Hierarchical, multilevel, expand and collapse navigation aid for hierarchical structures

• US 20050076312A1
• Filed: 10/03/2003
• Published: 04/07/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RELX Inc. (RELX PLC)
• Original Assignee: LexisNexis Group Inc. (RELX PLC)
• Inventors: Jacobs, Wendy D., Bressler, Jason R., Gardner, Douglas L., Ly, Kevin T., Bancroft, James C., Ramachandran, Kavya
• Granted Patent: US 7,360,175 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/853
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus

Abstract

A software utility navigation aid for hierarchical structures such as file managers, taxonomies, or tables of contents that displays a dynamic menu when the mouse cursor is hovered over an activator used to swap the expanded/collapsed state of a node displayed in a hierarchical structure. The menu contains entries that identify in which display level of expansion the node resides based on the structure'"'"'s fully collapsed condition (from the root node), the number of display levels to which this branch of the hierarchy can be expanded, and the number of nodes that will be exposed when this branch is expanded to each of those levels. Each displayed entry in this menu, positioned both below and above the identified node, can be clicked to cause the hierarchical structure to expand or collapse to that display level.

Claims

1. A navigation aid for hierarchical structures having multiple levels of nodes, the navigational aid comprising:

means for displaying the nodes in a multilevel hierarchical structure;

means for displaying a conventional expand/collapse icon in the vicinity of the name of each node; and

means for displaying a dynamic menu when the cursor is hovered over an activator used to swap the expanded/collapsed state of a node displayed in the hierarchical structure.

2. The navigation aid of claim 1, wherein the means for displaying a dynamic menu includes means for gathering statistics about the current state of the hierarchical structure, and wherein the menu contains information that is generated dynamically from the statistics.

3. The navigation aid of claim 2, wherein the means for displaying a dynamic menu further includes means for adjusting the information based on the selected node'"'"'s position within the hierarchical structure.

4. The navigation aid of claim 3, wherein the menu identifies, by node name, the path of parent nodes from the root node (hierarchy fully collapsed) to the selected node.

5. The navigation aid of claim 4, wherein the path information also identifies what level of expansion, within this branch of the hierarchy, the selected node resides.

6. The navigation aid of claim 3, wherein the menu identifies how many additional levels this particular branch of the hierarchical structure can be expanded.

7. The navigation aid of claim 3, wherein the menu identifies the total number of additional descendant nodes that will be displayed if the hierarchy is expanded to a given level.

8. The navigation aid of claim 1, further comprising means for updating the display to show the branch of the hierarchical structure to be, expanded or collapsed to the selected level of expansion.

9. A computer program product for navigating hierarchical structures having multiple levels of nodes, the computer program product comprising a computer usable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied in the medium, the computer readable program code comprising:

computer readable program code means for displaying the nodes in a multilevel hierarchical structure;

computer readable program code means for displaying a conventional expand/collapse icon in the vicinity of each node'"'"'s name; and

computer readable program code means for displaying a dynamic menu when the cursor is hovered over an activator used to swap the expanded/collapsed state of a node displayed in the hierarchical structure.