US 11,687,508 B2
Accessing historical content items of a content management system through placeholders
Shi Cong, Sammamish, WA (US); and Tony Xu, Redmond, WA (US)
Assigned to Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed by Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA (US)
Filed on Feb. 17, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/177,597.
Application 17/177,597 is a continuation of application No. 15/395,238, filed on Dec. 30, 2016, granted, now 10,956,387.
Prior Publication US 2021/0173820 A1, Jun. 10, 2021
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 16/21 (2019.01); G06F 16/22 (2019.01); G06F 16/24 (2019.01); G06F 16/2458 (2019.01); G06F 16/93 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/219 (2019.01) [G06F 16/22 (2019.01); G06F 16/2474 (2019.01); G06F 16/94 (2019.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
receiving, from a content management system, one or more indications of content items contained in a previous version of a directory structure;
generating placeholders to represent content items in the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the placeholders are generated based on the one or more indications, wherein the generated placeholders are smaller in size than the content items in the previous version of the directory structure;
based on the one or more indications, presenting, at a user interface, a visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the visual representation includes the placeholders representing the content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure, and wherein the visual representation is separate from a current version of the directory structure;
transmitting a request to access a first placeholder in the visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the request includes an identifier associated with the first placeholder;
obtaining, from the content management system, a first content item associated with the first placeholder based on the request; and
updating the visual representation of the previous version of the directory structure to replace the first placeholder with the first content item, wherein the updated visual representation visually differentiates the first content item from remaining placeholders in the visual representation based on one or more visual attributes indicating that the first content item is a downloaded content item.