Navigating hierarchically organized information

Abstract

Hierarchies are navigated easily through a user interface that is continuous in its presentation of node information and may be implemented using a small display space.

1 - 55 . (canceled)  
   
   
       56 . A method of displaying hierarchically organized information in a two-dimensional space, the method comprising displaying representations of nodes of a hierarchy in a two-dimensional space on a display, each node representation fully occupying a subspace within the space, and allocating the space entirely to the subspaces, the allocation of the display space to the subspaces being dependent on a two-dimensional value representing a focus of a view of the hierarchy displayed to a user, such that a position and dimensions of the portion of the space allocated to each subspace of the display space vary only by an arbitrarily small amount for an arbitrarily small change in the two-dimensional focus value.  
   
   
       57 . The method of  claim 56  in which the two-dimensional value comprises a floating-point value.  
   
   
       58 . The method of  claim 56  in which one dimension of the two-dimensional value represents a depth of the hierarchy, and the extent of the display space allocated to a subspace in a dimension that represents the hierarchy depth is a function of the corresponding node's focus-relative depth, the focus-relative depth comprising the difference between the node's depth in the hierarchy and the component of a user-indicated focus in the dimension corresponding to hierarchy depth.  
   
   
       59 . The method of  claim 56  in which the extent of the display space allocated to a subspace in the dimension that does not represent the hierarchy depth is, for nodes within a central range of focus-relative depth, a function of the node's focus-relative depth and the number of the node's child nodes, and for nodes that are children to nodes within the central range, a function of the extent of the space allocated to the node's parent and the number of the node's siblings and its order with respect to them, and for nodes that are parent to nodes within the central range, a function of the extents of its child nodes.  
   
   
       60 . A method comprising receiving at a server a request from a client for information about a hierarchy, in response to the request, providing to the client information about only a portion but not all of the hierarchy, the portion including references to information about other portions of the hierarchy, and determining the size of the portion to be provided to the client adaptively based on parameters for optimizing communication between the server and the client.  
   
   
       61 . The method of  claim 60  in which each of the portions comprises a sub-hierarchy of the hierarchy.  
   
   
       62 . The method of  claim 60  in which the server automatically builds a hierarchy definition portion that is as near as possible in size to a given minimum portion size.  
   
   
       63 . The method of  claim 60  in which the server generates references to sub-hierarchies and includes them with definitions of nodes of the portion provided.