Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Taligent, Inc.

Webtv Networks, Inc.

Object Technology Licensing Corporation

Apple Inc.

Taugent, Inc.

David R Anderson

Christopher M White

Arnold Schaeffer

John R Matheny

Christopher White

Jack H Palevich

Daniel John Zigmond

Phillip York Goldman

Bruce A Leak

Keith R Ohlfs

Dean J Blackketter

Jeffrey D Yaksick

Larry S Rosenstein

Mark H Krueger

Joe Freeman Britt, Jr

Arn J Schaeffer

Debra L Orton

Chris M White

Ryoji Watanabe

Sean M Callahan

Bharath Siravara

Stephane Karoubi

Mitch Adler

Frank T Nguyen

Arthur William James Freeman

Neil A Brench

Keith A Rollin

James A Quarato

Joerg Raymond Brown

Prashant Patel

Darrin E Eide

Laura Werner

Joe Montgomery

Timothy J Catlin

Mark A Kieling

Various embodiments enable a device to create a pool of at least one empty application. An empty application can be configured to contain resources that are common across one or more other applications and initialize the resources for the one or more other applications effective to reduce startup time of the other applications. In one or more embodiments, an empty application can further be populated with the one or more other applications effective to cause the one or more other applications to execute. Alternately or additionally, a device can be monitored for an idle state, and, upon determining the device is in the idle state, at least one empty application can be created.

Process pool of empty application hosts to improve user perceived launch time of applications

A system for accessing the World Wide Web or other information sources using the Internet incorporates scaled-down versions of images associated with recently-viewed documents or documents designated as favorites into a recent menu or a favorites menu, respectively. As a user accesses a Web page, a scaled-down version of the Web page is inserted into a recent menu. The user can view the recent menu and visually determine the identity of the recently-viewed Web pages, which allows the user to conveniently select Web pages to access. This recent menu also enables the user to access recently-viewed documents in any order, which does not need to be in the chronological order in which the pages were originally viewed or in a reverse chronological order. Scaled-down versions of Web pages designated as favorites are stored in the favorites menu, thereby assisting the user in recalling the content of the favorite documents.

Displaying scaled-down versions of documents on favorites and recent menu

An arrangement for generating page and/or device-optimized cascading style sheets ('CSS') is disclosed in which CSS blocks are provided in a collection of one or more files. In an illustrative example, the collection of files is arranged as XML (extensible Markup Language) files. Each CSS block is marked with attributes that indicate to which modules used to compose a page it applies, and/or its applicability to a specific device. At page rendering time, the CSS for the page is dynamically generated by selecting CSS blocks from the files based on detected device capabilities and/or the modules on the page.

Page and device-optimized cascading style sheets

A viewer of television programming is alerted to the availability of content related to the programming (e.g. an associated Internet web page) by an icon momentarily displayed on the screen. Using a remote control, the viewer can select the icon. A control panel then appears, superimposed over the television image, and provides additional detail about the related content. By further operating the remote control, the viewer can select the associated content for viewing, or return to watching the television. Various other features and variations are disclosed.

Television with set top internet terminal with user interface wherein auxiliary content is received that is associated with current television programming

Methods and systems for scaling down a Web page image enables the image to be displayed on a standard television without horizontal scrolling of the image. A Web page image that initially has a horizontal dimension larger than the horizontal dimension of a television display is received from a web server and subsequently scaled down by a scaling factor that is based only upon the amount of scaling that is necessary to fit the image within the horizontal dimension of the television display. This scaling factor is used to scale the image horizontally and vertically, thus preserving the aspect ratio of the image. When a hyperlink from the scaled down Web page image is selected, coordinates to the hyperlink are scaled up based on the same scaling factor so that they will correspond with the server-side image map of the Web page image.

Resizing internet document for display on television screen

Described are a method and apparatus for incorporating broadcast television into Web pages. Broadcast television can be embedded into Web pages using, for example, a 'tv:' attribute in conjunction with common HTML tags. Within the 'tv:' attribute, a Web-page author can reference a TV station by channel number, network, or broadcast call letters. HTML documents are parsed to recover both the conventional-tags and tags that include TV attributes. The resulting Web pages display the identified broadcast TV in a frame specified by the TV attribute. One embodiment supports the presentation of television in the background of an HTML document. In that embodiment, HTML tags corresponding to overlying HTML content are provided with an attribute that defines a level of transparency from zero to one-hundred percent. The transparency attribute allows content providers to overlay any type of HTML information over a broadcast television show without completely obscuring the underlying show. This aspect of the invention employs a z attribute that can be used to specify the relative position of broadcast television and overlying HTML content.

Document data structure and method for integrating broadcast television with web pages

Described are a method and apparatus for incorporating broadcast television into Web pages. Broadcast television can be embedded into Web pages using, for example, a 'tv:' attribute in conjunction with common HTML tags. Within the 'tv:' attribute, a Web-page author can reference a TV station by channel number, network, or broadcast call letters. HTML documents are parsed to recover both the conventional tags and tags that include TV attributes. The resulting Web pages display the identified broadcast TV in a frame specified by the TV attribute. One embodiment supports the presentation of television in the background of an HTML document. In that embodiment, HTML tags corresponding to overlying HTML content are provided with an attribute that defines a level of transparency from zero to one-hundred percent. The transparency attribute allows content providers to overlay any type of HTML information over a broadcast television show without completely obscuring the underlying show. This aspect of the invention employs a z attribute that can be used to specify the relative position of broadcast television and overlying HTML content.

A collaboration system synchronizes an application or applications running on one or more computer systems. Each of the applications has a local data copy and the applications commence operation by creating consistent local copies from a common third copy. The consistency is maintained by distributing address space independent selections and commands to each application as they are entered at a controlling system. The selections and commands are generated by directly manipulating a presentation of each local data copy. When a selection and command arrive at a destination, the selection is used to find and selection the data and the command is applied to the data located by the selection.

Method and apparatus for supporting real-time collaboration

In a visual display system using a tabbed focus, movement of the focus is coordinated seamlessly between container-generated visual content and active content.

Seamless tabbed focus control in active content

Television/internet terminal user interface

Methods and systems for scaling down a Web page image enables the image to be displayed on a standard television without horizontal scrolling of the image. A Web page image that initially has a horizontal dimension larger than the horizontal dimension of a television display is received from a web server and subsequently scaled down by a scaling factor that is based only upon the amount of scaling that is necessary to fit the image within the horizontal dimension of the television display. This scaling factor is used to scale the image horizontally and vertically, thus preserving the aspect ratio of the image. When a hyperlink from the scaled down Web page image is selected, coordinates to the hyperlink are scaled up based on the same scaling factor so that they will correspond with the server side image map of the Web page image.

Described are a method and apparatus for incorporating broadcast television into Web pages. Broadcast television can be embedded into Web pages using, for example, a &ldquo;tv:&rdquo; attribute in conjunction with common HTML tags. Within the &ldquo;tv:&rdquo; attribute, a Web-page author can reference a TV station by channel number, network, or broadcast call letters. HTML documents are parsed to recover both the conventional tags and tags that include TV attributes. The resulting Web pages display the identified broadcast TV in a frame specified by the TV attribute. One embodiment supports the presentation of television in the background of an HTML document. In that embodiment, HTML tags corresponding to overlying HTML content are provided with an attribute that defines a level of transparency from zero to one-hundred percent. The transparency attribute allows content providers to overlay any type of HTML information over a broadcast television show without completely obscuring the underlying show. This aspect of the invention employs a z attribute that can be used to specify the relative position of broadcast television and overlying HTML content.

Web browser software is implemented in a processing system housed in a set-top box connected to a television and communicating over a wide-area network with one or more servers. The browser allows a user to use a remote control device to navigate between hypertex, anchors in World-Wide Web pages displayed on the television. User inputs are entered from the remote control device using an infrared IR link in order to move a selection between hypertext anchors or various control buttons displayed on the television display. The browser is capable of downloading audio files from Web sites and generating sound through a speaker of the television set based on the audio files. Background music is generated during Web browsing based on audio files downloaded from one of the servers or audio files stored in memory in the set-top box. A background music audio file from a server can be downloaded while another background music audio file is played. An audio panel can be displayed when an audio file from a Web site is downloaded and played to form a user interface by which the user to play, stop, pause, rewind, or fast-forward the audio file.

User interface for controlling audio functions in a web browser

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

David R Anderson