Automatically rendering web and/or hybrid applications natively in parallel

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9910833-B2
Application number	US-201213675056-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 13, 2012
Priority date	Nov 13, 2012
Publication date	Mar 6, 2018
Grant date	Mar 6, 2018

Abstract

An embodiment includes causing elements to be recognized that correspond to one or more browser-supported programming languages in an application. The recognized elements are those elements that can be converted to native user interface elements in the operating system and rendered on a display of a computing device. The elements in the one or more browser-supported programming languages are converted to native user interface elements. The native user interface elements are caused to be rendered on the display of the computing device. Methods, apparatus, software, and computer program products are disclosed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method performed on a computing device comprising an operating system, comprising: causing elements to be recognized that correspond to one or more browser-supported programming languages in an application by traversing a model of at least a portion of the application, wherein the recognized elements are those elements in the model that can be converted to native user interface elements in the operating system and rendered on a display of the computing device; converting the elements in the one or more browser-supported programming languages to native user interface elements; causing the native user interface elements to be rendered on the display of the computing device, wherein a native rendering process performs at least the converting the elements and causing the native user interface elements to be rendered and a web rendering process performs at least the causing the elements to be recognized, and performing both a web rendering of the application and a native rendering of the application in parallel by performing at least the following: the web rendering process, in response to a change in the model, calling the native renderer process to cause the native rendering process to render native user interface elements corresponding to recognized elements in a changed portion of the model; and the native rendering process, in response to an event occurring in the native rendering, injecting code corresponding to the event into the web rendering causing the web rendering process to be hidden from the display.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more browser-supported programming languages comprise one or both of hypertext markup language or JavaScript.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein causing the native elements to be rendered on a display of the computing device further comprises causing the operating system of the computing device to render the native elements on the display.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the converting the elements further comprises converting each element in the model that can be converted to native user interface elements in the operating system and rendered on the display to a native user interface element in a tree.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the recognizing is performed because the recognized elements in the model correspond to elements in a library.

6. The method of claim 3 , wherein the operating system comprises one of iOS, Android, or Windows.

7. The method of claim 4 , wherein the tree further comprises for each native user interface element a renderable type corresponding to the native user interface element.

8. The method of claim 4 , wherein converting the elements is performed so there is a one-to-one correspondence between elements in the model that can be converted to native user interface elements in the operating system and rendered on the display to a native user interface elements in the tree.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein both the native rendering process and the web rendering process are performed on the computing device.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the native rendering process is performed on the computing device, but the web rendering process is performed on a device different from the computing device.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising propagating events occurring in the web rendering process to the native rendering process.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein converting the elements further comprises converting each element in the model that can be converted to native user interface elements in the operating system and rendered on the display to a native user interface element in a tree; and wherein recognizing elements in the model that can be converted to native user interface elements in the operating system and rendered on a display of the computing device further comprises bridging callbacks into native code performing the native rendering process for at least some of the elements so that during the web rendering process, the native rendering process is called via the callbacks, and. in response to the calls, the native rendering process uses the tree to cause native user interface elements, corresponding to elements in the model and to corresponding native user interface elements in the tree, to be rendered on the display.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the display is one or more of a touchscreen, flat screen, monitor, television, or projector.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein causing the native user interface elements to be rendered on a display of the computing device further comprises positioning renderables corresponding to native user interface elements, marking the renderables as ready to draw, and causing the computing device to render the renderables.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the web rendering process, in response to a change in the model, calling the native renderer process to cause the native rendering process to render native user interface elements further comprises the web rendering process, when traversing the model, finding and performing callbacks to the native rendering process, the callbacks corresponding to recognized elements; and performing a web rendering of the application and a native rendering of the application in parallel further comprises: the native rendering process performing the callbacks to cause native user interface elements corresponding to recognized elements in the model to be rendered on the display.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein performing a web rendering of the application and a native rendering of the application in parallel further comprises: the web rendering process handling the injected code and, for an event that modifies the model, notifying the native rendering process by using a callback.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the injected code comprises JavaScript code.

18. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to performing the web rendering of the application and the native rendering of the application in parallel, traversing the model and bridging callbacks, for recognized elements in the model, from the model into the native rendering process.

19. The method of claim 1 , wherein causing the web rendering process to be hidden from the display comprises at least one of: performing the web rendering in a video scratch area, performing the web rendering outside the viewable area of the screen, and disabling output from the web rendering process to the display.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Ligman Joseph W
• Pistoia Marco
• Ponzo John
• Thomas Gegi

Classifications

• G06F3/00

  Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements · CPC title

• G06F17/00

  Digital computing or data processing equipment or methods, specially adapted for specific functions (information retrieval, database structures or file system structures therefor G06F16/00) · CPC title

• G06F17/2247 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F40/143 Primary

  Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD] · CPC title