CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present patent application is a divisional of and claims priority from U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/517,874, entitled â€œExclusive Use Display Surface Areas and Persistently Visible Display of Contents Including Advertisementsâ€ and filed Mar. 2, 2000, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein. Application Ser. No. 09/517,874 is itself a continuation-in-part application to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/344,409 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,570,595), entitled â€œExclusive Use Display Surface Areas and Persistently Visible Display of Contents Including Advertisementsâ€ and filed Jun. 24, 1999 (and issued May 27, 2003), the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to the field of computer systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to exclusive use display surface areas, and their applications to persistently visible display of contents, such as advertisements.

2. Background Information

With advances in microprocessor and other related technology, today's computers are equipped with processing capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of large mainframe computers. To exploit these capabilities, today's computers are often equipped with multi-tasking operating systems that allow multiple tasks of the same or different applications to be executed at the same time. These operating systems are also typically equipped with windowing managers to manage the concurrent display of the execution results of the various tasks or applications through windowing, within the constraint of the available display surface of a display device. That is, the execution results of the various tasks/applications are rendered in corresponding display windows (hereinafter, simply windows), and these windows share the display surface. This employment of windows along with the use of iconic representations for various programs and â€œobjectsâ€ is also often referred to as the desktop metaphor, with the shared display surface area being referred to as the desktop area.

Whether the contents rendered in the various windows are actually visible to a user depend on the relatively placement of the windows within the available display surface. Except for the top window (such as the â€œin focusâ€ window or another window â€œriggedâ€ to be â€œalways on topâ€ ) or windows that do not overlap with other windows (such as windows placed in a tile arrangement), contents of the underlying windows disposed in the overlapping portions are considered obstructed, and generally invisible, unless the top and other intermediate windows are considered â€œtransparentâ€ . Contents disposed in the obstructed portions of these underlying windows become visible only when the window manager surfaces the window as the top window, typically responsive to a user request.

Many applications, such as Internet advertising, desire to have at least some of their rendered contents (in the case of Internet advertising, the advertisements themselves) persistently visible to the user. However, â€œriggingâ€ the browser window to be â€œalways on topâ€ is not necessarily a viable option. Furthermore, in the case of Internet advertisement, even if â€œriggingâ€ the browser window as â€œalways on topâ€ is a viable option, it still would not fully satisfy its persistent visibility desire. The reason is because most Internet advertisements are rendered in the form of banners, typically disposed at least at the top and at the bottom of a page. The banner advertisement placed at the bottom of a page is typically not visible when the page is first displayed, as the page is typically larger than the browser window. Similarly, the banner advertisement placed at the top of the page becomes invisible as the page is scrolled downward.

Thus, an improved approach to display management that better addresses the persistent visibility requirements of applications, in particular, the persistent visibility requirements of Internet advertising is desired.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In a computer system having a display device with a display surface, a portion of the display surface is reserved for an exclusive use, allowing contents rendered in the reserve area to be persistently visible. In one embodiment, the reservation is accomplished through reducing the width and height of a shared portion of the display surface managed by a window manager, corresponding to a graphics resolution. In another embodiment, the reservation is accomplished by having the window manager works with a pixel resolution smaller than the operative pixel resolution of the display hardware. In one embodiment, the reservation is made only while the computer system is â€œon-lineâ€ . In one embodiment, the exclusive use is to render advertisements in the reserved portion by an advertising rendering program. The advertisements are HTML pages received from an advertisement web server through the Internet. The HTML pages are rendered in the reserved portion through a direct draw component. The direct draw component is provided with the unreduced width and height as the width and height of the surface area to support direct drawing of graphical displays. A cursor control device driver also supports monitoring of movements of a cursor control device and of occurrences of cursor events. The cursor control device driver is likewise provided with the unreduced width and height as the width and height of the surface area to monitor for cursor movements and events. In other embodiments, multiple portions of the display surface are reserved for advertising and/or other exclusive uses. In yet other embodiments, full screen applications, including those that utilize page flipping are accommodated.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

The present invention will be described by way of exemplary embodiments, but not limitations, illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like references denote similar elements, and in which:

FIG. 1a-1f illustrate an overview of the present invention, in accordance with six embodiments;

FIG. 2 illustrates an example computer system suitable for practicing the present invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates the operating system of FIG. 2 in further details, and its interaction with the various applications, in accordance with one embodiment;

FIGS. 4a-4c illustrate various operational flows of the EDA manager of FIG. 3, in accordance with one embodiment;

FIG. 4d illustrates an alternate embodiment to the operation flow of FIG. 4a;

FIGS. 5-6 illustrate application of the present invention to advertisement rendering, in accordance with two embodiments; and

FIGS. 7-8 illustrate application of the present invention to Internet advertising in further details, in accordance with one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

In the following description, various aspects of the present invention will be described. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced with only some or all aspects of the present invention. For purposes of explanation, specific numbers, materials and configurations are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, it will also be apparent to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without the specific details. In other instances, well known features are omitted or simplified in order not to obscure the present invention.

Parts of the description will be presented using terms such as display surfaces, windows, device drivers, and so forth, commonly employed by those skilled in the art to convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art. Parts of the description will be presented in terms of operations performed by a computer system, using terms such as rendering, determining, reducing, transmitting, and so forth. As well understood by those skilled in the art, these quantities and operations take the form of electrical, magnetic, or optical signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, and otherwise manipulated through mechanical and electrical components of a digital system; and the term digital system include general purpose as well as special purpose data processing machines, systems, and the like, that are standalone, adjunct or embedded.

Various operations will be described as multiple discrete steps performed in turn in a manner that is most helpful in understanding the present invention, however, the order of description should not be construed as to imply that these operations are necessarily order dependent, in particular, the order the steps are presented. Furthermore, the phrase â€œin one embodimentâ€ will be used repeatedly, however the phrase does not necessarily refer to the same embodiment, although it may.

Referring now to FIGS. 1a-1f, wherein six block diagrams illustrating an overview of the present invention in accordance with three embodiments are shown. As illustrated, in accordance with the present invention, displace surface 102 of display device 100 (of a computer system) are divided into display areas 104 and 106a-106aa. Display area 104 is referred to as the shared display area (SDA), where any number of applications 108 (executing on the computer system or remotely, and of a display area sharing type) may render contents in their corresponding windows (disposed inside SDA 104). Display areas 106a-106aa are referred to as exclusive-use display areas (EDA), where only assigned applications 110 (executing on the computer system or remotely, and of an exclusive use type, in terms of display area) may correspondingly render contents into these areas. For FIG. 1a, one EDA 106a disposed along the bottom edge of display surface 102 is set aside or reserved. Whereas, in FIGS. 1b-1c, three EDAs 106b-106d and 106e-106g disposed along the left and top edges and along the right and bottom edges of displace surface 102 respectively, are set aside or reserved. In FIGS. 1d-1e, six EDAs 106h-106m and 106n-106s disposed in two rows along the left and top edges and along the right and bottom edges of displace surface 102 respectively, are set aside or reserved. Finally, in FIG. 1f, eight EDAs 106t-106aa disposed along the perimeter of displace surface 102 are set aside or reserved. As a result, contents rendered into EDAs 106a-106aa by applications 110 are persistently visible to an end-user, without resorting to prior art â€œriggingâ€ techniques, such as â€œalways on topâ€ . As will be described in more detail below, by selectively associating with an application 110, an application 108 may selectively render a portion of its output display in this persistently visible manner, thereby enabling applications (such as advertisement rendering), to overcome the prior art disadvantage of losing visibility to some of the rendered contents (such as banner advertisements), when the rendered contents (such as a displayed page), is scrolled up and down within a display window (such as a browser window).

These and other aspects of the present invention will be described more fully below. However, before doing do, it should be noted that while six embodiments of partitioning or setting aside or reserving exclusive-use display areas 106* were shown, from the descriptions to follow, those skilled in the art will appreciate that depending on how the coordinate system or pixel configuration is implemented by the operating system of the computer system, some embodiments are more suitable for one operating system, while other embodiments may be more suitable for another operating system. Of course, other variations of partitioning or setting aside or reserving exclusive-use display areas may also be practiced. It should also be noted that each assigned application 110 may elect to employ multiple windows in rendering contents in its assigned EDA 106*. However, for ease of understanding, the remaining description will substantially be confined to the scenario where an un-windowed or single window approach is employed in each of the assigned EDA 106*. (The symbol * after reference number 106 stands for a â€œwildcardâ€ , which in this case may be any one of the letters â€œaâ€ through â€œaaâ€ .)

Referring now to FIG. 2, wherein an example computer system suitable for practicing the present invention is shown. As shown, example computer system 200 includes processor 202, ROM 203, and system memory 204 coupled to each other via â€œbusâ€ 206. Coupled also to â€œbusâ€ 206 are non-volatile mass storage 208, display device 210, cursor control device 212 and communication interface 214. ROM 203 includes a basic input/output system (BIOS) 205. During operation, memory 204 includes working copies of operating system 222, applications 224 that use the shared display area (see FIGS. 1a-1f) of the display surface of display device 210, and applications 226 that use correspondingly assigned exclusive-use display areas (see FIGS. 1a-1f) of the display surface of display device 210. For some embodiments, memory 204 further includes working copies of applications 228 that use the entire display area (also referred to as â€œfull screenâ€ applications). Operating system 222, applications 226, and in some embodiments, applications 224 and 228 are incorporated with the teachings of the present invention. Examples of SDA applications 224 are conventional word processing applications, spread sheet applications, and the like. Examples of EDA applications 226 include advertisements, as alluded to earlier, messaging applications, and the like. Examples of â€œfull screenâ€ applications 228 include multi-media games and the like.

Except for the teachings of the present invention incorporated, each of these elements is intended to represent a wide range of these devices known in the art, and perform its conventional functions. For example, processor 202 may be a processor of the PentiumÂ® family available from Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., or a processor of the PowerPCÂ® family available from IBM of Armonk, N.Y. Processor 202 performs its conventional function of executing programming instructions of operating system 222 and applications 224-228, including those implementing the teachings of the present invention. ROM 203 may be EEPROM, Flash and the like, and memory 204 may be SDRAM, DRAM and the like, from semiconductor manufacturers such as Micron Technology of Boise, Id. Bus 206 may be a single bus or a multiple bus implementation. In other words, bus 206 may include multiple buses of identical or different kinds properly bridged, such as Local Bus, VESA, ISA, EISA, PCI and the like.

Mass storage 208 may be disk drives or CDROMs from manufacturers such as Seagate Technology of Santa Cruz of Calif., and the like. Typically, mass storage 208 includes the permanent copy of operating system 222 and applications 224-228. The permanent copy may be installed in the factory, or in the field. For field installation, the permanent copy may be distributed using article of manufactures with recordable medium such as diskettes, CDROM, DVD and the like, or downloaded from a distribution server through a data network (such as the Internet). The distribution server may be a server of the OEM, i.e. the software developer, such as Microsoft of Redmond, Wash., if an operating system of the WindowÂ® family is used, or a server of a publisher, such as Red Hat of Durham, N.C., if Linux is used instead.

Display device 210 may be monitors of any types from manufacturers such as Viewsonic of City, State. Cursor control 212 may be a mouse, a track ball and the like, from manufacturers such as Logictech of Milpitas, Calif. Communication interface 214 may be a modem interface, an ISDN adapter, a DSL interface, an Ethernet or Token ring network interface and the like, from manufacturers such as 3COM of San Jose, Calif.

As those skilled in the art will also appreciate, from the description the follow, the present invention may also be practiced without some of the enumerated elements, e.g. mass storage 208, or with additional elements, such as graphics accelerators, audio and video add-on cards, and so forth. Furthermore, while for ease of understanding, the term â€œapplications 226â€ is used to refer to â€œapplicationsâ€ assigned to use the exclusive-use display areas, in alternate embodiments, through appropriate use of an â€œemulation interfaceâ€ , one or more of applications 226 may be another operating system instead.

Referring now the FIG. 3, wherein a block diagram illustrating enhanced operating system 222 and its interactions with applications 224-228 is shown. As illustrated, operating system 222 includes conventional elements such as window manager 302, graphics manager 304, display device driver 306, and cursor control device driver 308. Each of these elements performs its conventional functions known in the art. That is, window manager 302 performs the conventional function of managing the current display of the various display windows of applications 224 in the SDA (see FIGS. 1a-1f). Graphics manager 304 performs the conventional function of rendering graphics objects for an application. Graphics manager 304 includes in particular, the capability of allowing an application to make direct draw onto the display surface of a display device. For example, for the WindowsÂ® operating systems, graphics manager 304 is intended to represent the Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and DirectX combined. (The two components are expected to be consolidated into a single component in GDI2K and beyond.) Display driver 306 performs the conventional function of controlling the display device, whereas cursor control device driver 308 performs the conventional function of monitoring movements of a cursor control device and cursor events (such as clicking or double clicking of a control button).

As illustrated, in accordance with the present invention, operating system 222 is also advantageously provided with exclusive-use display area manager 310. EDA manager 310 is employed to â€œcoordinateâ€ with window manager 302 to set up the shared and exclusive areas. Furthermore, EDA manager 310 is also employed to enable applications 226 to be able to correspondingly render contents into their assigned EDAs, and to respond to cursor device movements and events detected within their assigned EDAs. For the illustrated embodiment, SDA applications 224 render contents into their windows using graphics manager 304 through window manager 302, where a EDA and â€œfull screenâ€ applications 226-228 render contents into the EDAs and the entire display screen respectively using the direct draw functions of graphics manager 304. These and other aspects will be described more fully below with references to FIGS. 4a-4c.

FIG. 4a illustrates the operational flow of EDA manager 310 for â€œcoordinatingâ€ with window manager 302 in setting up the shared and exclusive-use display areas, in accordance with one embodiment. As shown, for the illustrated embodiment, EDA manager 310 intercepts a call from window manager 302 to display device driver 306 to obtain the size of the display surface for the display device under the control of display device driver 306 for a particular graphics resolution. The interception or redirection to EDA manager 310 is accomplished in an operating system dependent manner. In one embodiment, where the operating system is of the WindowsÂ® family, the interception or redirection of the call is by modifying the registry and the system.ini file. For this embodiment, the call includes the graphics resolution, expressed in terms of a pixel resolution, e.g. 800Ã—600 pixels.

Upon interception, at 402, EDA manager 310 forwards the call to display device driver 306. At 404, the display device driver 306 returns the size of the display surface of the display device under the control of display device driver 306 for the particular graphics resolution. In one embodiment, the size is expressed in terms of the width and height of the display surface. In one embodiment, the width and height are implicitly expressed in terms of maximum x and y coordinates. In one embodiment, where the operating system is of the WindowsÂ® family, the original of the x-y coordinate is by-definition the top left corner of the display surface.

For the illustrated embodiment, upon receipt of the size of display surface expressed in terms of width and height, at 406, EDA manager 310 reduces the width and height accordingly to set aside or reserve the EDA(s). In one embodiment, the number of EDA(s) to be created and the applications to be assigned to the various EDAs are specified through a configuration file, e.g. for an operating system of the WindowsÂ® family, through sections in the win.ini and system.ini files. Depending on the coordinate system of the operating system, multiple EDAs can be created with a single or successive operations of reducing the width and the height. For example, for the embodiment where the size is expressed in terms of maximum x (x_max) and maximum y (y_max) referencing an origin disposed at the top left corner of the display surface, the three EDAs of FIG. 1c may be created by reducing x_maxand y_maxto xâ€²_maxand yâ€²_maxwhere xâ€²_maxand yâ€²_maxare smaller than x_maxand yâ€²_maxrespectively. EDAs 106f and 106g are the areas disposed along the bottom and the right edge of the display surface respectively, less the intersected area, which is treated as EDA 106e. Similarly, the six EDAs of FIG. 1e may be created by successively reducing x_maxand y_maxto xâ€²_maxand yâ€²_max, and xâ€³_maxand yâ€³_maxâ€², where xâ€²_maxand yâ€²_maxare smaller than x_maxand y_maxâ€², and xâ€³_maxand yâ€³_maxare smaller than xâ€²_maxand yâ€²_max, respectively. EDAs 106n-106s are the two rows of areas disposed along the bottom and the right edge of the display surface respectively. The successive reduction may even be performed through recursive invocation of a reduction function. In alternate embodiments, the allocation of the EDAs to applications 110 may be made dynamically instead, employing a resource allocation manager.

Upon reducing the size of the display surface, at 408, EDA manager 310 returns the reduced size to window manager 302, thereby â€œcoordinatingâ€ the locations of the shared and exclusive-use display areas with window manager 302. In alternate embodiments, other expression of sizes as well as other coordinate systems may be employed. The manner in which the size is reduced, and the manner in which shared and exclusive-use areas are designated may simply be adjusted accordingly to the alternate approaches.

For the illustrated embodiment, it is assumed that upon receipt of the reduced size, window manager 302 also sets up graphics manager 304 and cursor control device driver 308 to operate with the same display surface information, i.e. the reduced size. Accordingly, at 410, EDA manager 310 overrides this information, restoring graphics manager 304 and cursor control device driver 308 to operate with the unreduced size, thereby allowing applications 226 to render contents into the EDAs through direct draw, and to be notified of detected cursor movements and events in the EDAs. Towards the later objective, at 412, EDA manager 310 also modifies the set up of cursor control device driver 308 such that event notifications of cursor movements and events are provided to EDA manager 310 instead of window manager 302, for EDA manager 310 to filter out the detected cursor movements and events in the EDAs before allowing the residual detected cursor movements and events (within the shared display area) to be passed on to window manager 310.

In one embodiment, window manager 302 attempts to establish the size of display surface at each system start-up/reset. Accordingly, the operations illustrated in FIG. 4a are performed at each system start-up/reset.

In an alternate embodiment, operations 406-410 are not performed at each system start-up/reset. Instead they are performed only when the computer system is â€œon-lineâ€ , e.g. connected to the Internet. That is, upon receiving the size of the display surface from display device driver 306 at system start/reset, EDA manager 310 forwards the information to window manager 302 without the earlier described reduction and conformance, operations 406-410. EDA manager 310 instead proceeds to monitor for the computer system going â€œon-lineâ€ (not shown in FIG. 4a). Only upon detection of such event, EDA manager 310 performs operations 406-410. (The monitoring/detection may be accomplished in any one of a number of operating system dependent manners known in the art.) Furthermore, upon performing operation 410, EDA manager 310 monitors for the computer system going â€œoff-lineâ€ (also not shown in FIG. 4a). Upon detection of the computer system going â€œoff-lineâ€ , EDA manager 310 notifies window manager 302 to switch back to the unreduced screen size. Accordingly, the reservation, or the existence of the exclusive-use display areas are available only when the computer system is â€œon-lineâ€ .

In yet another embodiment, operations 406-410 are performed only when a CD or a DVD is being used. Similar to the earlier described embodiment, upon receiving the size of the display surface from display device driver 306 at system start/reset, EDA manager 310 forwards the information to window manager 302 without the earlier described reduction and conformance, operations 406-410. EDA manager 310 instead proceeds to monitor for the presence and usage of a CD/DVD (not shown in FIG. 4a). Only upon detection of such event, EDA manager 310 performs operations 406-410. (The monitoring/detection may be accomplished in any one of a number of operating system dependent manners known in the art.) Furthermore, upon performing operation 410, EDA manager 310 monitors for the removal of the CD/DVD (also not shown in FIG. 4a). Upon detection of the removal of the CD/DVD, EDA manager 310 notifies window manager 302 to switch back to the unreduced screen size. Accordingly, the reservation, or the existence of the exclusive-use display areas are available only when a CD/DVD is being used.

As can be seen from these embodiments, in general, the exclusive use areas of the present invention may be facilitated upon occurrence of any one of a number of events, and the facilitation ceases upon occurrence of any one of a number of other events, including in particular, â€œcomplementsâ€ of the earlier events. In one embodiments, the computer system may be programmatically configured with these events.

Note that starting applications 110 assigned with the EDAs is a separate issue. These applications may be started as part of an auto start process at system start-up or they may be started on an as needed basis by a task manager or by other applications.

FIG. 4b illustrates the operational flow of EDA manager 310 for filtering cursor movement/event notifications, in accordance with one embodiment. Upon receipt of a cursor movement/event notification, at 412, EDA manager 310 first determines whether the movement/event was detected in the SDA or one of the EDAs. If the movement/event was detected in the SDA, at 414, EDA manager 310 forwards the notification to window manager 302. From there, operations proceed as in the prior art. On the other hand, if the movement/event was detected in one of the EDAs, at 414, EDA manager 310 determines within which EDA, the movement or event occurred. At 416, EDA manager 310 forwards the notification to the appropriate application 110 accordingly. The manner in which the notification is handled is application dependent.

FIG. 4c illustrates the operational flow of EDA manager 310 for accommodating â€œfull screenâ€ applications 226, in accordance with one embodiment. At 422, EDA manager 310 monitors for calls by any one of â€œfull screenâ€ applications 228 to the direct draw functions of graphics manager 304 to enter a â€œfull screenâ€ mode of operation. Upon detection of one of such calls, EDA manager 310, at 424, notifies EDA applications 226 to temporarily refrain from drawing to the EDAs. EDA manager 310 then monitors for a call by the current full screen occupying application 226 to the direct draw functions of graphics manager 304 to restore the normal â€œnon-full screenâ€ mode of operation, 426. Upon detection of such a call, EDA manager 310, at 428, notifies EDA applications 226 that they may resume using the EDAs again. Thus, â€˜full screenâ€ applications are accommodated.

In an alternate embodiment where â€œfull screenâ€ applications 228 employ the feature referred to as â€œpage flippingâ€ , instead of accommodating the â€œfull screenâ€ applications 228 by temporarily removing the EDAs, the current full screen occupying application 228 may actually leave a perimeter of pixels for use as EDAs (e.g. like FIG. 1c), and notifies EDA manager 310 of the size. In response, instead of instructing EDA applications 226 to temporarily refrain from drawing to the EDAs, EDA manager 310 will intercept the â€œpage flipâ€ call by the current full screen occupying application, and coordinate having EDA applications 226 write to the â€œunusedâ€ locations of the â€œbackâ€ buffer (unused by the full screen occupying applications), using the direct draw functions of graphics manager 304, before forwarding the â€œpage flipâ€ call onward and have the â€œpage flipâ€ operation performed (that is, moving the content of the â€œbackâ€ buffer to the â€œfrontâ€ buffer). Accordingly, the EDAs of the present invention as well as the â€œfull screenâ€ applications may both be accommodated.

FIG. 4d illustrates the operational flow of EDA manager 310 for â€œcoordinatingâ€ with window manager 302 in setting up the shared and EDAs, in accordance with another embodiment (i.e. an alternate embodiment to FIG. 4a). In this embodiment, it is assumed that SDA applications 224 include an application that monitors for the computer system going â€œon-lineâ€ and â€œoff-lineâ€ . Upon detecting the computer system going â€œon-lineâ€ , the application causes a number of EDA applications 226 to be launched, and upon detecting the computer system going â€œoff-lineâ€ , the application causes the launched EDA applications 226 to be terminated. In one implementation, the SDA application is an enhanced browser with a â€œplug inâ€ , such as an ActiveX control to perform the monitoring. Furthermore, it is also assumed that the launched EDA applications 226 include a â€œprimaryâ€ application that initiates the reservation or creation of the EDAs.

As illustrated, upon invocation, â€œprimaryâ€ EDA application 226 first notifies EDA manager 310 that it is going to call window manager 302 to request window manager 302 to change to a â€œsmallerâ€ display mode (in terms of pixels), 432. At 434, â€œprimaryâ€ EDA application 226 makes the actual call to window manager 302 to request the â€œsmallerâ€ display mode. In response, window manager 302 internally notes the change (and hencefore manages the display windows within the SDA accordingly), and calls display device driver 306 to reconfigure the display hardware (by way of EDA manager 310), 436. EDA manager 310, having been alerted by â€œprimaryâ€ EDA application 226 ignores the request without forwarding it to display device driver 306, effectively aborting the call, 438. As a result, the display hardware is still configured for the â€œlargerâ€ display mode (in terms of pixels), while window manager 302 manages display windows of SDA applications 224 in accordance with a â€œsmallerâ€ display mode. Accordingly, the desired EDAs are effectively reserved or created.

Similar to FIG. 4a, it is also assumed that upon â€œcallingâ€ display device driver 306 to reconfigure the display hardware to the â€œsmallerâ€ display mode, window manager 302 will set up graphics manager 304 and cursor control device driver 308 to work with the â€œsmallerâ€ display mode. At 440, EDA manager 310 overrides these set up, and restoring graphics manager 304 and cursor control device driver 308 to operate with the â€œlargerâ€ display mode, thereby allowing EDA applications 226 to render contents into the EDAs through the direct draw function of graphics manager 304, and to be notified of detected cursor movements and events in the EDAs.

As part of the termination process, â€œprimaryâ€ EDA application 226 also first notifies EDA manager 310 that it is going to call window manager 302 to request window manager 302 to change to a â€œlargerâ€ display mode (in terms of pixels), 442. At 444, â€œprimaryâ€ EDA application 226 makes the actual call to window manager 302 to request the â€œlargerâ€ display mode. In response, window manager 302 internally notes the change (and henceforth manages the display windows of the SDA accordingly), and calls display device driver 306 to reconfigure the display hardware (by way of EDA manager 310), 446. EDA manager 310, having been alerted by â€œprimaryâ€ EDA application 226 again ignores the request without forwarding it to display device driver 306, again effectively aborting the call, 448. As a result, window manager 302 returns to managing display windows of SDA applications 224 in accordance with the â€œlargerâ€ display mode, consistent with the display hardware. At 450, EDA manager 310 resets graphics manager 304 and cursor control device driver 308, as operation 440. Accordingly, the EDAs are effectively unreserved or eliminated.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that since the EDAs are reserved and unreserved without requiring display device driver 306 actually reconfiguring the display hardware, a user will see the contraction of the shared display area (and formation of the EDAs) as well as the expansion of the shared display area (and elimination of the EDAs) without seeing the blanking of the display device (caused by the reconfiguration of the display hardware), a very desirable usability feature.

Similar to the embodiment of FIG. 4a, detection of cursor movements and events within the EDAs may be facilitated as described earlier with reference to FIG. 4b, and â€œfull screenâ€ applications 228 may be accommodated as earlier described referencing FIG. 4c.

Referring now to FIGS. 5-6, wherein an example application of the present invention to rendering advertisement, in accordance with two embodiments are shown. As illustrated, both in FIGS. 5-6, EDA manager 310 assigns one of the EDAs, more specifically, EDA 506a or 606a disposed at the lower right corner of display surface 502, to display its identification signifying its presence and operation in the system, along with status and other control information. Additionally, for the illustrated embodiment, at least one of the applications 110 assigned with corresponding EDAs 506b and 506c or 606b and 606c is an advertisement rendering program for rendering advertisements (e.g. advertisements received from a remote server (such as a web server) through a data network (such as the Internet)).

For FIG. 5, it is assumed that the advertisements are constituted with Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML) pages, and each advertisement rendering program is an instance of a browser program, such as the Internet Explorer available from Microsoft or Navigator available from Netscape, recently acquired by America On-Line of Dulles, Va. By virtue of the browser's exclusive use of its assigned display area 506b or 506c, the advertisement rendered are persistently visible, independent of changes in the shared display area 504.

For FIG. 6, it is also assumed that the advertisements are also constituted with Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML) pages, however the advertisement rendering program assigned the EDA is merely a program that renders iconic representations for advertisements in the assigned EDA, e.g. trademarks or service marks of the advertisers. The program, in response to a user selection of a corresponding displayed iconic representation of an advertisement, launches an instance of a browser program to render the advertisement in a conventional browser window 608 disposed in SDA 604. Although for this embodiment, the advertisements themselves are not persistently visible, but their iconic representations, by virtue of the program's exclusive use of the display areas, are persistently visible. Although not proportionally illustrated, EDAs 606b and 606c may be substantially smaller than EDAs 506b and 506c, thereby offering a compromised tradeoff of having a larger shared display area 604, and yet maintaining a small amount of persistently visible display areas 606b-606c.

Referring now to FIGS. 7-8, wherein two block diagrams illustrating the example application of the present invention to advertising, more specifically, to Internet advertising, in further details, are shown. As illustrated, FIG. 7 is a network view of an improved approach to Internet advertising including end-user systems 702 incorporated with the teachings of the present invention set forth above, and web-based advertisement servers 710 equipped to exploit the presence of end-user systems 702 with persistent visibility provided through the present invention. End user systems 702 are coupled to the Internet 704, some through the conventional PSTN 706, while others through their private/public LAN 708.

FIG. 8 illustrates the operational flow of the Internet advertising method of the present invention, in accordance with one embodiment. As shown, at 802, server 710 transmits a web page to one of the end-user systems 702 in response to a â€œrequestâ€ for the web page from the particular end-user system 702. As in the prior art, the request and response may be accomplished through e.g. an http connection that includes an URL denoting the web page or the particular server 710. In accordance with the present invention, the web page includes a script, e.g. a Javascript, that requests EDA manager 310 to provide an URL identifying one or more advertisements to an advertisement rendering program assigned to a designated exclusive-use display area, e.g. the EDA disposed along the bottom edge of the display surface. (The advertisement rendering program may be an embodiment of the FIG. 5a type or an embodiment of the FIG. 5b type, or embodiment of other like type.) Thus, upon receipt, at 804, the embedded script makes the request accordingly.

At 806, EDA manager 310 provides the URL to the advertisement rendering program assigned the designated EDA accordingly. In response, at 808, the advertisement rendering program opens another http connection to the specified resource location to retrieve the specified advertisements. Upon receipt of the advertisements, the advertisement rendering program renders the advertisements accordingly, as described above.

Thus, a method and an apparatus for creating exclusive-use display areas, and using them for persistently visible display of contents, such as advertisement, have been described.

While the present invention has been described in terms of the above illustrated embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention is not limited to the embodiments described. The present invention can be practiced with modification and alteration within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. The description is thus to be regarded as illustrative instead of restrictive on the present invention.