. The reason is that the image distribution server generates a Web page and transmits it to the client terminal as image data.
[0038]
Also, the client terminal does not need to have a large amount of character font data. The reason is that the image distribution server also transmits character data to the client terminal as image data.
[0039]
Further, there is no difference in the appearance of the Web page displayed on each client terminal. The reason is that the image distribution server uniformly generates the Web page.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an overall configuration of a Web page browsing system according to a first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a processing flow of a Web page browsing system according to the first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an image distribution server according to the first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a client terminal according to the first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a processing flow in a Web page browsing system according to a second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 6 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an image distribution server according to a second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a client terminal according to a second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an image distribution server according to a third embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating a compression technique according to a third embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 10 is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example of a protocol between a Web server and a Web browser.
[Explanation of symbols]
Reference Signs List 10 client terminal, 11 image distribution server, 12 Web server, 31 Internet control unit, 32 Web page generation unit, 33 font information, 34 image data generation unit, 35 linked URL extraction unit, 36 image compression unit, 41 Internet control unit , 42 image data receiving unit, 43 click position detecting unit,

Claims (14)

A first server for publishing a web page on the Internet, a client terminal for browsing the web page, and a second server for relaying between the first server and the client terminal;
The second server reads a component of a web page from the first server based on the address information sent from the client terminal, generates a web page from the component, and converts the generated web page into bits. A web page browsing system, which converts the data into map data and transmits the map data to the client terminal. A first server for publishing a web page on the Internet, a client terminal for browsing the web page, and a second server for relaying between the first server and the client terminal;
The client terminal transmits position information of a designated character string or image to the second server,
The second server reads a component of a web page from the first server based on the address information and the location information sent from the client terminal, generates a web page from the component, and generates the generated web page. A web page browsing system, wherein a web page is converted into bitmap data and transmitted to the client terminal. 3. The web page browsing system according to claim 2, wherein the position information is coordinates on a screen for displaying the web page. 3. The web page browsing system according to claim 1, wherein the address information is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), and a component of the web page is an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) document. 3. The web page browsing system according to claim 1, wherein the second server compresses the generated web page and transmits the compressed web page to the client terminal. 4. The web server according to claim 1, wherein the second server divides the generated web page into predetermined areas, and separately compresses each of the divided areas and transmits the compressed area to the client terminal. 4. Page browsing system. The web page browsing system according to claim 6, wherein the predetermined area is a character area and an image area. An image distribution server that relays a web server that publishes a web page on the Internet and a client terminal that browses the web page,
Reading a component of a web page from the web server based on the address information sent from the client terminal, generating a web page from the component, converting the generated web page into bitmap data, An image distribution server for transmitting to an image delivery server. An image distribution server that relays a web server that publishes a web page on the Internet and a client terminal that browses the web page,
Based on the address information and the designated character string or the position information of the image sent from the client terminal, read the components of the web page from the web server, generate a web page from the components, the generated web page Is converted to bitmap data and transmitted to the client terminal. The image distribution server according to claim 9, wherein the position information is coordinates on a screen displaying a web page. The image distribution server according to claim 9, wherein the address information is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), and a component of the web page is an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) document. The image distribution server according to claim 9, wherein the generated web page is compressed and transmitted to the client terminal. The image distribution server according to claim 9, wherein the generated web page is divided into predetermined regions, and the divided regions are separately compressed and transmitted to the client terminal. 14. The image distribution server according to claim 13, wherein the predetermined area is a character area and an image area.

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