Patent ID: 7213060

Claim:
A method of installing a network printer in a printers folder on a workstation for peer-to-peer communication over a network between the workstation and the network printer, the method comprising the steps of: downloading a printers Hypertext Markup Language (html) page to the workstation, the printers html page providing a plurality of hyperlinks of network printers that can be added to the workstation; managing a database having corresponding printer identification information, printer configuration information, and print driver information, respectively, for each of the network printers; selecting a hyperlink from among the plurality of hyperlinks included in the downloaded html page for the network printer to be added to the workstation; in response to the selecting step, looking for, by a browser on the workstation, an Active Server Page (ASP) referenced in the selected hyperlink and downloading the ASP to the browser, wherein the downloaded ASP contains computer executable scripts; automatically extracting, by one of the computer executable scripts, the printer identification information of the selected network printer from the selected hyperlink and executing a component object on the workstation to install the network printer, wherein, the component object calls a function that performs the steps of: automatically obtaining the printer configuration information and the print driver information based at least in part on the extracted printer identification information, wherein the printer configuration information and the print driver information are obtained from the managed database and are determined from the managed database by using the extracted printer identification information as a key; automatically configuring the network printer and installing the print driver information based on the obtained printer configuration information determined from the managed database and the print driver information determined from the managed database, without further user input; and creating a locally managed instance of the network printer on the workstation for peer-to-peer communication over the network between the workstation and the network printer, wherein, when a print operation is performed on the workstation to print to the installed network printer, a print job is submitted directly to the network printer from the workstation.