Interactive web collaboration systems and methods
A topic room is provided in which one or more individuals or other entities may collaborate on topics of mutual interest. Multiple individuals or participants may use the topic room to communicate in real or non-real time and may work together to create, browse, modify, comment on, and perform any other suitable action on content. A chat room within the topic room receives, records, and transmits the communications and all activity in the topic room to all participants as messages. Client processes at a participant's user equipment may listen to the messages and take particular actions. For example, one participant can follow another participant as that participant browses through material by using the messages received from that participant.
1. A method for using chat messages, comprising:
enabling a software object associated with a web browser operated by a first user on a computer to generate and pass chat messages understandable by a human being as though sent by the first user from the first user to one or more users when the first user changes a location of the first user's web browser, wherein each message from the first user contains the location of the first user's web browser;
enabling a software object associated with a web browser operated by a second user on a computer to generate and pass chat messages understandable by a human being as though sent by the second user from the second user to one or more users when the second user changes a location of the second user's web browser, wherein each message from the second user contains the location of the second user's web browser;
enabling a given software object associated with a browser operated by a user, on a computer that receives and displays the chat messages from the first user and the second user, to also receive the chat messages from the first user and the second user;
enabling the user to follow the first user by causing the given software object to use the messages to change a location of the user's web browser to the locations contained in the messages received from the first user, and then subsequently follow the second user by causing the given software object to use the messages to change a location of the user's web browser to the locations contained in the messages received from the second user, wherein multiple messages are received from the first user or the second user and used to successively change the location of the user's web browser to the locations contained in each of the messages received from the first user or the second user;
and enabling the given software object to receive the messages from the first user or the second user and not change the location of the user's web browser when the user does not follow the first user or the second user or after the user stops following the first user or the second user, whereby the messages are received by the given software object and the location of the user's web browser is not changed to the locations contained in the messages.
2. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising allowing software objects to listen to the chat messages and take scripted actions in response.
3. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising enabling software objects to send chat messages describing their actions.
4. The method defined in claim 1 , wherein a message is passed each time the first user changes the location of the web browser and wherein each message contains the current location of the first user's web browser.
5. The method defined in claim 1 , wherein enabling the user to follow the first user by causing the given software object to use the messages to change a location of the user's web browser to the locations contained in the messages comprises enabling the user to input a whenever statement and an associated script.
6. The method defined in claim 1 , wherein the messages from the software object associated with the first user to the one or more users are passed through a chat room.
7. The method defined in claim 1 , further comprising:
enabling the user to cause the given software object to change the location of the user's web browser to a location of the first user's web browser or the second user's web browser using information from a message previously received from the first user or the second user.
8. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising enabling the user to follow the first user and the second user by causing the given software object to use the messages to change the location of the user's web browser to the locations contained in the messages from the first user and the second user.