Collaborative communication in a web application

摘要

A document accessible on a network may be opened by multiple users. A user may use a thin client application to access the document, wherein an image of the document and XML data including comments and locations of the comments in the document. Hint icons are displayed in the document where comments are anchored. Upon selection of a hint, an HTML comments pane may be displayed to a side of the document, exposing comments and replies to comments currently stored in the document. The comments pane may be scrolled to the comment associated with the selected hint. Additionally, highlighting may be provided over elements in the document associated with a selected comment. Comments may be added via the comments pane and saved to the document on the network. Comments and comment location data may be communicated to other clients, allowing for collaborative communication via a thin client application.

主权项

1. A method executed by a computer processor for collaboratively commenting via a thin client application, the method comprising:
receiving a document; receiving a request from the thin client application to view the document; sending an image of the document to the thin client application; and sending one or more comments and information that associates each comment with a location in the document where the comment is anchored to the thin client application, the comments and information sent in an extensible markup language (XML) file, such that a selectable control representing the location of a comment is displayed at a location near the location of the anchor as a hypertext markup language (HTML) overlay over the image of the document, wherein a pane displayed proximate to the image of the document includes the one or more comments and selection of one of the one or more comments causes the display to scroll to a portion of the document at the location of the anchor associated with the one of the one or more comments and providing an HTML overlay, over a portion of the image of the document, that highlights the anchor of the selected comment.