Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for presenting Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in an online game. In one method, a player becomes a “regular” visitor of a friend when the player visits the friend a predetermined amount of times within a certain period (e.g., three times within the last seven days). When a player becomes a regular visitor, the player may obtain items (e.g., pepper) that are not obtainable in any other way. As long as a player is a regular visitor, the player may continue visiting the friend to continue obtaining the special items. However, if the player falls below the threshold of visits required within the period, the status of regular visitor is lost by the player, and the player may regain the regular status by meeting the requirement again.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for presenting Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in an online game. In one method, a “throw in the ingredients” animation is performed to place ingredients into a cooking appliance (e.g., a grill). Each time the player clicks on an ingredient, the ingredient goes into the cooking appliance. In one example, the last item has a special flair or a colorful animation indicating that the dish is ready to be cooked. In another interface, the user is given an option by the game to “show me” which teaches the player how to get that ingredient. The interface may also show which friends have the desired ingredient, and if the player clicks one of the friends, a game request is sent to the friend for the needed ingredient.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for presenting Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in an online game. In one method, a player becomes a “regular” visitor of a friend when the player visits the friend a predetermined amount of times within a certain period (e.g., three times within the last seven days). When a player becomes a regular visitor, the player may obtain items (e.g., pepper) that are not obtainable in any other way. As long as a player is a regular visitor, the player may continue visiting the friend to continue obtaining the special items. However, if the player falls below the threshold of visits required within the period, the status of regular visitor is lost by the player, and the player may regain the regular status by meeting the requirement again.

Abstract: Some applications require the use of a long list of items. For example, an email application may have a long list of emails or an online banking application may have a long list of transactions. A problem arises, however, when there are many items in the list because it may take too long to download all of the data. To overcome this problem, a technology is proposed that creates a list with a placeholder for each of the elements in the list. As portions of the list are needed (or viewed), the relevant data is downloaded and used to populate the relevant items in the list.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are provided for evaluating the extent to which link text, representing a hypertext link on a web page, corresponds to a web page referenced by the link. In one embodiment, the link text may be compared to the title of a web page referenced by the link, such as by parsing the link text and page title into individual tokens and comparing the tokens. The extent to which the link text and the page title correspond may be expressed as a percentage of tokens which match. A graphical user interface (GUI) may be provided which presents a visual indication when a minimum percentage of tokens do not match.