Patent ID: 7664739

Claim:
A navigation based system that facilitates smooth viewing of search results comprising: a search component that receives search input and processes the input to return a plurality of thumbnails representing search results; a display component that presents the plurality of thumbnails in a first display space that is one page in length regardless of the number of search results, wherein the length of the page is based on a number of search results returned; one or more navigational components that facilitate navigation and manipulation of the plurality of thumbnails, wherein the one or more navigational components comprise: (1) an infinite-scroll component that dynamically determines an amount of scroll space necessary to view the plurality of thumbnails; (2) a pointing device that facilitates grabbing within the first display space containing the thumbnails and dragging the first display space in a desired scroll direction to navigate the thumbnails; (3) a zoom control that selectively zooms in or out on the plurality of thumbnails, wherein zooming in causes fewer thumbnails to be visible in the first display space at once but in greater detail, while zooming out causes more thumbnails to be visible in the first display space at once but in less detail; and (4) an object-overlay component that, upon selection of a thumbnail from the first display space, displays in a second display space a web page, which is a source of the thumbnail, by displaying the thumbnail over the displayed web page.