Patent ID: 7610564

Claim:
A method for displaying and browsing through a sparse view of content items in a hierarchy, comprising: receiving a request to display a set of content items with a common parent in the hierarchy, wherein a display area on a computer display has insufficient space to simultaneously display all of the content items from the set of content items, and wherein the set of content items includes a first subset of content items and a disjoint second subset of content items; displaying the first subset of content items; displaying as a content item in the hierarchy a search element that represents the second subset of content items, wherein displaying the search element indicates to a user the presence of the second subset of content items which are not currently displayed; upon receiving a selection of the search element by a user, initiating a search operation that allows the user to determine and select a desired content item from the second subset of content items; upon receiving a user-selected content item from the second subset of content items during the search operation, adjusting the first subset of content items to include the user-selected content item; and displaying the adjusted first subset of content items in the computer display.