Patent ID: 7664870

Claim:
A method in a client application of a client computing device for providing a low fidelity representation of data until a high fidelity representation of the same data becomes available, the method comprising: establishing a communication channel between the client computing device and a content server providing datasets for download by the client computing device, wherein a dataset represents data and comprises at least a low fidelity representation of the data and a high fidelity representation of the data, the low fidelity representation of the data being divided into portions such that when a portion is received the portion can be used without having to wait until the other portions of the low fidelity representation of the data is received, the high fidelity representation of the data not being divided into portions such that the high fidelity representation of the data cannot be used until all the high fidelity representation of the data is received; and upon detecting a need to download data from the content server, determining by the client computing device a download priority for downloading the low fidelity representation of the data and the high fidelity representation of the same data wherein the low fidelity representation of a portion of the data is given a higher priority than the high fidelity representation of the entire data and the low fidelity representation of another portion of the data is given a lower priority than that high fidelity representation of that data; requesting the content server to download to the client computing device the low fidelity representation of the data and the high fidelity representation of the data in the determined download priority; and receiving at the client computing device the low fidelity representation of the data and the high fidelity representation of the data, wherein the client application uses the low fidelity representation of the data until the high fidelity representation of the data is downloaded and wherein the portion of the low fidelity representation of the data with the lower priority and the high fidelity representation of the data are downloaded simultaneously such that when the low fidelity representation of the data with the lower priority is downloaded before the high fidelity representation of the data with the higher priority, the low fidelity representation of the data with the lower priority is used before the high fidelity representation of the data with the higher priority.