FACILITATING BROWSING OF RESULT SETS

• US 20100100836A1
• Filed: 10/19/2009
• Published: 04/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pomian & Corella LLC
• Original Assignee: Pomian & Corella LLC
• Inventors: Corella, Francisco, Lewison, Karen Pomian
• Granted Patent: US 9,069,854 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/768
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0256 User search

Abstract

A method of facilitating the browsing of a plurality of result sets by a user. The method includes displaying a plurality of queries on a computer display, each query having a corresponding result set, the plurality of queries thereby constituting a set of displayed queries, and displaying the result set of a selected displayed query in response to the user selecting the query from the set of displayed queries via a user interface procedure, while continuing to display the set of displayed queries so the user can subsequently select other queries from the set of displayed queries to thereby interleave browsing the result sets of the queries in the set of displayed queries.

Claims

1. A method of facilitating the browsing of a plurality of result sets by a user, comprising:

displaying a plurality of queries on a computer display, each query having a corresponding result set, the plurality of queries thereby constituting a set of displayed queries; and

displaying the result set of a selected displayed query in response to the user selecting the query from the set of displayed queries via a user interface procedure, while continuing to display the set of displayed queries so the user can subsequently select other queries from the set of displayed queries to thereby interleave browsing the result sets of the queries in the set of displayed queries.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the user interface procedure used by the user to select a displayed query comprises clicking on the displayed query.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user interface procedure used by the user to select a displayed query comprises:

bringing keyboard focus to a user-interface element containing the set of displayed queries and having a highlighted selection; and

using up/down keys to move the highlighted selection until it coincides with the query to be selected.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the result set of the selected displayed query is displayed by displaying a page of the result set and a result-set navigation tool, if the result set is not empty.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the navigation tool is relative to the page.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the navigation tool comprises a page menu.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising augmenting the set of displayed queries with an incremental set of displayed queries in response to the user submitting a query using a user interface procedure, the incremental set comprising at least the query submitted by the user.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the user interface procedure for submitting a query comprises entering the query in a query box and clicking on a button.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the user interface procedure for submitting a query comprises entering the query in a query box and hitting a submission key.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the user interface procedure for submitting a query, when the query is one of the set of displayed queries, consists of dragging the displayed query to a query box.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the user interface procedure for submitting a query, when the query is a displayed query, comprises double-clicking on the displayed query.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the incremental set further comprises a respelling of the query submitted by the user.

13. The method of claim 7, wherein the incremental set further comprises at least one query deemed similar by a search back-end to the query submitted by the user.

14. The method of claim 7, wherein the incremental set further comprises a subquery of the query submitted by the user.

15. The method of claim 7, wherein the query submitted by the user is a conjunctive query and the incremental set further comprises every immediate conjunctive subquery of the conjunctive query.

16. The method of claim 7, wherein the query submitted by the user is a disjunctive query and the incremental set further comprises every immediate disjunctive subquery of the disjunctive query.

17. The method of claim 7, wherein the query submitted by the user has an empty result set and the incremental set further comprises a group of queries that together constitute a cooperative response to the query submitted by the user.

18. The method of claim 7, wherein each displayed query has a Boolean retention status, a user-interface element for displaying the retention status, and a user-interface procedure for altering the retention status, the method further comprising removing from the set of displayed queries every displayed query having a retention status equal to false in response to the user submitting a query.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the user-interface element for showing the Boolean retention status of each displayed query is a checkbox and the user-interface procedure for altering the Boolean retention status of each displayed query comprises clicking on the checkbox.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein augmenting the set of displayed queries with the incremental set of displayed queries in response to the user submitting a query includes setting to false the retention status of each displayed query in the incremental set.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising removing from the set of displayed queries every displayed query having a Boolean retention status equal to false in response to a user performing a user interface deletion procedure.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the user interface deletion procedure comprises clicking on a user-interface element.

23. The method of claim 1, including:

displaying the result set of the selected displayed query by making visible a result-set container that displays the result set of the query; and

making invisible a result-set container that displays the result set of a different displayed query, all result-set containers having same size and position on the display.

24. A system comprising:

a computer having a display and a storage facility;

a search application stored in the storage facility, the search application executable by the computer for performing a method of facilitating the browsing of a plurality of result sets by a user of the computer, the method comprising;

displaying on the computer display a plurality of queries, each query having a corresponding result set;

displaying the result set of a selected displayed query in response to the user selecting the query from the set of displayed queries via a user interface procedure, while continuing to display the plurality of queries, the result set being displayed, if not empty, by displaying a page of the result set together with a navigation tool for the result set, the page then being said to have been visited;

displaying a destination page of a displayed non-empty result set in response to the user specifying the destination page using a displayed navigation tool for the result set, the destination page then being said to have been visited; and

displaying again the result set of a previously selected displayed query in response to the user again selecting the query, the result set being displayed, if not empty, by displaying a last visited page of the result set and a navigation tool for the result set.

25. The system of claim 24, further comprising a search back-end containing an index into a collection of documents, the result sets of the displayed queries being relative to the collection of documents and being defined by the index, the computer accessing the search back-end over a network and obtaining pages of the result sets from the search back-end using a network interface.

26. The system of claim 25 wherein the network interface comprises an HTTP-based interface.

27. The system of claim 26 wherein the network is the Internet.

28. The system of claim 27, wherein the collection of documents is a collection of files reachable on the World Wide Web.

29. The system of claim 24, wherein, when displaying again the result set of a previously selected displayed query, as part of the method performed by the search application when executed by the computer, the last visited page displayed if the result set is not empty is displayed at a last scrolling position.

30. The system of claim 24, wherein the method performed by the search application when executed by the computer further comprises:

saving to a persistent memory, when the search application exits, data comprising the plurality of queries and a page number of a last visited page of every displayed query that has been selected; and

reading back said data from the persistent memory when the search application restarts,

thereby preserving said data when the search application is not running.

31. A computer readable storage medium storing computer executable instructions for controlling a computing device to perform a method of facilitating the browsing of a plurality of result sets, the method comprising:

displaying a plurality of queries on a computer display, each query having a corresponding result set; and

displaying the result set of a selected displayed query in response to the user selecting the query from the plurality of queries while continuing to display the plurality of queries so that the user can subsequently select other queries from the plurality of queries to thereby interleave browsing the result sets of the plurality of queries.