The invention relates to a method and apparatus for regenerating portions
of the page that have changed and transmitting only those portions to the
client for display. Executing only the necessary parts of the page
generation code and transmitting only changes to the client improves the
efficiency of using the resources of the network communication channel,
the client node and the server node. Performing these operations only
when required, when the data has changed, improves the efficiency of use
even further. The invention also takes advantage of any portions of the
page that are already on the client by reusing them and thus eliminates
the need to regenerate or transmit those reusable portions.In one aspect,
the invention relates to a method for incorporating a partial page into a
transmitted page displayed on a client. The method includes displaying
the transmitted page on a client, receiving by the client a regenerated
portion of the transmitted page from a server and incorporating by the
client the regenerated portion into the transmitted page displayed on the
client. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving by the client a
modification list from the server instructing the client on the
incorporation of the regenerated page portion into the transmitted page.
In another embodiment, the method includes receiving by the client
additional code instructing the client on how to interpret commands
contained in the modification list.