Patent ID: 7584193

Claim:
A client-server system comprising: a server operable to: receive from a client, over a network, a request for a structure comprising data objects; receive, from the client, an available bandwidth for client-server communication over the network; prepare a partial structure of data objects, the partial structure differing from the requested structure in that the partial structure comprises a first subset of the data objects comprising the requested structure and one or more placeholder objects in place of a second subset of the data objects comprising the requested structure, thereby omitting the second subset of data objects comprising the requested structure from the partial structure; and transmit the partial structure over the network to the client in place of the requested structure, wherein: the placeholder objects have positions in the partial structure corresponding to positions of the omitted second subset of data objects in the requested structure, the placeholder objects in the partial structure require less bandwidth to transmit than the omitted second subset of data objects, and the server varies the number of placeholder objects and the number of data objects in the partial structure to conform the bandwidth required to transmit the partial structure over the network to the available bandwidth received from the client.