RIM recently filed a new patent application which promises to speed up web browsing. At first I could not figure out what they were trying to patent but then it all made sense. I will try to explain it but in short RIM does not want important parts of a website to be caught in line behind unimportant parts when you are downloading a webpage.
RIM provides a good example of the problem they are trying to solve with this patent below if you understand a bit about how the elements of a website work together.
By way of an example, a browser of the wireless device may encounter a JavaScript.TM. source or cascading style sheet (css) reference in a response while loading a web page. Such references require immediate action. The browser is required to fetch the data for the reference, via a second request. It is also required to pause any further rendering of the page for any response data it may have until the new reference is completed. However, the send queue of the gateway may contain the remainder of the response to the first request while it receives the response to the second request. Send queues operate in accordance with first in first out (FIFO) rules. As such, the gateway puts the response to the second request at the end of its queue for sending after it completes the sending of the first response.
RIM’s solution is explained briefly below:
Therefore, there is a need for a method and system whereby a first device (e.g. a wireless handheld device or mobile station) may send a request to a second device (e.g. a wireless gateway server or other server) for response data having a higher priority than response data for an earlier request which is still transferring to the first device from the second device. Further there is a need for a second device (e.g. the server) to process the prioritized requests accordingly, inserting the higher priority response data into a content stream that the second device is transmitting to the first device, pre-empting any earlier lower priority response data that may already be enqueued.
via USPO Patent Application via ReadWriteWeb via BBRocks
kman Not Registered
Posted: June 16, 2010 at 11:44 AM EST from my BlackBerry 9000
Kind of ironic that RIM is patenting fast web browsing technologies, but its encouraging to see that they’re taking one of their glaring weaknesses seriously.