JP2005215776A - Content conversion device and content conversion method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a content conversion technique capable of converting a web content using a frame to a format capable of easily and properly displaying and operating it on a small-sized terminal. <P>SOLUTION: This content conversion device checks whether or not frames are used in a Web content and when the frames are used, generates and transmits a menu screen schematically showing the frame structure of the Web content to the terminal. When any frame is selected on the menu screen, a file corresponding to the selected frame is converted to a terminal format and transmitted to the terminal. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a technique for converting web content provided by a content server into a terminal format.

  On the Internet, many content servers provide various web contents such as information retrieval, information distribution, online shopping, music / video distribution and the like. The user can browse the web content using a terminal having a web client function. Recently, web client functions have begun to be implemented not only in personal computers but also in small terminals such as mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistance), and in-vehicle terminals.

  However, web contents provided on the Internet are generally created assuming a personal computer having a display resolution higher than VGA (Video Graphics Array). Even when such web content is displayed on a small terminal, it is often the case that it does not fit within the screen and cannot be browsed. In addition, due to hardware or software restrictions, small terminals may have limited input operations or may have web content that cannot be displayed or played.

Therefore, a mechanism for converting web content created for a personal computer into a format that can be easily browsed even on a small terminal-content conversion-has attracted attention. For example, Patent Document 1 proposes a method of changing an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) element, which is difficult to display on a small terminal, to another element when a browsing request is received from the small terminal. There is also known a method of converting a file in HTML format or XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) format into CHTML (CompactHTML) format or XHTML Basic format which is a subset thereof.
JP 2000-222276 A

  A “frame” element is a particularly important content conversion target. A frame divides a page into a plurality of areas and displays different web content files (HTML files or the like) in each area. Each area is sometimes referred to as a frame. For example, when a page is divided into three, at least four files of a file in which frame elements are defined and three files corresponding to each frame are necessary (because there are actually pasted images, etc.) It is often composed of four or more files.)

  In the conventional content conversion technology, for a page in which a frame is used, all the files that make up the page are read, and they are laid out as appropriate in a single format file without a frame. .

  However, in such a conventional technique, since all files must be acquired and analyzed and how they are displayed on the web client screen must be calculated, a considerable amount of time is required for the conversion process. There is a problem that it ends up. Further, when all the frames are converted into a single file, the scroll bar set for each frame is lost, which causes a problem in display and a deterioration in operability.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and the object of the present invention is to provide a content conversion technology that can convert web content in which a frame is used into a format that can be easily displayed and operated on a terminal. Is to provide.

  In order to achieve the above object, the present invention converts web content by the following means or processing.

  A content conversion apparatus according to the present invention is an apparatus that mediates between a content server that provides web content and a terminal that browses web content, and at least a request receiving unit that receives a web content browsing request from the terminal; Content conversion means for acquiring a web content file corresponding to the browsing request from the content server, converting the web content file into a terminal format, and transmitting the file to the terminal.

  All of the content server, the terminal, and the content conversion apparatus can be configured using a general-purpose computer system. The present invention can also be applied to a terminal such as a personal computer. However, the screen size is larger than that of a personal computer such as a mobile phone (including PHS), a PDA, an in-vehicle terminal, and a home appliance. Can be preferably applied to a small terminal having some kind of hardware or software restriction such as a small number, a low processing capability, a limited input operation, or a limited Web client function.

  Here, the content conversion means checks whether or not a frame is used for the web content, and if the frame is used, generates a menu screen that schematically shows the frame configuration of the web content, The menu screen is transmitted to the terminal, and when any frame is selected on the menu screen, a file corresponding to the frame is converted into a terminal format and transmitted to the terminal.

  As a result, even if the terminal does not support frames or the terminal format does not support frames, content conversion can be performed without problems.

  In addition, since the web content files are not converted at once, but only the designated frames are individually converted, the time required for the conversion process can be shortened, and the cost of converting the files that are not browsed can be saved.

  The terminal format is preferably a scalable format. Thereby, even when the screen size of the terminal is small, appropriate display can be performed.

  The content conversion means examines whether or not a frame is used at the stage where a part of the web content file corresponding to the browsing request is acquired from the content server, and at the stage when any frame is selected on the menu screen, A file corresponding to the frame may be acquired from the content server. In this case, only necessary files can be acquired in a short time, and unnecessary traffic between the content conversion apparatus and the content server can be eliminated.

Alternatively, all the web content files corresponding to the browsing request are acquired from the content server and stored in the storage means, and when any frame is selected on the menu screen, the file corresponding to the frame is read from the storage means. You may read and use. In this case, it is not necessary to access the content server one by one, and the responsiveness to the browsing request from the terminal can be improved.

  The content conversion device preferably operates as a proxy server. If it is a proxy server, once it is set in the terminal, the user can browse web content without being particularly conscious of the intervention of the content conversion device.

  The present invention can be understood as a content conversion apparatus having at least a part of the above means. The present invention can also be understood as a content conversion method including at least a part of the above processing, or a content conversion program for realizing the method. Each of the above means and processes can be combined with each other as much as possible to constitute the present invention.

  ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the web content in which the frame is used can be converted into the format which can be displayed and operated easily and appropriately with a terminal.

  Exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings.

(First embodiment)
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing an application example of a content conversion apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

  A large number of content servers 2 are connected to a wide area network 1 such as the Internet. Each content server 2 provides various types of web content such as information search, information distribution, online shopping, music / video distribution. In the present embodiment, it is assumed that these web contents are created for a personal computer (PC) 3. The user can access the content server 2 and browse the web content by using the web client software installed in the PC 3.

  Further, as shown in FIG. 1, a small terminal 4 such as a mobile phone 4a, a PDA 4b, and an in-vehicle terminal 4c (hereinafter collectively referred to as “terminal 4”) may be used to connect to the wide area network 1. it can. These terminals 4 generally use wireless communication via a communication base station 5.

  This type of terminal 4 has some hardware or software restrictions such as a smaller screen size, inferior processing capability, limited input operations, or limited web client functions than the PC 3. There are often. Therefore, it is not realistic to browse the web content of the content server 2 directly from the terminal 4.

  Therefore, in this embodiment, the content conversion device 6 converts the web content file created for the PC 3 into a format for the terminal 4. The content conversion device 6 is a device that mediates between the content server 2 and the terminal 4, and operates as a so-called proxy server. Only by setting the network address (for example, IP address and port number) of the content conversion device 6 in the web client software of the terminal 4, the terminal 4 automatically accesses each content server 2 via the content conversion device 6. become.

The content conversion device 6 includes a general-purpose computer system including a CPU (Central Processing Unit), a RAM (Random Access Memory), a ROM (Read Only Memory), a storage device, a display device, and an input device. The content conversion process described below is realized by reading a content conversion program (proxy server program) stored in the storage device into the RAM and executing it by the CPU.

  Now, the content conversion processing by the content conversion device 6 will be described in detail with reference to FIGS. FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a flow of content conversion processing of the content conversion device 6, and FIG. 3 is a sequence diagram showing operations of the terminal 4, the content conversion device 6, and the content server 2.

  When the user selects web content desired to be browsed on the web client software of the terminal 4 or inputs its URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), a browsing request is transmitted from the terminal 4 to the content conversion device 6 that is a proxy server. .

  When the content conversion device 6 receives a browsing request from the terminal 4 (step S1), it accesses the content server 2 specified by the URI included in the browsing request and acquires the corresponding web content file (step S2). . The web content file is usually provided as a file in HTML format or XHTML format.

  At this time, the content conversion apparatus 6 according to the present embodiment does not acquire all of the web content files corresponding to the browsing request, but first acquires only a part thereof. Then, the content conversion device 6 analyzes the acquired file and checks whether or not a frame is used for the web content (step S3).

  For example, in the case of the web content shown in FIG. 4, the page is divided into two columns (2 columns), and the right column is further divided into three rows (3 rows). As shown in FIG. 5, the web content including such a frame includes a parent file (index.html) that defines the frame structure and a plurality of child files (navi.html, head. html, data.html, head2.html) (actually, files such as images and CGI are often included, but here, in order to simplify the explanation, it is composed only of HTML files. To do.)

  The parent file includes a frameset element (<frameset> to </ frameset>) that defines the number of divisions, frame size, etc., and the names of individual frames, web content files to be displayed there, presence of scroll bars, etc. The frame element (<frame>) that defines is described. The name attribute in the frame element represents the frame name, and the src attribute represents the URI of the file corresponding to the frame.

  Whether or not a frame is used in the web content corresponding to the browse request can be determined by checking the presence of the frameset element in the parent file, and the attributes (frame name and file to be displayed) of each frame are stored in the frameset element. It can be found by analyzing the contained frame element. Therefore, in step S2, it is sufficient to acquire only the parent file from the content server 2.

  If it is determined in step S3 that “there is a frame”, the content conversion device 6 generates a menu screen based on the frameset element (including the frame element) (step S4), and transmits the menu screen to the terminal 4. (Step S5). This menu screen schematically shows the frame structure of the web content. On the menu screen, it is preferable that an aspect of page division and an outline of each frame are displayed. FIG. 6 shows an example of a menu screen displayed on the terminal 4. In this example, the frame border and the name attribute of each frame are shown. In addition, the display text of the name attribute is linked to the file corresponding to each frame.

  When the user selects any frame (display text) on the menu screen of the terminal 4, a browsing request regarding the file corresponding to the frame is transmitted from the terminal 4 to the content conversion device 6. The processing of steps S1 to S3 described above is also executed for this browsing request.

  For example, when the display text “data” is selected on the menu screen, the content conversion device 6 receives a browsing request including the URI of the web content file “data.html” (step S 1), and receives “ data.html "is acquired (step S2). Then, the content conversion device 6 analyzes the acquired file “data.html” to check whether or not a frame is used for the web content (step S3). If no frame is included in “data.html”, the process proceeds to step S6.

  In step S6, the content conversion device 6 converts the web content file “data.html” acquired in step S2 into a terminal format. As the terminal format, CHTML or XHTML Basic may be used, but a scalable format is preferably used. The scalable format has an advantage that the display size can be freely changed according to the small screen of the terminal 4.

  In the present embodiment, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is used as the terminal format. Since SVG is scalable and also supports data compression, it is suitable for web content use on a small terminal 4. Note that the menu screen described above is also preferably created by SVG.

  In step S7, the content conversion device 6 transmits the converted SVG file to the terminal 4. As a result, as shown in FIG. 7, only the web content corresponding to the frame “data” is displayed on the screen of the terminal 4.

  According to the content conversion technology described above, when a frame is used for web content, a menu screen is first generated and transmitted (displayed) to the terminal 4, and when the frame is selected, the frame is individually displayed. The content is converted to content and sent (displayed). Therefore, even if the web client function of the terminal 4 does not support frames or the terminal format does not support frames, content conversion can be performed without any problem.

  Also, instead of batch conversion of web content files, only files that have been requested to be browsed (specified frames) are individually converted, reducing the time required for the conversion process and the cost of converting files that are not viewed Can be omitted.

  In particular, in the present embodiment, when a part (parent file) of the web content file is acquired from the content server 2, it is checked whether or not the frame is used, and when any frame is selected on the menu screen. Since the file corresponding to the frame is acquired from the content server 2, only the necessary file can be acquired in a short time, and unnecessary traffic between the content conversion device 6 and the content server 2 can be reduced. Can be eliminated.

  On the other hand, the terminal 4 has the following advantages.

First, even the terminal 4 that does not support frames can browse web content including frames created for the PC 3 without any trouble. At this time, each frame can be browsed individually, so that even a small screen can be easily browsed.

  Further, since only data transmission / reception of a frame desired to be browsed is required, the communication cost can be reduced. In addition, since SVG is adopted as the terminal format, the data size of communication itself can be reduced, and the display is easy to see and excellent in operability.

  Furthermore, since the content conversion device 6 operates as a proxy server, once the terminal 4 is set, the user can browse web content without being particularly conscious of the intervention of the content conversion device 6.

(Second Embodiment)
The content conversion apparatus according to the first embodiment obtains necessary files one by one from the content server, whereas the content conversion apparatus according to the second embodiment of the present invention acquires all the web content files corresponding to the browsing request. It differs in that it is cached in advance. Since other configurations are almost common, the same reference numerals are used here, and detailed descriptions thereof are omitted.

  When receiving the browsing request from the terminal 4, the content conversion apparatus according to the present embodiment accesses the content server 2 specified by the URI included in the browsing request, and acquires the corresponding web content file. At this time, the content conversion apparatus acquires all of the web content files corresponding to the browsing request and temporarily stores the data in a storage device (storage means) such as a hard disk or RAM.

  Then, the content conversion apparatus analyzes the acquired file to check whether or not a frame is used for the web content. The process for determining the presence or absence of a frame is preferably started when a parent file in which a frame configuration is defined is acquired from the web content file.

  If it is determined that “there is a frame”, the content conversion apparatus generates a menu screen and transmits it to the terminal 4 as in the first embodiment.

  When the user selects any frame on the menu screen of the terminal 4, a browsing request regarding the file corresponding to the frame is transmitted from the terminal 4 to the content conversion apparatus. When receiving the browsing request, the content conversion device reads a file corresponding to the selected frame from the storage device, converts the file into a terminal format (such as SVG), and transmits the file to the terminal 4.

  The effect according to the first embodiment can be obtained also by the content conversion technique of the second embodiment described above.

  Furthermore, in the second embodiment, since all the web content files are acquired in advance, it is not necessary to access the content server 2 one by one, and the responsiveness to the browsing request from the terminal 4 can be improved.

  The above embodiment is merely an example of the present invention. The scope of the present invention is not limited to the above embodiment, and various modifications can be made within the scope of the technical idea.

  For example, although SVG is adopted as the terminal format in the above embodiment, it is also preferable to use another scalable format (for example, PDF).

  Moreover, in the said embodiment, although the content conversion apparatus is operate | moved as a proxy server, it is not restricted to this, It is also preferable to implement as a function of a content server.

  In the second embodiment, the web content file before conversion is cached, but the file after conversion to the terminal format may be cached. In the latter case, the response to the browsing request is further improved.

  In the menu screen of FIG. 6, the frame name (name attribute) is displayed as the frame outline. However, the present invention is not limited to this, but other attributes such as the src attribute, a part of the file corresponding to the frame, and the thumbnail of the file It is also preferable to display such as. In short, it is only necessary to display information that can be used as a reference when the user selects a frame.

It is a schematic diagram which shows the example of application of the content conversion apparatus which concerns on one Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the flow of the content conversion process of the content conversion apparatus which concerns on 1st Embodiment. It is a sequence diagram which shows mutual operation | movement of a terminal, a content conversion apparatus, and a content server. It is a figure which shows an example of the web content in which the frame is used. It is a figure which shows the file structure of the web content of FIG. It is a figure which shows an example of a menu screen. It is a figure which shows the example of a display of the selected flame | frame.

Explanation of symbols

1 Wide area network 2 Content server 3 Personal computer (PC)
4a Mobile phone (terminal)
4b PDA (terminal)
4c In-vehicle terminal (terminal)
5 Communication base station 6 Content conversion device

Claims (10)

A device that mediates between a content server that provides web content and a terminal that browses web content,
Request receiving means for receiving a web content browsing request from a terminal;
Content conversion means for acquiring a web content file corresponding to the browsing request from the content server, converting the web content file into a terminal format, and transmitting the content to the terminal;
The content conversion means includes
Check if the web content uses frames,
If a frame is used, generate a menu screen that schematically shows the frame structure of the web content, send the menu screen to the device,
A content conversion apparatus that, when any frame is selected on a menu screen, converts a file corresponding to the frame to a terminal format and transmits the converted file to the terminal.   The content conversion apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the terminal format is a scalable format. The content conversion means includes
When a part of the web content file corresponding to the browsing request is acquired from the content server, it is checked whether or not the frame is used.
The content conversion apparatus according to claim 1 or 2, wherein when any frame is selected on the menu screen, a file corresponding to the frame is acquired from the content server. The content conversion means includes
All of the web content files corresponding to the browsing request are acquired from the content server and stored in the storage means,
3. The content conversion apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when any frame is selected on the menu screen, a file corresponding to the frame is read from the storage means and used.   The content conversion device according to claim 1, wherein the content conversion device operates as a proxy server. A device that mediates between a content server that provides web content and a terminal that browses the web content is a method for converting a web content file,
A request receiving step of receiving a web content browsing request from the terminal;
Obtaining a web content file corresponding to the browsing request from the content server, converting the web content file into a terminal format and transmitting it to the terminal,
In the content conversion step,
Check if web content uses frames,
If a frame is used, generate a menu screen that schematically shows the frame structure of the web content, send the menu screen to the device,
A content conversion method in which when a frame is selected on a menu screen, a file corresponding to the frame is converted into a terminal format and transmitted to the terminal.   The content conversion method according to claim 6, wherein the terminal format is a scalable format. In the content conversion step,
When a part of the web content file corresponding to the browsing request is acquired from the content server, it is checked whether or not the frame is used.
The content conversion method according to claim 6 or 7, wherein, when any frame is selected on the menu screen, a file corresponding to the frame is acquired from the content server. In the content conversion step,
All of the web content files corresponding to the browsing request are acquired from the content server and stored in the storage means,
8. The content conversion method according to claim 6 or 7, wherein when any frame is selected on the menu screen, a file corresponding to the frame is read from the storage means and used.   The content conversion method according to claim 6, wherein the device operates as a proxy server.

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