Patent ID: 6557015
Filing Date: 2003-04-29
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A method of displaying a hypertext document, the method comprising:(a) displaying a display representation of at least a portion of a first hypertext document on a computer display, the portion of the first hypertext document including a hypertext link definition that references a second hypertext document; (b) determining whether the second hypertext document is one of a plurality of interlinked hypertext documents in a document trail, wherein the plurality of interlinked hypertext documents is arranged in a predetermined sequence and includes a selected origination hypertext document and a selected destination hypertext document, wherein the document trail is a selected one of a plurality of document trails, with each document trail associated with one of a plurality of origination hypertext documents, and wherein determining whether the second hypertext document is in the document trail includes: (i) searching a history list for the selected origination hypertext document, the history list including a plurality of previously-viewed hypertext documents arranged in the order in which the previously-viewed hypertext documents were viewed; (ii) comparing each of the previously-viewed hypertext documents viewed since the selected origination hypertext document with a corresponding interlinked hypertext document in the document trail; (iii) initially storing in a list of active document trails each document trail associated with the selected origination hypertext document, wherein comparing the previously-viewed hypertext document includes comparing each of the previously-viewed hypertext documents viewed since the selected origination hypertext document with a corresponding interlinked hypertext document for each document trail in the list of active document trails; (iv) removing from the list of active document trails any document trail in which at least one of the previously-viewed hypertext documents viewed since the selected origination hypertext document does not match the corresponding interlinked hypertext document for that document trail; and (v) determining that the second hypertext document is one of the plurality of interlinked hypertext documents in the selected document trail if the selected document trail remains in the list of active document trails and the second hypertext document follows the first hypertext document in the selected document trail; and (c) displaying one of first and second display representations of the hypertext link definition within the display representation of the portion of the first hypertext document based upon whether the second hypertext document is one of the plurality of interlinked hypertext documents in the document trail, wherein the first display representation indicates that the second hypertext document is one of the plurality of interlinked hypertext documents in the document trail, and wherein the second display representation indicates that the second hypertext document is not one of the plurality of interlinked hypertext documents in the document trail.