Background

Web browsers include but are not limited to Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, and Galeon. Web browsers are the standard for viewing website information. Web browsers have differentiated themselves by computer operating system support (such as Apple, Microsoft Windows, and Unix), webpage download speed, computer memory usage, and compliance to standards. Most web browsers are also capable of uploading and downloading files, but this competes with well-established file transfer protocol (FTP) programs in this particular arena. Some web browsers have the capability to call other programs depending on context, such as opening a media player to play a music file, after downloading the music file from a Network. Called programs may permanently reside on a local computer’s physical media, but may sometimes be (i) loaded across a Network and executed locally or (ii) executed on a different computer. 

Some web browsers have a loosely integrated search capability, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The user may enter the search topic and constraints into the web browser display and subsequently execute a search. The web browser calls a search engine across a Network to execute a search on a different computer and displays the resulting hyperlinks to webpages in a prioritized order on the local computer. A list of text hyperlinks, that may have an associated description in the vicinity of the hyperlink, is usually displayed in one panel of the web browser. A second panel sometimes holds static images with hyperlinks that may have
(i) an associated text hyperlink repeated in the vicinity of each image; and/or
(ii) an associated description in the vicinity of each image.
These images, when present, are simple thumbnail images with hyperlinks to an associated webpage. The thumbnail images are very small and tiled in the panel. Their small size makes it difficult to obtain much useful information from the picture alone. US patent number 6,271,840 B1 dated August 7, 2001 to inventors James Lee Finseth and Jerry Hermel and Bryan F. Pelz entitled “Graphical Search Engine Visual Index”describes a visual index method that provides graphical output from search engine results or other URL lists. The graphical information and other media information is rendered into a reduced graphical form for review by a user. The reduced graphical form is sometimes useful for discerning graphical and/or textual information when not much detail is required, but it is difficult to use a reduced graphical form when detailed graphical and/or textual information is required, similar to the thumbnail images described in the foregoing.

Web browsers that don’t have a loosely integrated search function, rely on search engine websites to provide the user interface to perform a search. Search engine websites generally display their results in one main viewing area of a web browser, and optionally display a list of
(i) text hyperlinks; or
(ii) static images with hyperlinks that may have the associated text hyperlink repeated in the vicinity of each image and an associated description in the vicinity of each image. 

Again, these images, when present, are simple thumbnail images with hyperlinks to an associated website. As this method is web browser independent and has been available for many years, it is the most widely used search technique.

Web browsers have the ability to display a webpage that contains information from multiple sources on a Network. A webpage points to such information through hyperlinks, designated Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) or informally as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). URIs are short strings that identify resources on a Network, including but not limited to documents, images, services, downloadable files, webpages, and electronic mailboxes. When loading a webpage, a web browser uses the URIs to locate, load and display information residing on a Network. In some cases, the web browser may take additional actions, such as asking for a username/password or loading another program(s) to interpret the information. 

The information from these multiple Network sources can be divided up into independent web browser viewing areas, called Frames. Frames are usually used to manage complexity and information from a particular website. A common use for Frames is to divide the web browser viewing area into categories of information, such as keeping the menu system in one area, advertisements in a second area, and main website content in a third area. Not all websites use Frames and not all web browsers support Frames. It is possible to subjugate multiple websites and their respective webpages within a website’s webpage(s). Such subjugation is usually done when the information is closely related between such websites and/or a relationship exists between the website owners.

Even though a website may subjugate another related website’s webpages through mechanisms such as Frames discussed in the foregoing, web browsers do not generally display and operate on multiple independent websites at one time. Information related to a particular search topic, may be scattered on multiple independent websites. Web browsers and search engines, do not coalesce pertinent webpages, as opposed to hyperlinks, and simultaneously display multiple webpages. This inability greatly impedes information search, retrieval, and viewing processes given current levels of processor power and Internet connection bandwidth.  To display and/or operate on more than one webpage at a time and have the search capabilities that users have become accustomed to would require enhancements to the web browser and tight integration of the web browser and search engine control functions—something that has not been done to date.

Every website has its own latency in responding to a web browser, such that the web browser can download the webpage and render the webpage in the display. Hence the time to review multiple website webpages includes each website’s response time, the Network latency at a given time, and the time to select the next hyperlink (collectively “Latency”). Web browsers are currently limited to downloading only one webpage at a time. Even with simultaneous multiple Network connections to such a webpage, the Latency to review multiple webpages or websites is additive and arbitrarily limited by the webpages that, for whatever reason, are slow to retrieve. US patent number 6,067,565 dated May 23, 2000 to inventor Eric Horvitz entitled “Technique For Prefetching A Web Page Of Potential Future Interest In Lieu Of Continuing A Current Information Download” describes prefetching webpages or pre-selected portions thereof, into a local cache of a client computer. This prefetching technique uses a probabilistic user model, which specifies, at any one time, those pages or portions of pages that are likely to be prefetched given, e.g., a webpage currently being rendered to a user; these pages being those which promise to provide the largest benefit (expected utility) to the user. This approach has little utility when used in conjunction with a conventional search engine, where a user gives search criteria to a search engine and such search engine returns a ranked ordered hyperlink list corresponding to webpages based on the user’s criteria. The search engine has already calculated the rank order for the hyperlinks before returning said hyperlink list to the user’s web browser. It is unnecessary to further apply a probabilistic or statistical user model to said web page containing said hyperlink list, as the hyperlink list is already ranked ordered. A preloading scheme that preloaded the ranked ordered hyperlinks directly into a web browser for later display would have much greater utility to lower the latency to review such webpages and more efficiently use the associated network and computer resources.  Similarly, US patent number 6,085,226 dated July 4, 2000 to inventor Eric Horvitz entitled “Method And Apparatus For Utility-Directed Prefetching Of Web Pages Into A Local Cache Using Continual Computation And User Models” describes prefetching webpages or pre-selected portions thereof, into a local cache of a client computer. This prefetching technique uses a probabilistic user model to specify, at any one time, those pages or portions of pages, that are likely to be prefetched given, e.g.,  a webpage currently being rendered to a user, which promises to provide the largest benefit (expected utility) to the user. Again, this approach has little utility when used in conjunction with a conventional search engine, where a user gives search criteria to a search engine and such search engine returns a ranked ordered hyperlink list corresponding to webpages based on the user’s criteria. The search engine has already calculated the rank order for the hyperlinks before returning said hyperlink list to the user’s web browser. It is unnecessary to further apply a probabilistic or statistical user model to said web page containing said hyperlink list, as the hyperlink list is already ranked ordered. A preloading scheme that preloaded the ranked ordered hyperlinks directly into a web browser for later display would have much greater utility to lower the latency to review such webpages and more efficiently use the associated network and computer resources.  Similarly, US patent number 6,182,133 B1 dated January 30, 2001 to inventor Eric Horvitz entitled “Method And Apparatus For Display Of Information Prefetching And Cache Status Having Variable Visual Indication Based On A Period Of Time Since Prefetching” describes prefetching webpages or portions thereof and subsequently making a visual indication to a user that such pages or portions have been prefetched. This prefetching technique uses a probabilistic or statistical user model to specify, at any one time, those pages that are to be prefetched given  information, e.g., a webpage currently being rendered to a user, content and structure of that particular page, a history of webpages visited by the user, user background, and user actions. Again, this approach has little utility when used in conjunction with a conventional search engine, where a user gives search criteria to a search engine and such search engine returns a ranked ordered hyperlink list corresponding to webpages based on the user’s criteria. The search engine has already calculated the rank order for the hyperlinks before returning said hyperlink list to the user’s web browser. It is unnecessary to further apply a probabilistic or statistical user model to said web page containing said hyperlink list, as the hyperlink list is already ranked ordered. A preloading scheme that preloaded the ranked ordered hyperlinks directly into a web browser for later display would have much greater utility to lower the latency to review such webpages and more efficiently use the associated network and computer resources.  

In reviewing webpage information, it is often difficult to copy and paste information accurately into other applications or even print such information. The capability to select any portion of the web browser display and generate an image in a selected format that can be saved to a physical media such as hard drive, floppy drive, compact disk or computer memory—such as the Microsoft Windows clipboard, is not incorporated in web browsers today. 

Websites frequently have webpages that include fonts and images that are small and difficult to read. Web browsers don’t have a zoom capability to enlarge a viewing area or make it smaller, thereby rendering such information that may be too small or too large useless, if it can’t be dynamically enlarged or made smaller respectively.

Web browsers have very limited functionality to enhance the viewing and processing of information, but do usually include the capability to
(i) list and select hyperlinks to webpages associated with the history of the websites previously visited; and
(ii) select and save favorite hyperlinks to website webpages, one at a time. Web browsers don’t have the capability to remove or prune one or more hyperlinks from a hyperlink list returned by a search engine(s) or save, for future retrieval, a complete hyperlink list or pruned hyperlink list returned by a search engine(s). There also isn’t a capability to save a hyperlink list or pruned hyperlink list to an alternate list or queue for later review or saving, while possibly continuing on with a new search that may entail different subject matter, options, constraints, or search engine(s).

Common search engines include, but are not limited to Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite, Northern Light, MSN Search, iWon, HotBot, AlltheWeb, Teoma, DMOZ, DOGPILE, WizeNut, Overture, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Inktomi, LookSmart, and Netscape. Search engines differentiate themselves mainly on content and features. The size of the search engine database is one of the content metrics. Search engines may return lists of hyperlinks that specialize in a content area such as: news, music files, auctions, employment, insurance, loans, yellow pages, white pages, email addresses, sports, shopping, movies, classifieds, health, images, movies, home life, finance, stocks, and travel. Search features may include: language selection, word exclusion, exact phrases to be returned, number of pages to be returned, file format, returning results from a specific website domain, and content blocks. Some search engines are website domain specific such as Dell, GM, and Sears and are accessed from their respective websites.  Conventional search engines return one or more lists of text hyperlinks and/or images with hyperlinks, not the fully active webpages associated with the hyperlinks.

Utilizing a search engine website is a serial process of browsing to such website; entering the search topic, options and constraints; executing the search; a list of hyperlinks (usually a set of ten (10) at one time) is returned by the search engine and displayed by the web browser; selecting a single hyperlink from the list; being vectored to the associated website; reviewing the webpage information that resides on the website in the web browser; and returning to the search engine website to select another hyperlink. This process is repeated for each such successive hyperlink. To view the next set (usually ten) of hyperlinks requires selecting yet a different hyperlink to render the next set of hyperlinks in the web browser. This laborious ping-pong process between websites and the search engine hyperlink list is continued until the sought after information is found or the search is terminated.

There are multiple inherent problems in using a prior art web browser—search engine paradigm for information retrieval and display, stemming from an age where Network and Internet bandwidth was limited and costly. Better solutions are needed that remove the foregoing web browser and search engine deficiencies, given the greater processor power measured in millions of instructions per second (MIPS) and Internet access bandwidth measured in millions of bits per second (Mbits/sec.) available today, while providing a tighter integration between the web browser and search engine(s).