[Sigia-l] Does this mean what I think it means?

[Listera]

"Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com" wrote:

> I think you could still do expanding/collapsing forms and not violate the
> exact conditions of the patent.

Well, leaving aside Java, Active X, Flash, etc., in xHTML we have iFrames,
frames and DHTML/CSS/DOM tree manipulation of selective
writing/deleting/hiding of nodes/elements, etc. My assumption is that these
are public and Amazon is not claiming to have invented them. Whether these
methods are used in a form or not is/should not be the determining factor.
Forms are important here because they are the principal (but not necessarily
the only) means of communicating with the server. Indeed, when I do quick
prototypes, I download all the data I need in a page in one swoop, then
hide/show/edit portions of the page to simulate the request/response loop
and server interactions, without going back to a (non-existing) server.
WebObjects, for example, has a framework precisely for hiding/disclosing
such dynamic data on HTML pages with the clicking of the familiar Apple
disclosure triangle thingy.

I'm too hungry at the moment to write more about this, but I read the whole
patent page and saw nothing there that was novel enough to merit a patent,
to say the least.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba