Patent ID: 8504922

Claim:
A method comprising: initiating, on a computer, a media environment browsing program that facilitates navigation to various types of media stored on the computer; presenting, by the media environment browsing program, a menu page that contains a content area and selectable menu items corresponding to media areas that can be accessed by the user, wherein the media areas include different types of libraries for browsing and selecting videos, music, and photographs stored on the computer, and wherein each media area provides a menu button for accessing the menu page; storing a navigation history in response to the user initiating forward accesses via the selectable menu items of the menu page and the menu button of each media area, wherein: the forward accesses include at least one visit to each media area from the menu page and at least one visit from each media area to the menu page via the menu button of each media area, the navigation history is stored in a last in first out data structure with a location of a last media area visited occupying a top position of the data structure, the navigation history allows a first backward access from the last media area visited to a location corresponding to a last visit to the menu page, and locations corresponding to all other visits to the menu page prior to the last visit to the menu page are removed from the data structure so that intervening menu pages that were used to move between other previously visited media areas during the forward accesses are skipped during backward accesses; presenting a user interface corresponding to the last media area visited for allowing the user to browse and select media items from a library; playing a media item at the last media area visited in response to selection of the media item by the user; removing the location of the last media area visited from the top position of the data structure in response to the user initiating the first backward access by pressing a back button so that the location corresponding to the last visit to the menu page occupies the top position of the data structure; presenting, by the media environment browsing program, the menu page with focus placed on the menu item corresponding to the last media area visited and with the media item continuing to play in the content area of the menu page; removing the location corresponding to the last visit to the menu page from the top position of the data structure in response to the user initiating a second backward access by pressing the back button so that a location corresponding to a previously visited media area occupies the top position of the data structure; and presenting a user interface corresponding to the previously visited media area, wherein the navigation history allows another media area to be directly accessed from the previously visited media area by pressing the back button to initiate a third backward access.