WO2007006917A1

WO2007006917A1 - Method, program, recording medium, server, and system for refreshing a multimedia content presented by an application

Info

Publication number: WO2007006917A1
Application number: PCT/FR2006/001601
Authority: WO
Inventors: Philippe Duvivier; Dominique Jezequel
Original assignee: France Telecom
Priority date: 2005-07-06
Filing date: 2006-07-05
Publication date: 2007-01-18
Also published as: FR2888356A1; EP1899871A1

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for refreshing a multimedia content presented by an Internet application, said method comprising the following steps: a) in response to a refresh request, the multimedia content server checks (64, 98) whether an immediate refreshing of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is necessary, b) if an immediate refreshing is necessary, the server immediately updates (66, 100) the multimedia content presented by the application in response to the refresh request, and c) if an immediate refreshing of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is not necessary, the server delays (80, 104) before responding to the refresh request.

Description

METHOD, PROGRAM, RECORDING MEDIUM, SERVER AND

SYSTEM FOR REFRESHING MULTIMEDIA CONTENT

PRESENTED BY AN APPLICATION

The present invention relates to a method, a program, a recording medium, a server and a system for refreshing multimedia content presented by an information presentation application.

Applications are, for example, Internet browsers.

Internet browsers allow. in particular to navigate the world spider web better known as the Internet or WEB (World Wide Web). More generally, Internet browsers make it possible to present or display downloaded multimedia content from a multimedia content server to which they are connected via an information transmission network. To fulfill this task, browsers use a standardized communication protocol such as HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol).

Today many information sharing software is capable of creating multimedia content for presentation or display by Internet browsers. For this, these programs use a multimedia content server. These same programs are also able to dynamically modify the multimedia content to be displayed in response to events outside the browser that displays the content. For example, such software are: cobrowing software in English),

- teletunion or conference software for the presentation of the same transparency to all participants in this teleconference and modify it dynamically, and telephone meeting software in which a data sheet on the speaker is automatically presented to all participants in this meeting.

More specifically, for example, in the joint browser software, the information presentation software detects that a user has clicked on a hyperlink and consequently changes the multimedia content displayed by each of the browsers of other users who participate in this joint navigation.

In these information sharing software, when the multimedia content is modified, the display of each browser must be refreshed so as to present each user with updated multimedia content. It is also said that the displays of each browser must be synchronized.

However, the media content of a browser can be refreshed only in response to a refresh request transmitted by the browser itself. Therefore, in the known refresh processes of the multimedia content displayed by an Internet browser, the browser sends a refresh request of the multimedia content currently displayed by this browser to the multimedia content server.

More precisely, to automatically trigger the sending of this refresh request, the browser is configured to automatically and cyclically send this refresh request at regular intervals of time. In order for the browser display to be quickly refreshed after a modification of the multimedia content to be displayed, this time interval is chosen oetit and, for example, equal to 3 seconds. Therefore, the browser sends a refresh request every 3 seconds. In response to each of these refresh requests, the multimedia content server sends systematically and immediately to the browser the most up-to-date multimedia content.

This method for refreshing the multimedia content displayed by the browser therefore causes significant data traffic on the network as well as a high workload for the media server.

The invention aims to remedy this disadvantage by proposing a method of refreshing the multimedia content presented by an information presentation application reducing the workload of the multimedia content server.

The invention therefore relates to a method of refreshing the multimedia content displayed by an information presentation application in which: a) in response to the refresh request, the multimedia content server checks whether an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is required, b) if immediate refresh is required, the server immediately refreshes the multimedia content presented by the application in response to the refresh request, and c) if an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is not necessary, the server delays before responding to the refresh request.

In the above method, the multimedia content server does not systematically immediately refresh the multimedia content currently displayed by the application in response to the refresh request. This slows down exchanging data between the media server and the application, which results in a decrease in the server workload.

The embodiments of this process ^"refresh may comprise one or more of the following features:

- When refreshing the multimedia content presented by the application, the server sends the refreshed multimedia content to present to the application, the multimedia content containing an instruction directly interpretable by the application to trigger the automatic sending of a new request refresh after a first predetermined time interval;

in step c), the server delays for a time strictly greater than the first predetermined time interval if no refresh of the multimedia content currently presented is necessary; during step c), the server interrupts the delay as soon as a modification of the multimedia content to be presented is detected or signaled; during step c), the server systematically interrupts the delay after a second predetermined time interval;

- In step a) the verification is made based on information on the changes in the multimedia content since the last presentation of the multimedia content by the application.

These embodiments of the refresh method further have the following advantages: including an instruction to trigger the automatic sending of a refresh request by the application in the refreshed multimedia content sent to this application allows to cause a refresh automatic multimedia content without requiring the execution on the terminal of a specific client software module in addition to the application to trigger the sending by the application of the refresh request; interrupting the delay as soon as a modification of the multimedia content is detected makes it possible to quickly refresh the displayed multimedia content after a modification thereof; and systematically interrupting the timer after a second predetermined time interval makes it possible to avoid the display of an error message by the application that has not received a response to its refresh request.

The invention also relates to a computer program and an information recording medium comprising instructions for performing the above refresh method, when these instructions are executed by an electronic computer.

The subject of the invention is also a multimedia content server adapted to implement the above refresh method, this server being able to: check if an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is necessary, refresh immediately the multimedia content presented by the application in response to the refresh request if immediate refresh is needed, and delay before responding to the refresh request if immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is not necessary .

The embodiments of the above server may include one or more of the following features: the server is adapted to send to the application the multimedia content refreshed to present, this multimedia content containing an instruction directly interpretable by the application to trigger the automatic sending of a new refresh request after a first predetermined interval of time ;

the server is able to delay for a time strictly greater than the first predetermined time interval if no immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented is necessary;

the server is capable of interrupting the delay as soon as a modification of the multimedia content presented is detected or signaled;

the server is able to systematically interrupt the timer after a second predetermined time interval; the server is able to check if an immediate refresh of the content being presented ^• multimedia is required based on information media intervened changes since the last presentation of the multimedia content by the application.

The invention also relates to a multimedia content presentation system comprising the server _ above.

The invention will be better understood on reading the description which follows, given solely by way of example and with reference to the drawings on which:

FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of the architecture of a media content presentation system for users; and FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a method of refreshing a multimedia content displayed by an Internet browser.

Figure 1 shows a system 2 for presenting multimedia content to users.

The system 2 comprises at least one and preferably several multimedia content presentation terminals. To simplify FIG. 2, only two terminals 4 and 6 are shown.

Since the general architecture of such terminals is known, only the details necessary for understanding the invention will be described here.

The terminal 6 is, for example, identical to the terminal 4, so that only the terminal 4 will be ¹ described here in detail.

The terminal 4 is equipped with a man / machine interface 8 making it possible to present or display multimedia content to a user of this terminal. The interface 8 is, for example, formed of a touch screen 10, able to present visual information to a user as well as a microphone 12 for audibly reproducing by the user the sounds coded in the multimedia content to present.

The terminal 4 also comprises an information presentation application capable of downloading multimedia content from a multimedia content server and controlling the interface 8 to present the user with the downloaded multimedia content. The information presentation application is an Internet browser 14, for example.

The browser 14 is capable of interpreting and executing an instruction for automatically triggering the sending of a refresh request to the multimedia content server after a time interval. predetermined ti. This instruction is, for example, the meta-directive "refresh" of the following HTML language (Hyper Text Markup Language):

- <meta http-equiv = "Refresh" content = "ti; url = newurl" /> where: ti is the time interval to wait before triggering the automatic sending of a new refresh request, and

- "newurl" is the url (locator resource) address of the multimedia content to be presented to the user.

Typically, the browser 14 is made in the form of a computer program recorded on an information recording medium 16 and executable by an electronic computer 18. The computer program includes instructions for the execution of the method of FIG. 2, when these instructions are executed by the computer 18.

The terminal 4 is, for example, a mobile phone or a laptop or desktop. The terminal 4 is shown in FIG. 2 in the form of a mobile telephone connected via an antenna 20 to the global spider web or Internet network 22.

The system 2 also comprises a server 26 for multimedia content connected to the network 22.

The server 26 comprises an information sharing software 28, such as a software for joint navigation, teleconference or telephone meeting. This software 28 is capable of creating and modifying multimedia content intended to be downloaded by Internet browsers to be presented to terminal users such as terminals 4 and 6.

The server 26 also comprises a synchronization module 30 of the multimedia content presented simultaneously by the terminals 4 and 6. The server 26 is made for example by means of a programmable electronic calculator 32 able to execute instructions recorded on an information recording medium 34. For this purpose, the support 34 includes instructions for the execution of the method of Figure 2 when these instructions are executed by the computer 32.

The operation of the system 2 will now be described with reference to FIG. 2 in the particular case of the refresh of the multimedia content presented by the terminal 4.

The software 28 and the module 30 run in parallel.

Typically, during a step 50, the software 28 modifies the multimedia content to be presented on the terminals 4 and 6. For example, in the case where the software 28 is a joint navigation software, it detects that the user Terminal 6 has clicked on a hypertext link and changes accordingly the multimedia content to be presented on the terminals 4 and 6, in which case the multimedia content is typically an HTML page.

In the case of a data conference, the multimedia content is, for example, a transparency and the software 28 replaces the current transparency with a new transparency in response to an instruction from one of the users. The transparency can be replaced by an HTML page.

In the case of a telephone meeting; "the multimedia content corresponds to a data sheet of the speaker, so that step 50, for example, consists of detecting that the speaker has changed and replacing the preceding data sheet with the data sheet of the new speaker , so that it is presented to all participants. Immediately after step 50, in a step 52, each time the multimedia content is modified, an identifier of the new multimedia content is created. For example, this identifier is constructed by calculating the checksum, better known as "checksum" from data of the new multimedia content. The software 28 also signals this modification of the multimedia content in step 52.

The identifier of the new multimedia content as well as the moment at which it was created are recorded at the step 52.

In parallel, the module 30 manages a service 54 for synchronizing the presentation of information on each of the terminals 4 and 6.

More specifically, during the execution of the service 54, the browser 14 of the terminal 4 sends, in a step 60, a refresh request of the multimedia content currently presented by this browser. The refresh request is, for example, a GET instruction of the HTTP protocol.

In response to this refresh request, during a step 62, the module 30 creates an autonomous task responsible for constructing the response to this request and sending it to the client. This autonomous task is better known as Thread.

Then, during a step 64, the standalone task checks whether immediate refresh of the multimedia content presented by the terminal 4 is necessary. For example, in step 64, the standalone task compares the identifier of the multimedia content currently presented by the browser 14 to the most recent identifier recorded in step 52. In the case where the two identifiers correspond, this means that the multimedia content has not been modified since the reception of the last refresh request ,. so that an immediate refresh is ^"not necessary. Otherwise, the autonomous task deduces that an immediate refresh is. necessary.

If the identifier of the multimedia content currently presented by the browser 14 is unknown, the autonomous task also deduces that an immediate refresh is necessary.

If an immediate refresh is necessary, the autonomous task immediately proceeds to a step 66 of refreshing the multimedia content currently presented by the terminal 4.

During this step 66, for example, the autonomous task begins, during an operation 68, to construct an HTML page corresponding to the new multimedia content to be displayed. The HTML page built in step 66 also includes changes to the multimedia content compared to the previous multimedia content, the "Refresh" meta-directive. In the meta-directive "Refresh" the parameter tj _. is less than 5 seconds and, for example, equal to one second and the parameter "newurl" is replaced by the url address of the multimedia content to be displayed. A time interval ti less than 5 seconds allows a fast refresh in case of modification of the multimedia content.

Then, during an operation 70, the HTML page thus constructed is sent to the terminal 4 in response to its refresh request.

In parallel with step 66, during a step 72, the autonomous gate stores the identifier of the multimedia content sent during the operation 70. This stored identifier is issociated at the instant at which the step 66 has been executed.

If, at step 64, the autonomous task has determined that immediate refreshment is not necessary, then a delay step 80 is performed before responding to the received refresh request.

For example, at the beginning of step 80, during an operation 82, the module 30 triggers a timer capable of counting a time interval t ₂ . Then, during an operation 84, the task created during the step 62 is put to sleep and then remains dormant as long as the time interval t ₂ has not elapsed or until a modification of the multimedia content n is not detected or signaled before the expiration of the time interval t ₂ . This detection with signaling is done in parallel with the countdown of the timer.

As long as the task is dormant, it does not use the computing resources of the server 26, so that they are saved. In addition, as long as the task is dormant, the multimedia content presented by the terminal 4 is not refreshed and the browser remains waiting for a response to its refresh request.

When the time interval t ₂ has elapsed or as soon as a modification of the multimedia content is detected or signaled, the task is woken up and resumes execution by immediately proceeding to steps 66 and 72.

During a step 90, when the browser 14 receives the response to its refresh request, it immediately proceeds to display the HTML page constructed during the operation 68.

In parallel with step 90, during a step 92, the browser 14 interprets the meta-directive "Refresh" incorporated into the received HTML page and triggers a timer to count down the time interval ti.

When the time interval ti has elapsed, in a step 94, the browser 14 sends a new refresh request to the server 26 and, during a ≥tape 96, waits for the response to this request. In parallel with step 96, during a step 98, in response to the refresh request, the standalone task checks whether immediate refresh of the multimedia content presented by the terminal 4 is necessary. Step 98 is, for example, identical to step 64.

In the case where such immediate refreshing is necessary, the autonomous task immediately proceeds to a step 100 of refreshing the multimedia content presented by the terminal 4 and in parallel with a step 102 of storing the identifier of the refreshed multimedia content. Steps 100 and 102 are, for example, identical to steps 66 and 72.

In the case where an immediate refresh of the multimedia content is not necessary, during a step 104, the autonomous task delays before responding to the refresh request. Step 104 is, for example, identical to step 80.

After step 104, when the time interval t ₂ has expired or as soon as a change in the multimedia content is detected or signaled, the autonomous task proceeds to steps 100 and 102.

At the end of steps 100 and 102, during a step 106, the module 30 deletes the task created during step 62.

In parallel with the step 106, the browser 14 proceeds to steps 108 and 110 respectively identical to the steps 90 and 92. It will be noted that the step 108. ends the waiting step 96, since the response to the refresh request is received during this step 108.

At the end of steps 106, 108 and 110, the method returns to step 60, since the HTML page received in step 108 incorporates the "Refresh" meta-directive.

Many other embodiments of system 2 and the method of FIG. 2 are possible. For example, the sending of the refresh request can also be triggered by the user of the terminal 4 or 6 by pressing a button, such as the "update" button of the browser. Thus, in a simplified embodiment, it is not necessary to insert an instruction to automatically trigger the sending of a new refresh request after a predetermined time interval.

The teaching given above also applies to a multimedia content presentation system comprising only one terminal equipped with a browser.

Changes to the media content are not necessarily caused in response to an instruction received from users. For example, these can be automatically caused by the software 28 without intervention of one of the users.

Claims

A method of refreshing a multimedia content presented by an information presentation application, said method comprising a step in which the application sends (in 60, 94) to a multimedia content server a request for refreshing the multimedia content. presently presented by the application to a user of the application, characterized in that the method comprises the following steps in which: a) in response to the refresh request, the multimedia content server checks (in 64, 98) whether an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is necessary, b) if an immediate refresh is necessary, the server refreshes immediately (in 66, 100) the multimedia content presented by the application in response to the refresh request, and c) if an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application does not it is not necessary, the server delays (at 80, 104) before responding to the refresh request.

2. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that during the refresh of the multimedia content presented by the application, the server sends (in 70) the refreshed multimedia content to present to the application, the multimedia content containing a directly interpretable instruction by the application to trigger the automatic sending of a new refresh request after a first predetermined time interval (ti).

3. Method according to claim 2, characterized in that during step c), the server delays for a period strictly greater than the first time interval. predetermined (ti) if no refresh of the multimedia content currently presented is necessary.

4. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that in step c), the server interrupts the timer as soon as a change of the multimedia content to be present is detected or reported.

5. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that during step c), the server systematically interrupts the timer after a second predetermined time interval (t ₂ ).

6. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that during step a), the verification is made according to information on the changes in the multimedia content since the last presentation of the multimedia content by the application.

7. Computer program, characterized in that it comprises instructions for executing a refresh method according to any one of the preceding claims, when said instructions are executed by an electronic computer.

8. An information recording medium, characterized in that it comprises instructions for the execution of a refresh method according to any one of claims 1 to 6, when the instructions are executed by an electronic calculator .

A server (26) for multimedia content adapted to be implemented in a method of refreshing a multimedia content presented by an information presenting application, in response to a refresh request sent by that application, characterized in that that the server is fit: - to check whether an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is necessary,

- to immediately refresh the multimedia content presented by the application in response to the refresh request if an immediate refresh is necessary, and

- Timed before responding to the refresh request if an immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented by the application is not necessary.

10. Server according to claim 9, characterized in that the server is adapted to send to the application the multimedia content refreshed to present, the multimedia content containing an instruction directly interpretable by the application to trigger the automatic sending of a new refresh request after a first predetermined time interval (ti).

11. Server according to claim 10, characterized in that the server is able to delay for a period strictly greater than the first predetermined time interval (ti) if no immediate refresh of the multimedia content currently presented is necessary.

12. Server according to any one of claims 9 to 11, characterized in that the server is able to interrupt the timer as soon as a modification of the multimedia content presented is detected or reported.

13. Server according to any one of claims 9 to 12, characterized in that the server is able to systematically interrupt the timer after a second predetermined time interval (t ₂ ).

14. Server according to any one of claims 9 to 13, characterized in that the server is able to check whether an immediate refresh of the content Currently presented multimedia is required based on information about changes to the media content since the last presentation of the multimedia content by the application.

15. System for presenting multimedia content comprising:

a server (26) for multimedia content capable of modifying a multimedia content that can be presented to a user by an information presentation application, at least one information presentation application (14) connected to the server by means of an information presentation application; network (22) for transmitting information, this application being able to send to the server a request for refreshing the multimedia content it presents, characterized in that the server is in accordance with any one of claims 9 to 14.