Dropping hyperlink onto document object
Contents
1. DOCUMENT 206 DROP SELECTED URL QUERY SYSTEM FOR TYPE OF DATA BEING DROPPED ADD URL TO URL UST IN DOCUMENT LOCATION BLANK 2 YES OTHER PUBLICATIONS User Manual for SoftQuad Hot Metal Pro 3 0 SoftQuad 1996 pp 119 125 User s Guide Netscape Navigator Gold Personal Edition Version 3 0 Netscape Communications Corporation 1996 pp 1 89 Stroud s Review of Netscape Gold Stroud s CWSApps http cws internet com reviews netscape netsgold3 html Oct 21 1998 Hawn Matthew Cyberfinder track internet URLs via the finder Macworld vol 13 No 3 p 82 Mar 1996 Laura Lemay Laura Lemay s Web Workshop Front Page 97 Sams Net 1997 pp 163 167 153 156 cited by examiner Primary Examiner Stephen S Hong 74 Attorney Agent or Firm Fish amp Richardson P C 57 ABSTRACT A method of creating document hyperlinks that allow a user to jump to another object or page within the same document or in another document all together either on a local storage device or on a remote storage device over a local area network private wide area network or the Internet Hyperlinks that access a document from the Internet are called URL hyperlinks AURL hyperlink in accordance with the present invention can be created as a new object e g a graphics figure or text or assigned to an existing object With a figure based hyperlink a user can click anywhere within t2. assigned to the assignee of the present invention filed on the same date as this application This application claim benefit to provisional application 60 017 905 filed May 6 1996 BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1 Field of the Invention This invention relates to computer software particularly for use in wide area networks including the Internet 2 Description of Related Art The Internet worldwide web is an international electronic network comprising a vast number of interconnected elec tronic sites using common communication protocols The architecture of the worldwide web simply web includes the use of web pages at a site to provide text graphical audio and video information to users accessing that site Selectable information is typically indicated by means of text or graphical images e g icons or bitmapped images which are associated with remote address pointers known as Universal Resource Locators URL s typically having the following form http www adobe com Selection of text an icon or an image having a URL causes the user s program to access the web page designated by the URL In addition objects e g data files images video clips etc within a web page can also be assigned URL s such that selection of the associated text icon or image causes the object to be transferred downloaded to the user s computer for playback or storage Modern electronic documents compri
3. STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE CERTIFICATE OF CORRECTION PATENT NO 6 233 591 B1 Page 1 of 1 DATED May 15 2001 INVENTOR S Phil Sherman Derek Shaw and Robert Scheld It is certified that error appears in the above identified patent and that said Letters Patent is hereby corrected as shown below Title page Item 56 References Cited after 5 724 595 please delete 3 1998 and insert 6 1999 therefor Signed and Sealed this Twenty second Day of January 2002 JAMES E ROGAN Attesting Officer Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
4. a jump to the designated destination In the preferred embodiment with a text based 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 2 URL hyperlink ajump will be invoked only when the user clicks on the specific characters that are associated with the URL hyperlink In the preferred embodiment figure based hyperlinks are signified by an icon or badge that appears in the lower left corner of a figure s bounding box Text based hyperlinks preferably are signified by using different text attributes and colors that the user defines for instance the user may want each hyperlink to be colored blue and underlined In the preferred embodiment URL hyperlinks can be created three different ways Figure Select and Assign the user can select a figure or text within a figure and open a dialog to enter a URL for the hyperlink to use Hyperlink Tool the user can use a hyperlink tool from a Tool palette and draw an invisible rectangle around an area the user wishes to be a hyperlink A dialog then opens to let the user define the URL to be used The user can use this tool for example to define hot spots on a bitmap to create an image map having several URL hyperlinks Drag and Drop a user can assign a URL hyperlink to an existing figure by dragging a URL link directly from a web browser and dropping the URL link on the figure If the user drags and drops a URL link on an empty part of a document a new t
5. level procedural or object oriented programming language to communicate with a computer system However the pro grams can be implemented in assembly or machine language if desired In any case the language may be a compiled or interpreted language US 6 233 591 B1 5 Each such computer program is preferably stored on a storage media or device e g ROM or magnetic diskette readable by a general or special purpose programmable computer for configuring and operating the computer when the storage media or device is read by the computer to perform the procedures described herein The inventive system may also be considered to be implemented as a computer readable storage medium configured with a com puter program where the storage medium so configured causes a computer to operate in a specific and predefined manner to perform the functions described herein A number of embodiments of the present invention have been described Nevertheless it will be understood that various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention Accordingly it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited by the specific illustrated embodiment but only by the scope of the appended claims What is claimed is 1 A computer implemented method of creating a docu ment hyperlink comprising the steps of receiving from a user an input gesture selecting a first object having an associated hyperlink
6. L the URL is added to a list of URL bookmarks kept within or associated with the document page 12 STEP 210 Bookmark lists are well known such as in the WordPerfect program mentioned above In the preferred embodiment a particular URL may be used more than once within a document unlike conven tional bookmarks The system software is also queried to determine the nature of the location on which a URL has been dropped STEP 212 If the underlying location contains a pre existing object such as a figure or text a bookmark property of the underlying object is set to the value of the dragged URL STEP 214 Alternatively an invisible bookmark code or bracketing pairs of codes are inserted within the document in close proximity to or surrounding the underlying object The object is now hyperlinked to the URL That is selecting the URL hyperlinked object in the 10 15 20 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 4 document e g by clicking on it with a mouse causes the underlying program to start an associated Internet capable communications module or program and use the URL address property of the object to retrieve the associated browser page 10 or an object therein If the underlying location does not contain a pre existing object i e the location is blank STEP 212 then in the preferred embodiment the object or the text of the object of the selected item in the browser page 10 is also copied
7. a United States Patent Sherman et al US006233591B1 US 6 233 591 B1 May 15 2001 10 Patent No 45 Date of Patent 54 75 73 21 22 60 51 52 58 56 DROPPING HYPERLINK ONTO DOCUMENT OBJECT Inventors Assignee Notice Appl No Filed Phil Sherman Bellevue Derek Shaw Robert Scheld both of Seattle all of WA US Adobe Systems Incorporated San Jose CA US Subject to any disclaimer the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U S C 154 b by 0 days 08 851 623 May 6 1997 Related U S Application Data Provisional application No 60 017 905 filed on May 6 1996 Int Cl US Cl U 4 982 344 5 153 936 5 159 669 5 204 947 5 353 388 5 500 929 5 615 325 5 724 595 5 877 765 sra anaes 707 501 707 513 345 326 Field of Search G06F 17 21 707 501 513 707 530 345 335 326 329 333 348 References Cited S PATENT DOCUMENTS 1 1991 Jordan et al 364 521 10 1992 Morris et al 395 128 10 1992 Trigg et al 395 159 4 1993 Berstein et al 395 157 10 1994 Motoyama wee 395 117 3 1996 Dickinson w 395 160 3 1997 Peden ws 395 326 3 1998 Gentner 707 501 3 1999 Dickman et al 345 349 SELECT OBJECT IN BROWSER HAVING A URL MAKE AVAILABLE URL TO DROP 204 DRAG CURSOR OVER
8. a document page 12 on which a URL hyperlink is to be created in accordance with the present invention The browser page 10 may be displayed by a convenient web browser program such as Netscape Navi gator from Netscape Communications Corporation of Mountain View Calif Shown is a portion of an actual web US 6 233 591 B1 3 page displayed in May 1996 by the assignee of the present invention The URL of the browser page 10 may be for example http www adobe com The browser page 10 may have additional active objects each with a URL For example the top most icon on the browser page 10 has the URL shown in FIG 1 In known fashion a browser program can also display and or copy a URL associated with an object The document page 12 is the active portion of a screen display of an exemplar program that uses the present inven tion not shown are conventional tool bars control buttons menu bars etc A text message is displayed that includes an associated URL hyperlink 14 Activation of the URL hyper link 14 e g by clicking with a mouse will start an associated Intemet capable communications module or program and access the URL of the browser page 10 In known fashion browser page 10 and document page 12 can be displayed in tiled or cascaded windows on a single monitor such that the user may access either AURL hyperlink in accordance with the present invention can be created as a new object e g a graphics f
9. and imported into the document page 12 as a figure or figure text STEP 216 The imported object then becomes an object of the document page 12 A bookmark property of the new object is set to the value of the dragged URL STEP 214 In the preferred embodiment figure based hyperlinks are signified by an icon or badge that appears in the lower left corner of a figure s bounding box Text based hyperlinks preferably are signified by using different text attributes and colors that the user defines for instance the user may want each hyperlink to be colored blue and underlined A number of the steps described above can be performed in different order to accomplish the same finction For example STEP 210 can be done after STEPS 212 216 When URLs are dropped onto existing graphic figures the resulting action is that of applying the URL hyperlink to the graphic The advantage of this approach is that the drag drop process allows the user to transfer the URL information to the target graphic without needing to separate the URL from its originating content In other words within the browser page 10 the URL exists as a property of an object of the browser page 10 transferring the URL to an object in the document page 12 does not require the URL to be separated visually from the browser page object Thus an object in the document page 12 takes on the same property as the object in the browser page 10 The URL as an independen
10. ext based hyperlink figure is created using the text associated with the URL link as displayed in the web browser The details of the preferred embodiment of the present invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below Once the details of the invention are known numerous additional innovations and changes will become obvious to one skilled in the art BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG 1 is a graphical depiction of a browser page con taining URL s and a document page on which a URL hyperlink is to be created in accordance with the present invention FIG 2 is a flowchart showing a preferred method of creating a URL hyperlink by dragging and dropping Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicate like elements DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Throughout this description the preferred embodiment and examples shown should be considered as exemplars rather than as limitations on the present invention Overview The present invention embodies docunent hyperlinks that allow a user to jump to another object or page within the same document or in another document altogether either on a local storage device or on a remote storage device over a local area network private wide area network or the Inter net Hyperlinks that access a document from the Internet are called URL hyperlinks FIG 1 is a graphical depiction of a browser page 10 containing URL s and
11. he figure s bounding box area to invoke a jump to the designated destination In the preferred embodiment with a text based URL hyperlink a jump will be invoked only when the user clicks on the specific characters that are associated with the URL hyperlink 10 Claims 2 Drawing Sheets 212 IMPORT ASSOCIATED OBJECT FROM BROWSER AS DOCUMENT OBJECT U S Patent May 15 2001 Sheet 1 of 2 US 6 233 591 B1 10 IF YOU CAN READ ME FIRST F 229 ex WHAT S NEW ABOUT ADOBE ADOBE ACROBAT ADOBE PRODUCTS Rall TIPS amp TECHNIQUES SUPPORT amp TRAINING J FREE ADOBE SOFTWARE CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHTS E ELSWHERE ON THE WEB FINDING ADOBE CLICK HERE B THIS ACTION WILL START YOUR BROWSER AND TAKE YOU YOU ADOBE s HOME PAGE FIG 1 U S Patent 200 SELECT OBJECT IN BROWSER HAVING A URL 202 MAKE URL AVALABLE TO DROP DRAG CURSOR OVER DOCUMENT 206 DROP SELECTED URL 208 QUERY SYSTEM FOR TYPE OF DATA BEING DROPPED 210 ADD URL TO URL LIST IN DOCUMENT May 15 2001 Sheet 2 of 2 US 6 233 591 B1 216 212 IMPORT ASSOCIATED OBJECT FROM BROWSER AS DOCUMENT OBJECT LOCATION BLANK 9 SET UNDERLYING OBJECT PROPERTY 10 URL FIG 2 US 6 233 591 B1 1 DROPPING HYPERLINK ONTO DOCUMENT OBJECT RELATED APPLICATION This application is related to co pending U S patent application Ser No 08 851 622 entitled DOCUMENT INTERNET URL MANAGEMENT
12. igure or text or assigned to an existing object With a figure based hyperlink a user can click anywhere within the figure s bounding box area to invoke a jump to the designated destination In the preferred embodiment with a text based URL hyperlink a jump will be invoked only when the user clicks on the specific characters that are associated with the URL hyperlink Description of Flowchart FIG 2 is a flowchart showing a preferred method of creating a URL hyperlink by dragging and dropping While using a program implementing the invention a user selects an object e g an icon or graphics figure from a browser page 10 having an associated URL STEP 200 The URL as provided by a browser program is made available for dropping by the system software in known fashion STEP 202 Using conventional techniques the user drags e g by holding down a mouse button and moving the mouse the selected object to a document page 12 until the computer display cursor is positioned over an existing object such as figure or text or a blank area STEP 204 For convenience the cursor may be changed to indicate that a URL is being dragged The user then drops the dragged object e g by releasing the mouse button STEP 206 At this point the program implementing the invention queries the system software in known fashion for the type of data being dropped in this case a URL STEP 208 Having identified the data type as UR
13. receiving from the user an input gesture dragging the hyperlink to a selected location on a document page receiving from the user an input gesture dropping the hyperlink onto the selected location determining without further user input whether the selected location includes a pre existing document object or not and if so setting a property associated with the pre existing document object to the value of the dropped hyperlink thereby linking the pre existing document object to the first object if not copying at least part of the first object into the document page as a new document object and setting a property associated with the new document object to the value of the dropped hyperlink thereby link ing the new document object to the first object 2 The method of claim 1 further including the step of adding the dropped hyperlink to a list of bookmarks asso ciated with the document page after dropping the hyperlink 3 The method of claim 1 wherein the first object is a browser page object 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 6 4 The method of claim 1 wherein the hyperlink is a universal resource locator 5 The method of claim 1 further including the step of visually marking the pre existing or new document object to indicate that such document object is linked to the first object by means of the hyperlink 6 Acomputer program residing on a computer readable medium for creating a document hyperlink comp
14. rising instructions for causing a computer to receive a user input that selects a first object having an associated hyperlink receive a user input that drags the hyperlink to a selected location on a document page receive a user input that drops the hyperlink onto the selected location determine without further user input whether the selected location includes a pre existing document object or not and if so set a property associated with the pre existing document object to the value of the dropped hyperlink thereby linking the pre existing document object to the first object if not copy at least part of the first object into the document page as a new document object and set a property associated with the new document object to the value of the dropped hyperlink thereby linking the new document object to the first object 7 The program of claim 6 further comprising instructions for causing a computer to add the dropped hyperlink to a list of bookmarks associated with the document page after dropping the hyperlink 8 The program of claim 6 wherein the first object is a browser page object 9 The program of claim 6 wherein the hyperlink is a universal resource locator 10 The program of claim 6 further comprising instruc tions for causing a computer to visually mark the pre existing or new document object to indicate that such document object is linked to the first object by means of the hyperlink UNITED
15. se text format and control codes and embedded objects such as figures e g vector or bitmapped graphics images audio clips and or video clips In addition some documents for example documents produced in WordPerfect 6 1 from Corel Corporation of Ontario Canada may include hyper text or hyperlinks Hyperlinks are areas in a document containing pointer information that a user can select e g by clicking with a pointer device such as a mouse causing the current application e g wordprocessor spreadsheet etc to jump to a new document or a different location in the current document The present invention is directed at extending the concept of hyperlinks to include URL s and includes a convenient easy to use method of creating URL hyperlinks SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention embodies document hyperlinks that allow a user to jump to another object or page within the same document or in another document altogether either on a local storage device or on a remote storage device over a local area network private wide area network or the Inter net Hyperlinks that access a document from the Internet are called URL hyperlinks AURL hyperlink in accordance with the present invention can be created as a new object e g a graphics figure or text or assigned to an existing object With a figure based hyperlink a user can click anywhere within the figure s bounding box area to invoke
16. t visual entity need not exist In addition there is no need to create some default display proxy e g an independent icon to represent the URL URL hyperlinks can be created manually be permitting the user to select a figure or text within a figure and open a dialog to enter a URL as a property of the selected object Another method is to permit the user to use a hyperlink tool from a Tool palette and draw an invisible rectangle around an area the user wishes to be a hyperlink A dialog then opens to let the user define the URL to be used The user can use this tool for example to define hot spots on a bitmap to create an image map having several URL hyperlinks While URL hyperlinks have been described programs implementing the present invention may also use conven tional intra document and inter document hyperlinks Implementation The invention may be implemented in hardware or software or a combination of both However preferably the invention is implemented in computer programs executing on programmable computers each comprising a processor a data storage system including volatile and non volatile memory and or storage elements at least one input device and at least one output device Program code is applied to input data to perform the functions described above and generate output information The output information is applied to one or more output devices in known fashion Each program is preferably implemented in a high
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