Patents Portfolio
U.S. Patent Application: US20170364326
Patent Title
User interface and application software in a mobile device that support wireless printing over a network
Meta Information
Appl. No.: 15/692977
Filed: Aug. 31, 2017
Inventor: William Ho Chang et al
External Links: UPSTO, Google Patents
Technical Fields
Abstract
Software applications supporting wireless printing are herein disclosed and enabled. The wireless printing from a mobile device may not require a device specific printer driver installed. For example, to print from an application (e.g., browsing application, email application, document application) on a smart phone, the application obtains digital content, displays the digital content on a touch sensitive screen, establishes a wireless local area network connection (e.g., IEEE 802.11) to a network, discovers one or more printers available in the network, receives device information related to a discovered printer, selects a printer for printing the digital content, and selects a print item to transmit output data to the selected printer. The application may register the discovered printer with a service over a network by transmitting the device information to the service. Subsequently, the service may share the registered printer with another mobile device that has appropriate security or authentication information.
Sample Claim
1. A smart phone method for printing digital content using, at least in part, one or more application software in a smart phone, the smart phone being a mobile and wireless information apparatus, the smart phone includes:
a touch sensitive screen interface,
a processing unit with one or more embedded processors,
wireless communication circuitry for establishing wireless local area network communications,
a memory or storage unit for storing software that includes at least a portion of operating system software and at least a portion of the one or more application software, and wherein the one or more applications software includes at least one of an Internet browsing application, an email application, a document creation application, or a digital imaging application, individually or in any combination, and
wherein execution of at least part of the software, by the processing unit of the smart phone, facilitates the smart phone to perform the smart phone method, comprising:
(1) obtaining, by the one or more application software at the smart phone, digital content;
(2) displaying, by the one or more application software and over the touch sensitive screen interface of the smart phone, the digital content obtained in (1);
(3) wirelessly establishing, using the wireless communication circuitry of the smart phone, a wireless local area network communication for connecting the smart phone to one or more printers in a
wireless local area network;
(4) wirelessly detecting, using the wireless communication circuitry of the smart phone, one or more printers that are available in the wireless local area network in (3);
(5) providing, over the touch sensitive screen interface of the smart phone, a list of one or more printers detected in (4) that are available in the wireless local area network in (3) for user selection on the touch sensitive screen interface;
(6) receiving, via the touch sensitive screen interface of the smart phone, at least an indication of a selected printer from among the one or more printers in the list that was provided over the touch sensitive screen interface for user selection in (5);
(7) providing a print item or function control over the touch sensitive screen interface of the smart phone for user selection on the touch sensitive screen interface of the smart phone to print the digital content displayed on the touch sensitive screen interface in (2);
(8) receiving, via the touch sensitive screen interface of the smart phone, selection of the print item or function control in (7) for printing at least part of the digital content; and
(9) subsequent to receiving selection of the print item or function control in (8), wirelessly transmitting, via the wireless communication circuitry of the smart phone, print data related, at least in part, to the digital content displayed on the touch sensitive screen interface in (2), over the established wireless local area network communication in (3) to the selected printer in
(6), thereby the one or more applications of the smart phone facilitates wireless printing of digital content from the smart phone to a printer available in the wireless local area network in (3); and
wherein, subsequent to having wirelessly detected the one or more printers in (4), and prior to wirelessly transmitting of the print data in (9), the smart phone further wirelessly receives, using the wireless communication circuitry of the smart phone and via the established wireless local area network communication in (3), device information related to the one or more printers in (4), the device information includes one or more capability information, or identification information, or security information, or device attribute information, individually or in any combination, related to the one or more printers in (4), and wherein the transmitting of the print data in (9) is based, at least in part, on the smart phone having received the device information.