Method and apparatus for browsing images

摘要

The present invention relates to a method for browsing images and an Image browser. The browsing is performed on a display of an electronic device having an image cache and includes the acts of determining an image, from accessible images not already stored in the image cache, being more likely to be displayed during the browsing than one image already stored in the image cache, storing the determined image in the image cache, shifting images presented on the display in response to a user input and at an image shifting rate of S. Said shifting images includes reading image data from the image cache and present the image on the display. The image browser includes a display, a dynamic Graphic User Interface, GUI, generator arranged to present images in accordance with a specific layout and to shift images at a specific image shifting rate S, an image cache arranged to temporarily store a plurality of images for use by the dynamic GUI generator, an access to a data storage, and an image retriever arranged to retrieve an image from the data storage and place it in the cache in case of the image retriever discovers an image in the data storage that is not present in the image cache and that is more likely to be displayed than one of the images present in the image cache. The image shifting rate S is frequently updated and is proportional to the present number of images in the image cache that are likely kept for browsing.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
determining an image, from accessible images not already stored in an image cache, preferred for display during a browsing over an image already stored in the image cache, storing the determined image in the image cache, shifting images presented on the display in response to a user input and at an image shifting rate of S, wherein said shifting images includes reading image data from the image cache and presenting the image on the display, wherein the image shifting rate S is frequently updated and is proportional to the number of images in the image cache that are stored for browsing, and wherein image shifting rate S is a rate of new images being shifted in to the display and wherein a caching rate Sl is the rate of which the electronic device is able to perform determining an image, retrieving said image, and storing the image in the image cache, wherein a desired maximum image shifting rate Sc is a predetermined fastest image shifting rate to be used when browsing the images, wherein a parameter U indicates an amount of useable information in the image cache, and wherein SαSl+(Sc−Sl)*U where Sc≠Sl and 0