Patent ID: 6330566
Filing Date: 2001-12-11
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
A method of serving customized web pages using a data structure, the data structure containing information indicating a set of web page content preferences of a user of a first computer, the data structure designed to be returned to a second computer by the first computer and the second computer thereby generating in response to receiving the data structure a customized web page based on the set of web page content preferences of the user, and the second computer returning the customized web page to the first computer, the data structure possibly containing canonical representations of user web page content preferences, where canonical representations of user web page content preferences are defined as ASCII character sequences containing key-value pairs, the data structure having at least a compressed representation of customized web page preferences, the compressed representation comprising non-canonical representations of customized web page preferences, the method comprising:identifying by the second computer a character from the non-canonical representations and determining the binary representation of the character, the binary representation comprising an ordered string of bits;determining whether each bit within the string of bits is set or not;determining to include and exclude customized content from a customized web page based on a combination of the location of a bit within the binary representation of the character along with whether or not the bit in that location is set;whereby the binary representation of preferences in the data structure reduces server latency in customized web page generation.