As the developments of networked processing systems, such as the Internet, continue to advance more computing power and features are available to users. For example, information that historically has been limited to TV and Radio broadcasts on home appliances is now being made available through on-line computing services. The combination of networked computers and multimedia interactive graphic user interfaces permits the access and display of textual and graphic information in a manner, and at a speed, not previously known in the industry.
As a result of these advancements in technology, various streaming content application solutions now exist to facilitate the transfer of streaming content over the Internet, such as Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies available from Microsoft Corporation located at Redmond, Wash. and Real Network's Streaming Media Solutions available from Real Networks located at Seattle, Wash.
While these solutions have made streaming media content possible, they are neither designed to, nor sufficient to, support a real time interactive dynamic user interface. For example in the prior art, universal resource locator (URL) commands are used in combination with streaming media to change the user interface in a browser. For example, a media file containing a song may be downloaded or streamed to a user and at the end of media file, a URL command may be included to direct the browser to a site to purchase the song. These systems use static commands or URLs in the encoded content stream that need to be indexed prior to delivery to the displayed user interface. It is necessary to index streaming media every time a modification is made to a non-streaming element of video or audio. As a result, the displayed user interface is neither dynamic nor real time and cannot be modified “on the fly” to incorporate new high resolution images or DHTML. This requirement of indexing a static command with streaming video limits flexibility. For example, if information, such as a price or image, is changed often, the media file must be constantly reindexed. Thus, an e-commerce site may have to constantly index a media file.
Therefore, there is a desire for a method, system and article of manufacture for integrating streaming content and a real time interactive dynamic user interface on a processing device network.