Patent ID: 7418660

Claim:
A method for displaying contents of a display page on a display device, the method comprising: retrieving content of the display page from a display page server, the content being organized hierarchically into document nodes, some document nodes being designated as fragment nodes that can be cached, each fragment node having an expiration; identifying as segment nodes those document nodes that have no child document nodes; designating as block nodes segment nodes and subdivisions of segment nodes that are to be displayed individually on the display device; caching content of fragment nodes, the identification of segment nodes, and the designation of block nodes; and upon receiving a request to display content of a node, when the cached content of the node has expired, retrieving from a display page server content of an expired fragment node that has expired and that is an ancestor of the node without retrieving other fragment nodes; identifying as segment nodes those document nodes of the expired fragment node that have no child document node without re-identifying as segment nodes for document nodes other than the expired fragment node; designating as block nodes segments nodes and subdivisions of segment nodes of the expired fragment node that are to be displayed individually on the display device without re-designating as block nodes the segment nodes of document nodes other than the expired fragment node; and caching the retrieved content of the expired fragment node, the identification of segment nodes of the expired fragment, and the designation of block nodes of the expired fragment node; and displaying the content of the node based on the cached content, the identification of segment nodes, and the designation of block nodes so that segment nodes are identified and block nodes are designated for only an expired node whose content is to be displayed to avoid having to re-identify segment nodes and re-designate block nodes for all the document nodes of the display page.